Posted on 07/06/2004 6:25:14 AM PDT by Clive
FAHRENHEIT 9/11 is one of those rare movies that tends to define the viewer more than the subject matter.
Those who admire it dislike George Bush; those who loathe it vote for Bush.
Michael Moore's explosive documentary is both a polemic against the U.S. president and a diatribe against the war in Iraq. And it is brilliant.
Clever, hilarious in parts, sometimes profoundly moving, other times provocative and outrageous. But always mesmerizing.
Above all, it is grossly (and grotesquely) unfair, slanted, distorted, just plain wrong, and deeply dishonest.
It is rampant propaganda with no pretense at objectivity or fairness. It is undiluted Michael Moore, and therein lies an essential weakness.
Fanatical in his hatred
To some, it is reminiscent of a heavy-handed Leni Riefenstahl, who glorified Nazism in the 1930s.
We've just come through a federal election, in which we saw signs of the Michael Moore approach -- candidates of one party portraying opponents as being without virtue or love of country.
In a previous election, we even had a Liberal minister suggesting that all who supported the old Canadian Alliance were racists. This election, Paul Martin implied only Liberals were truly Canadian: The Michael Moore syndrome.
Those who love Fahrenheit 9/11 (and there was applause when it ended at the screening I saw) tend to detest George Bush, even to the point of hatred.
Even before seeing the documentary (deservedly the winner of the Palme d'Or prize at Cannes), most who now rave about it would never vote for Bush.
But lack of balance and fairness is a turn-off for some. Fanaticism makes most people uneasy, and Michael Moore is nothing if not fanatical in his hatred of Bush. He is so intense that I doubt he even sees the flaws in his polemic.
For example, his (and others') claim that Bush stole the Florida vote from Al Gore in 2000 has been refuted by every subsequent investigation in those districts the Democrats challenged. Investigations by the likes of CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post confirmed that Bush got the majority of Florida's votes. (If Gore had won his own state of Tennessee, or Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas, he'd be president today.)
It's fair to attack Bush in a partisan way -- and Fahrenheit has comic moments in its unfairness, such as lampooning a police spy "infiltrating" a public cake-and-cookies peace group, looking for terrorists.
Or mocking airline security that allows passengers to carry two butane lighters and up to four packages of matches (but not five), yet forbids a nursing mother to carry four ounces of breast milk aboard for her baby.
But to imply that Bush and others were soft on terror and used 9/11 mostly as a chance to attack Iraq while being chummy with Osama bin Laden's family and protecting Saudis defies credulity. Moore relentlessly hammers this theme.
There's nothing in the documentary -- absolutely nothing -- to suggest that Saddam Hussein was anything except benign.
Scenes of happy, happy Baghdad -- a wedding, kids on slides and Ferris wheels, flying kites -- being suddenly obliterated by massive American bombs, is so wrong and misleading that one marvels at Moore's myopia.
There's not a hint of the butcher's hooks in Abu Ghraib prison on which Saddam's prisoners were impaled alive, or the hundreds of thousands of bodies being unearthed in mass graves.
From the documentary, you'd think the war was a screw-up. It wasn't. It was masterful, with minimum civilian casualties.
Where Bush screwed up was in the peace -- but that's not Moore's focus.
Many think the documentary is aimed at defeating Bush in November. Maybe, but Democrats don't come off well either, because mostly they supported Bush's war -- victimized, as they were, by the conspiracy of war propaganda.
Moore does not even think there's a need for the Patriot Act or security alerts. There's no danger to America -- unless it's Bush's paranoia and duplicity.
I doubt if Fahrenheit 9/11 will convert many. It's propaganda designed to fuel hatred and so heavy-handed that it may have a reverse effect on those with open minds. It gives overkill a bad name.
On second thought, rather than Leni Riefenstahl, Moore is more like George Orwell's Ministry of Truth, which elevates distortion into conventional wisdom. But, my goodness, it is brilliantly done!
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I read an article somewhere that suggested that Michael Moore made his movie so heavy-handed and such a work of propaganda because he needs Bush to be elected again - after all, criticism of Bush has made this man very, very rich.
The best way Moore can do this is to make a movie for the people who are voting against Bush anyway, and so over the top that it will sway normal folks into thinking that Democrats are fanatics and either abstain from voting, vote for Nader, or vote for Bush.
Has F911 swayed anyone? I think not. It was just raw meat for the vicious dogs, and they are climbing over themselves to give Moore money.
Brilliant idea, wish I had thought of it.
tSG
http://www.thesupergenius.com
I have seen better stuff come out of the rear end of a cow than Michael Moore and his movie.
