Michael Moore Unplugged (Barf Alert or Laugh Alert?)

AlterNet.org ^ | November 20, 2002 | By Michael Moore, Donahue

[VRW Conspirator]

I heard this lunatic wants to run for president. Yipee, I say. Let the nut cases come out on the left.

I am having trouble figuring out where to start with this guy. He represents all the liberal lunacy bunched into one charlie horse. The thing that strikes me the most about the peacenik approach to solving the world's problems is the total un-accountability. If America implemented the snake oil solutions exactly to Michael Moore's prescription, he would not ever accept responsiblity for when things went to hell in a handbasket. These fools would never "feel the pain" of their own decisions and they never want to accept that Liberals come up with wrong-headed solutions. Idiots!

[dyed_in_the_wool]

And you know, I got to say, if I were the mayor of this town, I would be down there to Ford Motor, and I'd say, "You want to make General Motors look bad? Put a factory here in Flint, Michigan. Put a factory here because people will line up around the block, and they'll work their butts off for you. Pay them a good wage, and that'll bring this town back." You know, but there's no thinking like that about how to bring other jobs here.

Because that's STUPID. Who in the hell does something in business just to show another firm up?
Ford is moving jobs, too, you idiot -- to Mexico where it costs $6,000/year for an employee versus $80,000.
And yet this idiot is on the same team as the Unions.

[11B3]

[wideawake]

It's not so much his America-hating rhetoric, like: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people." It's not so much his cockamie "solutions" to social problems like unemployment - everyone knows that plenty of countries have enacted the policies he's calling for and the social problems he's crowing about have intensified there.

What drives me nuts is the out-and-out lying. When he says that NYC had 2,100 murders and then we passed gun laws and they disappeared - HE'S LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH. The gun laws in NYC in 1991, when 2,100 people were murdered and the gun laws in 2000, when 600 people were murdered WERE IDENTICAL.

Only one thing changed - the "law-and-order" government of Rudy Giuliani took over from the Michael Mooresque administration of the useless David Dinkins.

[Tired of Taxes]

When I moved to New York City a decade ago, there were 2,100 murders that year. New York then enacted very strong gun laws. You cannot really buy a gun in New York City. Last year there were 600 and some murders, down from 2,100.

I guess the decrease in the number of murders had nothing at all to do with the Republican mayor cracking down on crime...

[Tired of Taxes]

Oops. Within a minute of each other. You said it better, though.

[Paul Atreides]

[Norman Arbuthnot]

I guess the decrease in the number of murders had nothing at all to do with the Republican mayor cracking down on crime...

Good point. I don't think NYC would have seen the same decline in crime if David Dinkins and other liberals of his ilk remained in charge.

[Gumlegs]

Glenn Reynolds provides a link to this:

TITLE: Moore titled the movie Bowling for Columbine because, he suggests, the two kids who shot up Columbine High in Littleton, Colo., went to a 6 a.m. bowling class on the day of the attack.
ACTUALLY: Cool story, but police say it's not true. They say the shooters skipped their bowling class that day.

MISSILES: Moore wonders whether kids at Columbine might be driven to violence because of the "weapons of mass destruction" made in Lockheed Martin's assembly plant in Littleton. Moore shows giant rockets being assembled.
ACTUALLY: Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton doesn't make weapons. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.

WELFARE: Moore places blame for a shooting by a child in Michigan on the work-to-welfare program that prevented the boy's mother from spending time with him.
ACTUALLY: Moore doesn't mention that mom had sent the boy to live in a house where her brother and a friend kept drugs and guns.

BANK: Moore says North Country Bank & Trust in Traverse City, Mich., offered a deal where, "if you opened an account, the bank would give you a gun." He walks into a branch and walks out with a gun.
ACTUALLY: Moore didn't just walk in off the street and get a gun. The transaction was staged for cameras. You have to buy a long-term CD, then go to a gun shop to pick up the weapon after a background check.

[ibbryn]

When I moved to New York City a decade ago,

How is this guy able to buy the rifle in the film from the bank/gun dealer in Minn? Can someone from out of state buy a rifle in Minn or did MM use his old Minn address as id when he really lives in NY?

[jhofmann]

I had a chance to see "Bowling for Columbine" but had to walk out after about 15 minutes. The movie was incoherent and irresponsible.

