M.moore

[Luca_liberale]

Allego una serie di documenti che spiegano in parte i motivi percui considero M.Moore un personaggi PER NULLA CREDIBILE e INTELLETTUALMENTE DISONESTO.

QUANDO MOORE CENSURO’ BERMAN

Michael Moore non odia soltanto George W. Bush e i suoi "stupidi uomini bianchi", farebbe a fettine anche Paul Berman, l'autore dell'articolo pubblicato qui sopra. Il regista Moore è stranoto e strapremiato, ma i lettori del Foglio ormai conoscono bene anche Berman, il saggista di sinistra che ha scritto "Terrore e Liberalismo", il libro sull'ideologia politica che sostiene sia i fondamentalisti islamici sia i regimi cosiddetti laici del Medio Oriente. Berman è uno col curriculum di sinistra senza pecche: esponente della New Left americana, studioso del Sessantotto, ha scritto per riviste antagoniste come Mother Jones e per giornali liberal come New Republic, Dissent, New York Times Magazine e Los Angeles Times. Berman non ha votato né voterà Bush ma, con altri intellettuali della sinistra americana spesso ignorati dalla stampa italiana, e con Tony Blair, crede che sia stato un bene, soprattutto per gli iracheni, l'intervento che ha cambiato il regime dittatoriale di Saddam. Fa parte, insomma, di quella sinistra liberale e non ideologica che sta agli antipodi rispetto al casarinismo disobbediente di Michael Moore. Moore, infatti, lo odia.
La storia è questa. Alla fine del 1985 la più popolare tra le riviste della sinistra americana, "Mother Jones", inviò Paul Berman in Nicaragua per fare un lungo reportage sulla gloriosa (per la sinistra radicale) rivoluzione sandinista. Berman soggiornò a lungo a Managua e girò il paese. La lunga inchiesta fu pronta nel 1986 e fu uno shock per la sinistra americana che vedeva nei rivoluzionari di Daniel Ortega un'alternativa possibile al capitalismo reaganiano di quegli anni. "Avevo semplicemente scritto dice oggi Berman al Foglio che i sandinisti erano antidemocratici". Aggiunse che erano leninisti, che violavano i diritti umani e che non erano in grado di governare l'economia. Insomma, cose che nessun oggi contesta più, probabilmente neanche Ortega.
Mentre Berman era in Nicaragua, però, successe una cosa. La proprietà di Mother Jones, giornale di San Francisco che deve il nome alla sindacalista socialista Mary Harris (Mother) Jones che morì nel 1930 all'età di 100 anni, assunse un nuovo direttore, un trentaduenne proveniente dal Michigan Voice, un mensile antagonista di Flint, cittadina, appunto, del Michigan. Era Michael Moore.
Quando il neodirettore Moore lesse l'articolo di Berman pronto per essere stampato decise di censurarlo, non lo pubblicò, perché sarebbe stato "un regalo a Reagan", il presidente impegnato a contrastare l'Impero del Male ovunque, anche nel cortile di casa, non solo in Europa dell'est. Successe il finimondo, dopo la censura dell'articolo. Scoppiò una lite furibonda tra Moore e l'editore e la vicenda divenne un caso nazionale. Finì che, nel settembre del 1986, quattro mesi dopo l'assunzione, Moore fu licenziato. Cinque giorni dopo essere stato cacciato, Moore fece una causa da 2 milioni di dollari al giornale. L'articolo di Berman uscì a novembre.