One can recognize genius, even when it's evil genius.
Clinton, IMHO, was brillant at triangulation, telling lies and distortions, and at controlling a debate by framing answers within a context he wished to convey, as opposed to what was being asked. Even the left-liberal Newsweek admitted Clinton "repeatedly outwitted his questioners" when being deposed by Paula Jones's attorneys about his relationship with Monica - they even gave examples of what he was asked, what he answered, and why the answer was misleading but not false. It takes quite a mind to do that - which is not to say that I have anything other than the deepest disgust for the man.
>> How can you in one breath say this is a film equivalent to NAZI propaganda and in the next rave about it being brilliant. What is brilliant about telling lies and distortions?
He probably thinks Himmler was brilliant.
In line with your point, let's ask why it is the Dems and Liberals are so terribly focused on Hitler all the time. These guys seem to making the Nazi party the very touchstone of political thought.
This movie 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11' is called an 'explosive documentary', since I was taught that in order for a literary work to be a documentary or non-fiction the work has to be true of fact. Because 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11' is not a work of facts and is said so even by M.Moore, why then does everyone and even him still want to call it a documentary? Why not from now on call this movie for what it is and that is a work of FICTION. A work of fiction done in the first years of Pres. George W. Bush.
I for one from now on will not acknowledge that a movie named 'FAHRENHEIT 9/11' as a documentary but only as a work of fiction.
Artistic products, like weapons of war, can be used for good purposes and for evil purposes. The comparison to Leni Riefenstahl is apt. Her "Triumph of the Will", a panegyric to Nazi Germany, was a brilliant work of art directed to an evil purpose. She also did a much-praised film on the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Like Moore's offal, it won prizes, in fact several prizes:
http://www.leni-riefenstahl.de/eng/bio.html
"Her greatest success she made with the documentary film »Triumph des Willens« named after the Reich Party Congress 1934 in Nuremberg which got the highest awards: The gold medal in Venice in 1935 and the gold medal at the World Exhibition in Paris in 1937. However, at the end of the war this film destroyed Leni Riefenstahl's career, for now it had no longer been recognized as a piece of art but been condemned as a National Socialist propaganda film. Her world-famous film about the Olympic games made the same experience. That film included two parts, part I »Fest der Völker« and part 2 »Fest der Schönheit« , and did also get the highest awards: the gold medal in Paris in 1937, the first price in Venice as the world's best film in 1938, the Olympic Award by the IOC in 1939, and in 1956 it had been classified as one of the world's best ten films."
As far as comparisons with other propaganda films, however, F911 is better compared to another Nazi flick: "The Eternal Jew". One can easily imagine some deranged viewer being pushed over the edge into attempting to kill one or more of the characters Moore demonizes. So, to the extent that the film is effective art, it's effective for a purpose as vile as "Eternal Jew".
http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/
micheal moore should be banished from this country and tried for treason!!!
I disagree with you. During the time of Monicagate, someone asked Clinton if he would like to pass a message to Monica at this time. If he said no, he wouldn't, Monica's feelings would have been hurt and his sexcapades would have ended, while if he said yes, it would have amounted to a public admission that he had something going on to her. Neither answer is a good one. In less time than it takes you to read this post, Clinton replied "That's good," apparently referring to the ingenious trap the question represents. Clinton analyzed both scenarios and rejected both, in a blink of an eye, and responded with a non-response. A stupid person wouldn't have been able to recognize the trap for what it was, let alone escape it so smoothly and so quickly.
Rule #1 if you want to be considered brilliant: Never answer a question straight forward. Did Clinton ever answer a question in a straight forward manner?
Not brilliant. Corrupt.
Physics Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was brilliant by every measure of the word, and he answered questions directly and straightforwardly. There are corrupt idiots (say, Washington D.C. mayor Marion Barry) and corrupt geniuses. I place both x42 and the hildebeast in the latter camp. I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I don't think they're stupid at all - far from it, you apparently do.
Propoganda is only brilliant if it works. That remains to be seen.
Feynman was indeed brilliant and could explain it.
But, if one was President, had an affair with an intern, and was pressed by it, don't go on television and deny it.
Go on television and say it is none of the VRWC's business and let it be done. The media will do the rest. That's brilliant or at least C work.
Notice, Clinton didn't answer the rape charges directly (he couldn't lie again). He got smarter.
Clinton has a photographic memory and can spout facts but he doesn't form them into coherent plans. Taking credit for what other people do while you do nothing is not brilliant. He initiated no grand ideas or solved any problems in a particularly clever way.
He couldn't even win at cards without cheating. Man, how average do you have to be to resort to cheating to beat your subordinates at cards?
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