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?
in this election, even a swing of as little as a few thousand votes can make the difference.
find later bump
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"You'll probably will when you have dinner with michael moore tonight. Just some advice, keep your food close to you and don't look away for a moment. Just try to control the drool between you two when you two priase hezbollah and al-queda."
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I have a different opinion about Bush's lack of reaction than maybe you do. I say nothing about Moore except to define him as the opposition. But, apropos of nothing I've written you've got me best friends with the guy and praising terrorists. You're an idiot.
Hey you should know since you hold such idiots as michael moore's opinion in such high regard.
The few thousand people who vote for John Kerry based on the b.s. in this movie deserve every hardship that will befall them. Unfortuantely the rest of us will have to suffer as well.
How long do you think it takes to ready a trip to the air port for the POTUS while an attack is happening?
Just a thought
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About as long as it takes to start the car, this is the President at the time of a national emergency. How long does it take to pick up a phone? Fighters were scrambled to intercept and maybe shoot down US civilian aircraft. My understanding is that Cheney gave that order. If that is true, why? Was that order given during those seven minutes? I don't know but I'm sure the timeline is out there.
My one and only point is that by sitting on his hands for even seven minutes while he knew we were under attack Bush handed the opposition a bat and they hit him with it.
Let me ask you a question....how did you react? Did you continue doing what you were doing or did you get on the phone to someone else to say "You believe this"? Did you sit and finish your breakfast or did you turn on Fox to see for yourself? Did you sit still?
let's see ourselves
ready.... start! 0 minutes
1 minute...
2 minutes...
Exactly. Thanks for a little reason.
3 minutes...
4 minutes...
5 minutes...
Sarasota principal defends Bush from "Fahrenheit 9/11" portrayal
AP/Sarasota Herald-Tribune ^ | 6-23-04
Posted on 06/23/2004 12:26:24 PM EDT by veronica
SARASOTA, Fla. -- Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticizes President Bush for listening to Sarasota second-graders read a story for nearly seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack on Sept. 11, 2001.
But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly.
"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"
"Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival, portrays the White House as asleep at the wheel before the Sept. 11 attacks. Moore accuses Bush of fanning fears of future terrorism to win public support for the Iraq war.
Bush told the federal 9/11 Commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." Moore says Bush failed to take charge.
Tose'-Rigell, who was at Bush's side, did not hear what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered when he squeezed past her to tell the president of the attacks, but "I knew it was something serious."
"The president bit his lip and clenched his jaw," she said. "I didn't know what happened, whether it was something with his wife or children or something with the nation. I remember praying that God would watch over our school and protect our children."
She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day."
Tose'-Rigell said she plans to publish her account of the morning of Sept. 11 from pages she wrote in her journal following the attack. The principal said she didn't vote for Bush. "But that day I would have voted for him."
6 minutes...
and 7.
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A long time to sit and do nothing.
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