Free Republic

The red-state warriors and blue-state battlers are at it again. This time, the goal isn't the White House. It's the Oscar. In one color-coded corner: Conservative groups pushing for nominations for The Passion of the Christ. In the other color-coded corner: Proud liberal Michael Moore pushing for nominations for Fahrenheit 9/11. If the contrast holds, Academy Award season may bare more than a passing resemblance to this fall's divisive general election. Promises Patrick Hynes: "It will be all that and more." Hynes is a senior account executive at the Washington, D.C.-based GOP consulting firm Marsh Copsey + Scott. This week,...

NEW YORK The small Illinois newspaper attempting to get an apology from filmmaker Michael Moore for allegedly misusing the paper in "Fahrenheil 9/11" said today it has gotten a rejection notice instead. The Pantagraph of Bloomington, Ill., disclosed today that New York-based lawyer Devereux Chatillon of the law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal sent a letter to the Bloomington attorney representing the newspaper, stating Moore was within his legal right to use one of the newspaper's headlines in the movie and that no "copyright infringement" occurred. He cited several precedents. This led The Pantagraph to conclude: "Moore apparently is not...

Michael Moore will be surrounded by more than just fans at the screening of “Fahrenheit 9/11” in Crawford, Texas tonight. The gadfly filmmaker plans to show his controversial documentary today in the town where Bush vacations, and a source says he intends on having armed guards there protecting him. As The Scoop reported earlier, Moore has been getting death threats, and a source says the situation has gotten worse. In fact, fellow filmmaker Spike Lee, while promoting his own film “She Hate Me,” has told interviewers that “they’re out to get” Moore who “has an armed guard 24/7.” Moore’s rep...

In his new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore reviews the Bush administration’s publicly stated rationale for the war against terrorism in Afghanistan – it was part of the U.S. response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 – and then suggests that the real reason for the war was, at least in part, to enable Unocal to proceed with a natural gas pipeline project in Afghanistan and for other U.S. energy and oil-service companies to participate in various projects in that country. Unocal has absolutely no intention of participating in an Afghanistan pipeline project nor are we in discussions with...

[excerpted] Moviemaker Michael Moore is entitled to his opinion. I even respect his audacity. I mean, come on? Who else has the guts to make up such garbage about any sitting president (unless you believe that former President Bill Clinton is innocent of sexual harassment — in which case Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky and Juanita Broaddrick are all just as audacious). I'm not going to sit here and point out the inaccuracies in Moore's film. You can get that on any number of Web sites or news stories. Look, "Fahrenheit 911" is an overwhelming success, considering the historical...

Friends, Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is Bush packing? Each day this week I was given a new piece of information from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head: ** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all...

Michael Moore, whose blistering, awarding-winning attack on the Bush administration, "Fahrenheit 9/11," is setting box-office records for a "documentary" says his next project will be an expose of health care in the United States. He told the London Guardian he hopes to embarrass health insurance companies and hospitals into continuing to care for patients with no coverage – highlighting holes in the American system. This time, Moore says he will be part of the story, as he was in previous work – using a hand-held camera and attempting to embarrass health-care providers into treating indigent patients. He said he believes...

New York -- “I don’t like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry,” Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore tells TIME’s Richard Corliss in this week’s cover story. Moore tells TIME, “When Clinton was president I went after him. And if Kerry’s president, on Day Two I’ll be on him.”

It looks like Democratic Party propaganda-meister Michael Moore may have finally found a way to get rid off all that filthy capitalist lucre he's been collecting from his hit movie, "Fahrenheit 911." That is, if he decides to go through with a proposal he floats in this week's Time magazine. About the numerous complaints that his movie is chock-full of inaccuracies, Moore boasts: "There is not a single factual error in the movie. I'm thinking of offering a $10,000 reward for anyone that can find a single fact that's wrong." Ooops. If recent reports from even liberal quarters are any...

