Posted on 06/23/2004 12:52:28 PM PDT by NYC Republican
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Michael Moore's controversial "Fahrenheit 9/11" arrives today in a blaze of hype and glory.
This diatribe against the Bush family, and especially against George W's handling of America's response to 9/11, is powerful enough to turn the stomach, if not a few votes in the upcoming presidential election - particularly on college campuses where the movie's questioning of authority and mocking tone are like mother's milk.
The movie is unabashedly political, yet it is entertaining enough to possibly become the top-grossing documentary in history. The thing is, it's not really a documentary.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is more reasonably seen as a filmic personal essay, drawing on all the things that make Moore both successful and infuriating - fun, provocative, messy, ingenious and slippery.
The movie is mostly an indictment of the Bush family's financial ties to the Saudis and the Bin Laden family. This complicated tangle of relationships - money and glad-handing, Moore argues - clouded the administration's judgment in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By following the money trail, Moore makes a damning case for, at the very least, conflict of interest, and at worst, transgressions against the American people.
I was in tears after first seeing "Fahrenheit" at Cannes (the final version has been slightly tweaked since then). The images were powerful - a maimed Iraqi baby, a Michigan mother grieving for her dead soldier son before a cordoned-off White House.
My tears do not mean the movie is perfect. Moore goes off on tangents and takes cheap shots that could turn off even the people who side with him. Those shots may be okay for a popcorn movie, but they don't build a solid case. If Moore's intent truly is to unseat a government, he'll need more facts and footnotes, not just clips of Bush mangling the language and looking like a buffoon.
Statistics fly without attribution or substantiation - that the Bushes have accepted more than a billion dollars from the Saudis, that Saudi Arabia owns a hefty slice of America and receives unusual government perks as a result.
There is also a lack of context, particularly with footage somehow obtained from Iraq. An inert Iraqi detainee is shown being touched inappropriately and ridiculed by U.S. soldiers. Was the detainee beaten? Dead? (Turns out, Moore told a press conference, the detainee was merely drunk.)
Moore doesn't always fight fair - but he does fight funny, including a hilarious roll call of the Coalition of the Willing, those nations who pledged us their support. Amidst the fun, a higher truth emerges, one that is enraging, even if it's old news - little people are the ones who pay the price for the war in Iraq and the limits on personal freedoms under the Patriot Act. Meanwhile, the rich get richer, and the powerful even more so.
There is less of Moore on camera than in "Bowling for Columbine" and "Roger and Me," but he still can't resist guerrilla-style humor. In one effective stunt, he asks congressmen on the street to enlist their own children in the military to show support for a war that is killing so many other people's kids. Naturally, they decline.
The most devastating footage speaks for itself (even though Moore narrates over it).
Moore obtained the full reel of President Bush sitting for nearly seven long minutes in that Florida schoolroom chair after learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. While everyone else in the world was rushing to a TV set or collapsing in grief, Bush continued to read "My Pet Goat."
That footage sums up the message of "Fahrenheit 9/11." The information here isn't necessarily new, but it is packaged in an acid-tongued way along with powerhouse visuals that drive home the filmmaker's nakedly political views. ________________________________________________________
Moore Does Less With Facts When I read in Lloyd Grove's column in The News last week about an encounter between Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly in the lobby of the Ziegfeld Theater, I thought wouldn't it have been great if they'd put the gloves on and settled everything right there. They're two big guys, possibly the meanest and loudest voices of the political left and right, respectively. Let 'em punch it out and may the best man win.
But, wait.
There is no best man. Moore, the Sparkplug of Flint, and O'Reilly, the Factor Flash, are both ideological thugs who play loose with the facts while fostering hatred in an increasingly polarized country. We need to give them less attention, not more.
I don't want to raise or lower the temperature on the debate over Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." I consider the movie to be neither the Kerry campaign pamphlet Bush supporters wish to label it, nor the courageous burst of singular outrage that Moore would have us believe it is.
Like his earlier essays on corporate greed and America's gun culture, "F 9/11" is a personal rant embellished with a mix of verifiable facts and eye-popping conclusions, seasoned with sarcasm and ridicule, heavily skewed with selective sources, and dressed out as a kind of feature-length editorial cartoon.
For a movie critic who shares Moore's political views but disdains his style, "F 9/11" presents a dilemma. Anything that helps convince people to vote against George Bush is good, but anything that flatters the pompous filmmaker is bad.
I was the movie editor at the Los Angeles Times when Moore arrived there with "Roger & Me" in 1989, and his Mr. Smith Goes to Hollywood act was fun for about 10 minutes, until it was clear how cannily manipulative he was of the press.