Moore repeats half-truths and lies that he has already been called on (for instance, that the U.S. government provided aid to the Taliban). I walked out after the sequence showing the "roll call" of America's "crimes" where at the end of this typical liberal screed, he shows the 2nd plane blasting into WTC thereby suggesting that the we are also to blame for 9/11.

There was alot of "so what?" stuff thrown in the movie (at least what I had seen) such as a rambling interview with some high school kids from Michigan who had been put on a "watch list" after Columbine. He interviews this loser in a bar while he is playing pool. When you get to the end of the interview with the "2nd person on the watch list", you find out that nothing happened. There's alot of that here. I guess he felt he needed to do this because he doesn't have much content besides "guns are bad" and "hate America".

The interview with the pathetic brother of Terry Nichols is also a "so what" moment except for how it shows how Moore is quite willing to exploit a mentally ill person for his own gains.

It is interesting that this anti-American film was produced by a foreign government (Canada) and given an award for best film by a foreign country (Cannes film festival is heavily funded by France). I didn't know the first part until reading this article. Wonder what other money he has taken from foreign governments particularly in his past when he used to foment anger against America within the labor unions. Alot of money for this subversion came from the USSR.

All this treason aside, the problem with Mr. Moore is that he fundamentally does not understand evil and thinks that inanimate things like guns are responsible and not the people. He also, with this movie, shows an innate willingness to capitalize on mass tragedies like Columbine and 9/11 in order to make his political points. He should be ashamed as should all the people that buy into this.

[jhofmann]

I had forgotten about the Lockheed-Martin interview. That was another "so what?" moment that I saw before walking out. Here's the logic - US government buys weaposn from L-M; L-M had a plant in Littleton, CO; Columbine High School shootings occured in Littleton, CO; ergo, the US government is responsbile for Columbine.

[Gumlegs]

Yeah. Makes sense to me.

By the way, did you know that George Bush breathes the same air as HITLER???!!!!

[binger]

IGNORANT OVERBEARING JERK!!

[jhofmann]

I saw him parodied on Saturday Night Live several weeks ago. They implied that he does not bathe regularily and doesn't wash his clothes just buys new ones when he grows out of them. Was this true? I didn't think so but then these skits are sometimes based on truth. He doesn't look like the cleanest person in the world, at the very least.

[babylonian]

Moore's heart goes pittypat over all the drastic problems facing the world, so what does he do? He begs for money so he can make a movie about it and make more money!

Moore, who co-reigns with Barbra Streisand as America's Premier Space Cadet, is a smelly dirtbag.

[redbaiter]

the problem that says we have a right to resolve our disputes through violence. That's what separates us from these other countries.

and a few paragraphs later:

And the French don't do it, the Germans don't do it, the Canadians don't do it. They're not any better than us. They're not any less violent as a people. They're humans, they have the same responses as we have. Why don't they go for the gun and kill at the rate that we do?

OK. To sum up: Americans kill each other at an alarming rate because they think differently than Europeans. But Europeans think the same way Americans do.

The man is incoherent.

[Positive]

We need to watch those dims closely when they start using statistics...they're utterly unashamed of how they mislead.

MM writes: "I mean, think about Japan, first of all. One hundred and twenty million people, 39 gun murders a year. That's almost unfathomable to us. I mean, we can't even imagine; that would be like us having 89 gun murders a year in the entire country."

I don’t know what the incidence of gun ownership in Japan is, but I do know that whenever I cross the U.S./Mexico border there is this big sign saying “Firearms Are Illegal in Mexico.” Notwithstanding that, Mexico’s homicide rate is twice that of the U.S.

So the Japanese have slightly smaller population than Mexico and a miniscule comparative murder rate. On the other hand Mexico has a slightly larger population, where guns are illegal and a huge murder rate.

I’m sick of hearing about the “gun culture,” pure and simple it just the culture. I’m going to say something inflammatory here. If we excluded the raw numbers regarding guns and homicides from the precincts that voted 80% or more for the Dims – our gun/homicide rate in the rest of the precincts would be quite respectably low.

I'd be willing to bet that of the 80,000,000 or so privately owned guns in the U.S., 79,960,000 are not used to COMMIT a crime AND in fact thousands are used to PREVENT a crime.

[Billthedrill]

You betcha, Mikey - we need to take non-violence lessons from the Germans and learn how to get along with others from the French. Great plan.

[jhofmann]

I wonder if a few of those Japanese snatched by the North Koreans had had guns, whether there might be some dead NKs today. Perhaps if Japan let their citizens arm, the NKs might not have even considered such a diabolical scheme.