Moore si vendicò scatenando una campagna di insulti e accusando Berman di non aver alcun titolo per valutare la situazione in Nicaragua anche perché, diceva Moore, Berman non parlava spagnolo. Ovviamente era falso, come false sono la gran parte delle cose che Moore dice di Bush, tanto che Berman gli rispose su un giornale direttamente in spagnolo. "Capii che era un bulletto, un demagogo, un ignorantone che usava metodi stalinisti, pur non essendo sofisticato come i peggiori vecchi stalinisti sapevano essere dice Berman al Foglio Ma aveva talento e riuscì a scatenare una crociata. Ho riso molto quando si è lamentato che qualcuno stava cercando di censurare il suo film detto da uno che aveva censurato il mio articolo". Naturalmente non c'è mai stato pericolo che "Farheneit 9/11" venisse bloccato. Era solo uno dei tipici colpi di marketing di Michael Moore, l'alfiere della stupid white left.

April 4, 2003, 20 p.m.
Bowling Truths
Michael Moore’s mocking.


In the field of mockumentary filmmaking, there are two giants. Rob Reiner created the genre with his film This is Spinal Tap. Michael Moore has taken the genre to an entirely different level, with Bowling for Columbine.
In 1984, This is Spinal Tap premiered as the world's first self-described "mockumentary." The film purported to be a documentary of a heavy-metal band called "Spinal Tap." In fact, there was no such band. No group had ever hit the charts in the 1960s with a song called "Listen to the Flower People." No rock drummer named John "Stumpy" Pepys had ever died in an inexplicable gardening accident. No arena rock performance had ever featured a pair of midgets dancing around an 18-inch replica of Stonehenge.

Over the course of the movie, most viewers figured out that "Spinal Tap" was not a real band. The realization often came somewhere between the band's rocker "Big Bottom" ("I met her on Monday; it was my lucky bun day") and the sensitive ballad "Lick My Love Pump."

Still, a substantial portion of the audience sat through the entire film without ever realizing that the whole thing was a joke. They left the theatre believing that there really was a band called Spinal Tap. In response, the creators ended up producing a Spinal Tap MTV video, and even a 1992 Spinal Tap "Reunion" tour. The stupidity of a fraction of the audience had brought its own "reality" to life.
This is Spinal Tap is an excellent movie which was, unfortunately, neglected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. No such fate befell Bowling for Columbine. While only an unusually dim minority believe that Tap is truth, Bowling for Columbine has seduced almost all of its audiences with its brazen mockumentary.

You can't really understand the artistic accomplishment of This is Spinal Tap if you naively expect to find the album Smell the Glove in your local music store. Likewise, you cannot understand the brilliance of Bowling for Columbine if you actually believe the purported facts in this mockumentary. For the benefit of the overly credulous, let me summarize some of the "facts" in Bowling for Columbine. Then, I will explain how Michael Moore demolishes the pretensions of the audience and of elite cinematic opinion in a way that has never before been accomplished.
FICTITIOUS "FACTS"
The introduction of Bowling is a purported clip from an NRA documentary, announcing that the viewer is about to see a National Rifle Association film. Obviously, Bowling is not an NRA film, and so Moore makes it clear right at the beginning that Bowling is not a documentary (based on true facts), but rather a mockumentary (based on fictitious "facts"). It's a humorous movie, but the biggest joke is on the audience, which credulously accepts the "facts" in the movie as if they were true.
The first mockumentary "fact" is the title itself. The Columbine murderers were enrolled in a high-school bowling class. After the NRA introduction, the film begins on the morning of April 20, 1999, the day of the Columbine murders. Narrator Moore announces that on that day, "Two boys went bowling at six in the morning." This serves as a setup for a later segment looking at the causes of Columbine, and arguing that blaming violent video games (which the killers played obsessively) or Marilyn Manson music (which the killers enjoyed) makes no more sense than blaming bowling.
In fact, the two killers ditched bowling class on the day of the murders. The police investigation found that none of the students in the bowling class that morning had seen the killers that day. The police report was completed long before the release of Bowling for Columbine, so the title itself is a deliberate falsehood. (I don't use the word "lie" because the mockumentary genre allows for the use of invented facts.)
After the April 20 lead-in, Bowling begins an examination of middle-American gun culture, and indulges the bicoastal elite's snobbery toward American gun owners.