NEW YORK — As a young boy, I loved the American flag. I'd lead my younger sisters in patriotic parades up and down the sidewalk, waving the flag, blowing a whistle and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over and over until my sisters begged me to let them go back to their Easy-Bake Oven. I loved singing the national anthem. I won an essay contest on "What the Flag Means to Me." I decorated my bicycle with little American flags for a Fourth of July parade and won a prize for that too. I became an Eagle Scout and proudly...

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...

The morning after I saw Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, I visited my local book shop to inspect the titles it stocked by the director himself and by other writers implacably hostile to George W Bush. On the counter was a pile of Moore's most recent bestseller, Dude, Where's My Country?. And his 2001 polemic, Stupid White Men, which has sold 350,000 copies in Britain alone, was also prominently displayed. In the same genre, though not by Moore, the shop offered such gems as The Bush-Hater's Handbook, Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species, Ugly Americans, What's Wrong with America?,...

The working title for this piece is “Michael Moore Is A Large Bloated Moron and Other Observations.” Since newspapers routinely change the author’s original headline, it was necessary to work that in so that you, Dear Reader, will perfectly understand where this piece is going. First, you will notice that the title is similar to that of a book written by a “comic” and now talk show host named Al Franken. We thought it would be all right to lift Mr. Franken’s title since he’s a political soul mate of Moore’s and since Mr. Moore lifted the title of his...

[This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online.] There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. The report follows the approximate order in which the movie covers particular topics: the Bush family, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. This report focuses solely on factual issues, and not on aesthetic criticism of the...

The lies from Michael Moore’s latest schlock-umentary begin before you enter the theater. On the posters out front, the movie is identified as “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Half the title and most of the concept were stolen without so much as a by-your-leave from the classic novel Fahrenheit 451, by the great Ray Bradbury. A few million Americans of a certain age (and I am one) got their introductions to excellence in science fiction, and also excellence in writing English regardless of subject, from Ray Bradbury. A dark vision of the future, in which the government suppresses and destroys knowledge, appears in...

Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn By Brendan Nyhan July 2, 2004 Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features...

Fifty-six Deceits in Fahrenheit 911   By Dave Kopel   [This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online.This report was first posted on the web on the morning of July 1. Since then, I've revisedseveral sections in response to reader requests for clarifications, and have added additionaldeceits which have been pointed out by readers or journalists. Astute readers will observethat the number of identified deceits now exceeds 56. I have not retitled the report or re-numbered the original 56 deceits. The final version will update the deceit count.] There are many articles which...

CNN Headline News just said on bottom ticker that F/911 has broken the 40 million mark and experts are saying the movie will break 50 by Monday....YUCK...what the hell is wrong with people paying to see this crap? I thought times were so bad that nobody can afford to do anything? Huh? The Bush tax breaks hurt everyone...but yet Americans find a way to blow their cash on this pile of crap...amazing. We are so doomed to be dumb. Thursday, July 1, 2004 Rank. Movie Title (Distributor) / Theater Count Daily Gross | % Change (Last Week) | Total Gross...

The only thing that appears to exceed Michael Moore's contempt for President Bush is his absolute distain for us, the American people. In making such a dishonest piece of propaganda masquerading as a "documentary," Moore had to make a few very unpleasant assumptions about his audience. First, he must be convinced that the American people are so ignorant that we will accept whatever we are told as gospel. As if we're a country of folks who believe, "Hey, if it's in writin' (or on the ole' big screen) it must be true."

The political firestorm surrounding filmmaker Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" has found its way into the file-sharing world. The controversial film--like virtually every new release--has been circulating online for days. Early in the week, anti-Moore Web site MooreWatch.com posted a link to a pirated version of the film available elsewhere on a file-sharing network, noting that the director himself has publicly backed downloading the movie online. The result has been a torrent of criticism from Moore supporters and his distribution company, Lions Gate Entertainment. The site was even the target of a denial-of-service attack a few days ago. But MooreWatch co-founder...