No sooner had "Roger & Me" caught the fancy of the country than Film Comment revealed how cannily manipulative Moore had also been with the facts, events and time references within the film - deceptive enough for the late Pauline Kael to denounce him as having broken faith with the audience. Moore and his many supporters brushed that criticism aside as nitpicking, as they would again when Moore was caught being maliciously creative in "Bowling for Columbine."
The transgression that stuck in most people's craws was his spectacularly boorish behavior with actor Charlton Heston, the celebrity head of the National Rifle Association. Moore wheedled his way into Heston's home for an interview, then demanded that Heston apologize to the people of Flint for making an NRA appearance there shortly after the shooting death of a 6-year-old girl. While Heston retreated, Moore chased after him holding up a picture of the dead girl and yelling shame.
It was later revealed that Heston had made no such NRA appearance in Flint. He'd shown up there months after the shooting as part of a three-state Republican get-out-the-vote rally.
In the publicity run-up to the release of "F 9/11," Moore has been dazzlingly obnoxious. He spent much of May bad-mouthing America to the delighted French and telling anyone who would listen that the American press could learn a little about hardnosed journalism from him (God help us).
Proving he still knows how to manipulate the media, he hoodwinked even The New York Times editorial page into accusing the Walt Disney Co. of censorship, after Michael Eisner refused to allow his Miramax division to release "F 9/11" - something Moore knew he was going to do a year earlier!
Moore is obviously aware of his credibility and image problems. To address the latter, he kept his own appearances in the new film to a blessed minimum. To address the former, he has hired a stable of fact checkers to counter any charges of breaking the faith, plus a trio of lawyers to sue anyone who dares libel him.
He has already been caught in one whopper of a factual error. He says in the film that members of the Bin Laden family were flown out of the country while airports were grounded in the aftermath of 9/11 and that they were not interviewed by the FBI. Wrong on both counts.
"I don't want to get lost in the forest because of a single tree," Moore said, when asked about this by a New York Times reporter.
I think that's two trees. But who's counting?
Huh? Oh that's correct, only the omnipotent wtc911 could.
JMO, your hubris is making hillary's hubris look puny.
That's just plain stupid. I expected better from you.
That was as fast as we could get there. Roads were closed to all but emergency vehicles. My family was not all home until after midnight on the 11th. We went in as soon as my son woke up. We had to side road it all the way through Queens and Brooklyn then walk in the last 3-4 miles, crossing over the Manhattan bridge on foot..
There's nothing in my posts to reflect this.
Every word you wrote reflects this... perhaps you need to go back and reread what you wrote. You certainly are saying that the President should have thought about how his enemies would use the fact that he did not spring into action the moment he heard the news.
If thoses aren't your thoughts then I suggest you reorder your words so that anyone who reads it won't draw the same conclusion.
Excuse himself and deal with it the way Cheney, Rumsfeld, Guiliani and hundreds of others did. I am sorry that he sat because of how it is being portrayed.
Well I see that all we can do, is agree to disagree.
Have a nice one!
It's not to me. I thought I was clear on that. On this thread my concern about the delay has the resident nimrods calling me everything from Bush basher to al-queda sympathizer.
Every word you wrote reflects this...._________________________________________________________
Show me my own words that say this (that he should have been thinking about what his enemies would do), my words, not your interpretation of them, my exact words. No, what I've said is that we should not be surprised that the opposition is using the gap, and that I personally am not comfortable with the way he handled it. I wasn't then I'm not now.
If you're sitting at the game and get a call saying your house is on fire you don't wait until the inning is over to find out what's going on.
btw. I think it's far more rude to presume to tell somebody what he's thinking than it is to object to being told so.
I know I have read all the previous posts.
I have also seen the previews for the movie. I was the only one in a theater in Memphis to boo the clip, by the way. I was absolutely furious at the way that that slime bag moore pieces newsclips together to make the President look bad.
It is clear to me, that that slime bag moore is not going to like anything Bush did or does, or will do in the future. He also would have made fun of Bush if he had suddenly run out of the room and started shouting orders into the telephone.
The bigger concern to me, will this sorry hit piece of a movie do serious damage to W?
I pray that the American people are smarter than to accept this load of bilge from an obviously biased piece of slime. If they are not, then they deserve what they will get.
I continued to wait for my son’s School bus, and sent him to school, like any other day. I then went to work, and told my coworkers to turn on their radio. Not that it matters really, the POTUS does not run out and jump in a car to go somewhere, the roads have to be cleared first, or the secret service is not doing it's job. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
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