We are taken to the North County Bank in Michigan, which — like several other banks in the United States — allows people who buy a Certificate of Deposit to receive their interest in the form of a rifle or shotgun. (The depositor thereby receives the full value of the interest immediately, rather than over a term of years.)
Moore goes through the process of buying the CD and answering questions for the federal Form 4473 registration sheet. Although a bank employee makes a brief reference to a "background check," the audience never sees the process whereby the bank requires Moore to produce photo identification, then contacts the FBI for a criminal records check on Moore, before he is allowed to take possession of the rifle.
Moore asks: "Do you think it's a little bit dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" The banker's answer isn't shown.
So the audience is left with a smug sense of the pro-gun bank's folly. Yet just a moment's reflection shows that there is not the slightest danger. To take possession of the gun, the depositor must give the bank thousands of dollars (an unlikely way to start a robbery). He must then produce photo identification (thus making it all but certain that the robber would be identified and caught), spend at least a half hour at the bank (thereby allowing many people to see and identify him), and undergo an FBI background check (which would reveal criminal convictions disqualifying most of the people inclined to bank robbery). A would-be robber could far more easily buy a handgun for a few hundred dollars on the black market, with no identification required.
The genius of Bowling for Columbine is that the movie does not explicitly make these obvious points about the safety of the North County Bank's program. Rather, the audience is simply encouraged to laugh along with Moore's apparent mockery of the bank, without realizing that the joke is on them for seeing danger where none exists. This theme is developed throughout the film.
From the Michigan bank, Moore moves on to an examination of the rest of Michigan's culture — or, more precisely, to eccentric and unrepresentative segments of that culture, thereby playing to the audience's feelings of superiority over American gun owners.

For example, hunting is a challenging sport, requiring outdoor skills, wildlife knowledge, patience, and good marksmanship. Most members of the urban audiences cheering Bowling for Columbine are no more capable of participating in a successful hunt than they are of conducting a three-day, backcountry cross-country ski trek, or playing rookie-league baseball. The vast majority of hunters are also very safety-conscious. In 2000, for example, there were 91 fatal hunting accidents in all of North America, within a population of over 16 million hunters.
Yet Moore ignores all of this. Instead, he comically reports an incident in which some reckless hunters tied a gun to their dog to take a funny picture, and one of the hunters was shot. According to the police reports, the foolish hunters had only a still camera, but Bowling presents a fabricated video clip which purports to have been filmed by the hunter's friend. Because the clip appears to be a home movie, Bowling makes hunters seem viciously callous: The "hunter" holding the camera continues recording after his fellow hunter has been wounded, rather than immediately stopping to help the friend.
Similarly, the ideology of gun ownership and civil liberty is not presented by reference to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, or to legal scholars such as liberal Democrats Sanford Levinson or Larry Tribe. Instead, Moore goes to the Michigan Militia.
While Moore allows the militia members to present their case, he makes the group (which has no record of illegal violence or any other illegal activity) appear extremely dangerous by informing viewers that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols attended militia meetings. Moore conveniently neglects to mention that the two were eventually kicked out, for talking about violence.
James Nichols, the brother of a convicted mass murderer, is offered as a spokesman for the right of free people to resist tyrannical government.
ON TO LITTLETON, LOCKHEED, AND 9/11
Bowling then departs Michigan and heads for Littleton, Colo., to develop the thesis that American militarism created the mass-murder atmosphere that resulted in Columbine.
Aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin has a factory in Littleton, so Moore asks a company spokesman if "our kids say to themselves, 'Well, gee, Dad goes off to the factory every day, and he builds missiles, he builds weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'" The camera then takes a shot of a workplace safety slogan — "It has to be foreign-object free" — to imply that Lockheed Martin employees revel in the killing of dehumanized foreigners.
