Posted on 07/03/2004 3:31:41 PM PDT by Pokey78
Excited about "Fahrenheit 9/11?" It's the Palme d'Or-winning and doubtless soon to be Oscar-winning "documentary" from average blue-collar multimillionaire Michael Moore. I saw it last weekend with an audience composed wholly of informed, intelligent sophisticates.
I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad -- eagles soaring, etc. -- composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister attorney general. Moore reveals -- and if you feel that knowing the plot would spoil the movie, please skip to the next paragraph -- that Bush is a privileged simpleton under the control of war-crazed Big Oil interests who arranged to have the 2000 election stolen for him. I hadn't heard that before, had you?
Once Moore gets past his recounting of the Florida recount, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I agreed with in the movie. For example, he's very hard on the Saudis, and the unique access to the Bush family enjoyed by their oleaginous ambassador in Washington, Prince Bandar. He's also very mocking of the absurdities of post-9/11 airport security, alighting on a poor mom forced to drink a beaker of her own breast milk in front of passengers before boarding in order to demonstrate the liquid wasn't anything incendiary.
As we left, the couple ahead of me said they thought Bush would have a hard job responding to these shocking revelations. I didn't like to point out they could have heard about all this stuff years ago just by reading yours truly. I mentioned the breast-milk incident in a column Aug. 10, 2002. I called for Prince Bandar to be booted back to Saudi Arabia in November 2002, and I've been urging the dismantling of the kingdom -- Washington's out-of-control Frankensaud monster -- for almost three years now, since within a month of 9/11.
So in theory I ought to welcome Michael Moore as a comrade in arms. But the trouble with "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that you don't come away mad at the Saudis or America's useless bureaucracy, you come away mad at Bush -- or, if not mad, feeling snobbishly superior to him. And, if feeling snobbishly superior to the president isn't your bag, what's left is an incoherent bore. Moore follows his GUT, by which I mean his Grand Universal Theory: Bush is to blame for everything. Because of Bush, the Saudis secretly run U.S. policy. Because of Bush, the Taliban were in bed with Texas energy executives. Because of Bush, the Taliban got toppled. . . .
Whoa, hold up a minute, I thought he was all pals with the Taliban. The Saudis certainly were, which is why they opposed the liberation of Afghanistan.
But by now Moore's moved on to pointing out that Bush's Afghan stooge Hamid Karzai used to work for the Texas energy company panting for that big Afghan gas pipeline.
But hang on, I thought the Texan energy guys already had the Taliban in their pockets and were funded by the Saudis . . . "Connecting the dots" is all very well, but not when you've got more dots in your picture than Seurat.
Bush has always been the issue for Moore. On Sept. 11 itself, his only gripe was that the terrorists had targeted New York and D.C. instead of Texas or, indeed, my beloved New Hampshire: "They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the plane's destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"
The fellows at the controls of those planes were training for 9/11 when Clinton was president and Gore was ahead in the polls, and they'd have still been in the cockpit had Ralph Nader been elected. Though Mohammed Atta took flying lessons in Florida, he apparently wasn't as worked up about its notorious hanging chads as Michael Moore. Mr. Moore is guilty of what I believe psychologists call "projection."
The "Why didn't you terrorists kill the Bush voters?" line is not reprised in the movie, but the strange preoccupations it betrays drive the entire picture. Here's the way it works: If Bush is wearing the blue boxer shorts, they're a suspicious personal gift from Crown Prince Abdullah. If Bush is wearing the red boxer shorts, it's a conspiracy to distract public attention from the blue ones he was given by Crown Prince Abdullah. If he's wearing no boxer shorts, it's because he's so dumb he can't find his underwear in the morning.
So, shortly after 9/11, Moore wrote that footage of one of the World Trade Center planes showed that it was being trailed by an F-16 -- i.e., the government could have shot it down but chose not to, so it could hit all those Al Gore voters. Imagine if, on Sept. 11, the U.S. Air Force had blown four passenger jets to kingdom come. Moore's film would be filled with poignant home movies of final Christmases and birthday parties and exploitative footage of anguished parents going to Washington to demand the truth about what happened that day and an end to the lame Bush spin about vague "threats" to public buildings.