Of course the connection is nonsense. While one killer's father once served in the Air Force, neither family worked in the defense industry. The other killer's parents were gun-control advocates — so much so that they forbade him to play with toy guns — unlike the many children who are shown with toy guns elsewhere in the film. One of the killers' gun suppliers was the son of a Colorado anti-gun activist. Thus, Moore might just as well have asked a spokesman for a gun-prohibition group if "our kids say to themselves, 'Well, gee, mom and day say that guns are just for killing innocent people. So if I have a gun, I guess I should use it for killing innocent people.'"
Moore returns to the bowling theme a few scenes later, to present the argument — which the audience of course supports — that neither bowling nor Marilyn Manson was responsible for the Columbine crimes. The audience is encouraged to feel intellectually superior to the politicians, who are pictured blaming Marilyn Manson.
Yet the connection the movie draws between Lockheed and the Columbine mass murder is even more tenuous than the connection with Manson. The Columbine killers had no connection to Lockheed, but they did listen to Marilyn Manson. And Brian Warner's choice of the stage name of "Manson" shows that mass killers can enjoy enduring pop-culture fame — precisely what the Columbine killers hoped to achieve. (I avoid mentioning their names so as not to assist their vicious quest.)
After blaming Lockheed for 13 deaths at Columbine, the film moves on to blaming the United States government for 3,000 deaths on September 11. It does this by arguing that we got what we deserved, because our nation revels in the killing of civilians by air.
A montage of U.S. foreign-policy atrocities (to the tune of "What a Wonderful World") concludes with the statement that the U.S. gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000-01. The next shot is of the World Trade Center in flames.
In fact, that money was not given to the Taliban government, but rather to U.S. and international agencies that distributed humanitarian aid to the people of Afghanistan. In other words, the fact that the United States gave money to Food For Peace and for girls' schools for Afghan refugees is supposed to prove that the America deserved to be attacked by al Qaeda.
Right after the footage of the airplanes hitting the Twin Towers, Bowling shows a B-52 memorial at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Moore intones: "The plaque underneath it proudly proclaims that this plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve 1972." The point is obvious: that the United States government and al Qaeda both perpetrate murder by airplane.
In fact, the plaque on the B-52 at the AFA is not as Moore describes it. The plaque says "B-52D Stratofortress. 'Diamond Lil.' Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26-year history in the command. Aircraft 55-083, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52Ds credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam Conflict Flying out of U-Tapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southern Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas Eve, 1972."
Moore thus confirms the absurdity of the blame-America-first position popular among the Hollywood Left, by showing that such views require the ignoring of obvious facts — such as the difference between financial aid to a dictatorship and humanitarian aid to refugees, or between fighting enemy pilots and perpetrating war crimes against civilians.
BLAME IT ON THE NRA
A long mockumentary segment reports on the NRA convention in Denver in May 1999. The segment begins with NRA president Charlton Heston holding an antique rifle above his head and delivering the signature line: "From my cold dead hands." Actually, Heston never displayed a rifle or uttered that line at the Denver convention.
Moore bashes the NRA for being insensitive by holding its convention in Denver two weeks after the Columbine murders. That insensitivity is heightened by the implication that Heston did the "cold dead hands" rifle display there. Viewers are not informed that the NRA convention had been scheduled many years in advance, that Mayor Webb (who at the last minute told the NRA to cancel the convention) had eagerly solicited the NRA convention for Denver, or that the NRA drastically reduced its four-day convention, holding only its annual members' meeting, in an afternoon session legally required by its non-profit charter from the state of New York.
The litany of scapegoating (Lockheed Martin, the United States, the NRA) then abruptly shifts into the anti-scapegoating segments concerning bowling and Marilyn Manson.
In keeping with the mockumentary format, Moore tells the audience that bowling was "apparently the last thing they did before the massacre." Even if the killers hadn't skipped class, this statement would be untrue. Bowling class was at 6 A.M.; the killings began around 11 A.M.
The "scapegoat Lockheed and the NRA" segments serve as a perfect counterpoint to the "don't scapegoat bowling or Manson" segment. By leading the audience into fatuous scapegoating of Lockheed and the NRA, the film demonstrates the pervasiveness of scapegoating — even by people who denounce it.
A cartoon history of the United States comes next, on the theme that American gun owners are racist. The Second Amendment is said to have been written "so every white man could keep his gun." Actually, at the time of the Second Amendment, every state allowed free people of color to own guns. Moreover, anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner would later use the Second Amendment as part of his argument to show that slavery was unconstitutional. Gun prohibition, he argued, is a condition of slavery; the Second Amendment guarantees the right of all people to own guns; hence slavery, and its attendant gun prohibition, are unconstitutional.
The audience is now informed that the National Rifle Association was founded in 1871, "the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." The voice-over says that this was just a coincidence, but the cartoon shows gun owners helping Klansmen to murder blacks.
The phrasing of the Klan line leaves some viewers with the impression that the Klan was created in 1871, even though the group was founded in 1866 in Tennessee. What happened in 1871 was congressional passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, which allowed the president to suppress the Klan by denying Klansmen the writ of habeas corpus. (The Klan was, of course, composed of men who fought on the losing, pro-slavery side of the Civil War.)
President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 into law, and worked for the rapid extermination of that terrorist organization. Grant dispatched federal troops into South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida to destroy the Klan and to protect black voting rights. In an April 1872 report to Congress, Grant pointed out the continuing problem in some southern counties of the Ku Klux Klan attempting "to deprive colored citizens of their right to bear arms and the right of a free ballot."
President Grant also signed the Enforcement Act of 1870, which made it a federal crime for the Ku Klux Klan or similar conspiracies to interfere with the civil rights of freedmen — including their Second Amendment right to arms.
Frederick Douglass justly called Grant "the benefactor of an enslaved and despised race, a race who will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
The 1871 founders of the National Rifle Association were thus diametrically opposed to the Confederates who founded the KKK. The NRA founders were Union officers who had fought on the winning, anti-slavery side of the Civil War. Dismayed by the poor quality of Union marksmanship during the war, the NRA's founders aimed to improve the shooting skills of the American public at large. The first NRA president was Ambrose E. Burnside, who had served as commander of the Army of the Potomac.
Ulysses Grant left the presidency in 1877, but continued his long career of public service in retirement. In 1883, he was elected president of the National Rifle Association. From 1871 until the end of the century, nine of the NRA's ten presidents had fought against slavery during the Civil War. These included Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, a hero of Gettysburg, and Gen. Phillip Sheridan, the famous Union cavalry commander. During Reconstruction, Gen. Sheridan served as military governor of Louisiana and Texas, and removed hundreds of local officials (including the governors of both states, and the chief justice of the Texas supreme court) from office for failing to respect the rights of freedmen and for failing to enforce laws for their protection.
In Bowling, Michael Moore brags that he is an NRA "Lifetime member." So it might be expected that Moore would inform viewers about the NRA's noble anti-slavery history. But Moore's connection to the NRA is bizarre; he told Tim Russert that he joined the group so that he could be elected its president and make it support gun control. This is aggrandized self-delusion, rather like Barbra Streisand announcing that she was becoming Catholic so that she could be elected Pope and make the Church support polygamy.
The supposedly racist nature of white gun owners is reinforced by Bowling's statement that an 1871 law made it illegal for blacks to own guns. No such law existed, although it is true that many gun laws from the late 19th century — such as licensing and registration laws, or bans on inexpensive guns — were selectively enforced in the South so as to deprive blacks of firearms. These are the same kinds of laws that Moore promotes today. Indeed, he turned the Bowling for Columbine premier into a fundraiser for the Brady Campaign, which works hard to outlaw inexpensive guns used by poor people for protection.
MEDIA FEAR-MONGERING
Having established the racism and paranoia of American gun owners, Moore now begins an extended sequence depicting the media as racist fear-mongers. He first argues that the media create irrational fears about black criminals. (According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports, table 43, 4,238 blacks were arrested for murder and non-negligent manslaughter, compared to 4,231 whites.)