Midway through the picture, a "peace" activist provides a perfect distillation of its argument. He recalls a conversation with an acquaintance, who observed, "bin Laden's a real ass---- for killing all those people." "Yeah," says the "pacifist", "but he'll never be as big an ass---- as Bush." That's who Michael Moore makes films for: those sophisticates who know that, no matter how many people bin Laden kills, in the ass---- hit parade he'll always come a distant second to Bush. Why, even Saddam Hussein, at his arraignment on Thursday, sounded awfully like he'd just seen "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the Loews Baghdad Roxy: "This is all theater. . . . The real criminal is Bush."
I can understand the point of being Michael Moore: There's a lot of money in it. What's harder to figure out is the point of being a devoted follower of Michael Moore. Apparently, the sophisticated, cynical intellectual class is so naive it'll fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act. If the Saudis were smart, they'd have bought him up years ago, established his anti-Saudi credentials, and then used him to promote the defeat of their nemesis Bush.
Hmm. Maybe they don't need to. Stick him in a head-dress and he looks like King Fahd's brother.
All I'm saying is connect the dots . . .
There is no need for both of us to do the same thing. After all, we are not clones, now are we?
Oh dear. I am afraid we can't do business at all. :)
No what I am suggesting is that you don't post obvioulsy psuedo-honest opinions masquerading as being "fair" all in the name of being contrarian.
You know that micahel moore is nothing more than a two bit side show huckster.
I just won't suffer your contrarian charade.
Don't post stuff like this... Hillary is listening. SHEEESHH
Well, I have to agree with you that indeed I don't do that. Cheers.
Cheers to you also, Torie, just don't get caught up in the made up hoopla of snake oil salesman moore, just because in some of your social circles, it is the fashionable thing to do.
Smart? When it rains mine sits on TOP of her doghouse! Personally I think she's a little bit 'flicted.
America is in no danger of too much religious fundamentalism. Every day, God is being forced further from our American public discourse. He doesn't like it either.
Yeah so, I and many others know that michael moore is a two bit snake oil salesman.
I don't need to plunk down 8 bucks to find out something I already know.
Steyn BUMP.
Ping
"Another good slam at Moore."
Yes it is! Thanks!
I wish Mr. Steyn hadn't dropped himself to liberal standards when he made fun of Moore's size and suggested he looked like the King's brother.
....although it is a funny mental picture, I must admit. ;^)
Oh, OK. You're a Liberal pretending to be Conservative when it's interesting to do so. Have fun.
BTW, you can always pay more tax than you have to. They never return a check.
I was more upset by Moore's manipulative sketch of the dead soldier's mother, and her visit to Washington.
The pictures of the wounded soldiers... Hell, war is ugly. The soldiers said that themselves. That it changes you forever.
But damn, folks, people DIE in conflicts. We lost the same amount of men and women that get killed in auto accidents over a 4 day weekend.
That said, Bush is going to have a real hard time getting re-elected, IMO. It's shameful and disgusting that some of my friends and fellow Americans fall for this type of bullsh*t.
I told them what is wrong with Halliburton getting contracts? I asked them who they would hire to build their airplanes. Lockheed or Boing. Certainly not Air-Buses-R-Us.
Well it's only Halliburton or Bechtel, IMO. Hire the best.
Sorry for rambling, but the movie depressed me a bit as far as Bush's chances.
Is a boycott your #1 concern? Or do you think we can't think for ourselves and hold-on to our conservative values after viewing it?
Hey whatever, there is reason for the adage "A fool and his money are soon parted".
No wonder you are depressed. You should get out of the beltway sometime.
Tell me about it. I'm just very nervous about the possibility of a Bush defeat. The Supreme Court is getting a facelift soon.
The USA will be gone as you know it in the next 30 year, if the country goes LEFT.
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