University of Southern California Professor Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear, gets lots of camera time to explain how the media sensationalize crime and hype fears to unrealistic levels. And this is where Bowling's genius truly shines.
On the one hand, Bowling works the audience into self-righteous anger at "the media" for using cheap sensationalism to promote fear. At the very same time, the film uses — you guessed it — cheap sensationalism to promote fear. The very techniques which he decries in the media, Moore uses himself, with obvious approval from the audience. Moore thus enacts a real demonstration of how the audience is itself complicit in the cycle of fear.
Moore criticizes weakly researched media stories that scare people over nothing (such as phony stories about razors in Halloween apples), but at the same time, his own factual claims are either invented or taken grossly out of context.
For instance, Moore lets Glassner criticize the media for sharply increasing coverage of homicides during a period when the actual homicide rate was falling. Yet his own frantic film about the terrible dangers of American gun violence comes even as gun crime rates have fallen sharply from their early 1990s levels.
Glassner's book points out that an American schoolchild is much more likely to be killed by lightning than in a school shooting. Yet Moore's film rests on the premise that the Columbine shooting represents an American epidemic of violence.
Even while denouncing Americans for being so afraid of violent crime, Bowling for Columbine works hard to make them still more afraid.
The audience accepts Moore's cinematic fear-mongering — while congratulating itself for being too sophisticated to fall for media fear-mongering. So even as Bowling offers its audience the superficial social satisfaction of being less media-malleable than the rubes who are presented as typical Americans, the audience nevertheless falls for sensationalistic media exploitation. The L.A. Weekly noted the "tabloid" nature of Moore's film, and the film's tawdry use of cheap emotion and cheap shots could indeed serve as a model for an aspiring tabloid television producer.
Accordingly, the smug audience of Bowling is degraded not merely to the level of ordinary gullible Americans who buy into the fear-mongering on the evening news, but still further — to the trash-news level of people who are easily manipulated by tabloid media.
Thus, Bowling turns the audience's very pleasure in watching the movie into a deconstruction of the audience's blue-state social pretensions. The Bowling audience is every bit as ignorant and fearful as the audience for Inside Edition.
Moore's technique is that of turning an audience's acceptance of a work's superficial message into a much deeper message which critiques the audience itself. Thus, Bowling for Columbine makes the audience complicit in its own delegitimization and degradation. Most of the audience, of course, never "gets" the real point.
Moore's clever techniques of inversion reach an apogee with the Willie Horton ad. Political historians will remember that in the 1988 Democratic primaries, candidate Al Gore criticized Gov. Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts furlough program under which Willie Horton — who was serving a murder sentence of life without parole — was given a weekend furlough, and raped a woman. During the fall campaign, the pro-Bush National Security Political Action Committee ran a Willie Horton commercial.
The official Bush campaign ran its own advertisement, "Revolving Doors," which attacked the furlough program but did not mention Willie Horton.
But Moore pastes text from the National Security PAC ad over film from the Bush commercial, thus creating the impression that Bush invoked Willie Horton. Moore falsifies the advertisement by pasting onscreen the text: "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." This libels Willie Horton, who perpetrated a rape but not a murder during his furlough. The audience already knows that it is supposed to be angry about the Willie Horton ad, because it was unfair and because it politically seduced gullible Americans. So Bowling does a "Willie Horton" of its own on the audience, making the film's version of the ad into a falsehood and so turning the audience into dupes of a Willie Horton ad — just like the 1988 dupes of the original ad. For good measure, the ad makes the audience believe that a black man is guilty of a crime he never committed; Bowling thereby perpetrates the same manipulation of racial fears which it accuses the media of perpetrating.
OH, CANADA!
After over an hour spent on the horrors of the United States, Moore switches to the peaceful society of Canada. He begins by arguing that Canada and the United States are very similar — except that Canada has a generous welfare state, and no culture of fear.
It's true that Canada does have a lot of guns compared to England or Japan, but Canada's per-capita gun ownership rate is about a third of the American level.
Moore films the over-the-counter purchase, no questions asked, of some ammunition in a Canadian store. The Canadian government has pointed out that such a transaction would be illegal, since the buyer is required to present identification. Moore did not respond to a request from the government's Canadian Firearms Centre to explain whether he staged a fake purchase, edited out the ID request, or broke the law.
Moore then tells the audience that 13 percent of the Canadian population is minority ethnic, the same as in the U.S. Actually, it's about 31 percent in the U.S. More significantly, blacks and Hispanics, who are involved in well over 50 percent of American homicides (both as victims and as perpetrators) make up about 2.5 percent of the Canadian population. In the United States, each group makes up about one-eighth of the U.S. population.
Comparing U.S. gun-death totals with Canada's, Moore offers a U.S. total that includes death by legal intervention (e.g., a violent felon being shot by a police officer) while omitting this same category from the Canadian total.
We return to Flint, Mich., for a long segment on Kayla Rowland, a six-year-old girl who was fatally shot in school by a male classmate the same age. Moore blames Michigan's requirement that welfare recipients work at a job. Because the killer's mother, Tamarla Owens, commuted to work in a shopping mall 70 hours a week, and because she still could not pay her rent, she was about to be evicted. She thus moved in with her brother, and then her unsupervised son found a handgun, brought it to school, and killed Kayla Rowland.
Actually, Owens earned $7.85 an hour from one job ($1,250 a month, almost entirely tax-free), plus at least the minimum wage from her second job, and received food stamps and medical care. Her rent was $300 a month. Michigan had rent-subsidy and child-care programs too, but Owens apparently did not know about them. So, contrary to the impression created by Moore, Michigan's welfare-to-work program is generous: Even without the rent subsidy, Owens earned more than enough to pay the rent. Perhaps Owens's caseworker should have told her about the available subsidies, but the caseworker's mistake hardly means that the Michigan system is the Dickensian horror portrayed by Moore.
Moore tells the audience that Ms. Owens and her son were living with Owens's brother. He doesn't tell the audience that their home was a crack house, or that the stolen gun was received by the brother from one of his customers, in exchange for drugs.
"No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl," says Moore. Actually, the killer was the class bully; said that he hated everyone at school; had been suspended for stabbing a child with a pencil; and, subsequent to the shooting, stabbed another child with a knife.
We now get a quick cut to Charlton Heston speaking at a gun-rights rally in Flint, holding a rifle above his head. Moore explains that Heston came to Flint after Rowland was killed. Later, when interviewing Heston, Moore tells him, "You go to these places after they have these horrible tragedies." There's a considerable distortion here. Kayla Rowland was killed on February 29, 2000. Heston appeared at a Bush campaign rally in Flint over half a year later, in mid October.
Moore told Phil Donahue that "The American media wants to pump you full of fear." And that's just what Moore himself does, terrifying and angering his audience about American gun owners, George Bush, American media, American foreign policy, American welfare policy, the National Rifle Association, and the American character. The theme of the movie could well be encapsulated by D. H. Lawrence's claim that "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer."
Bowling for Columbine revels in the tabloid-style, raw exploitation of emotion — in promotion of unjustified fear, in falsehoods and quarter-truths, in oversimplification of the problems of race, and in mean-spirited pandering to the audience's bigotry about people of different social backgrounds.
In this way, Bowling subverts its own audience. To participate in Bowling's emotional journey is to surrender to the very same mendacious hate- and fear-mongering that the movie purports to criticize. Liking Bowling for Columbine is no different from liking the sleaziest "news" show on television, except that the audience for the latter doesn't claim to be more aesthetically — or morally — sophisticated than the mainstream American public.
Bowling also subverts elite Hollywood opinion. Imagine if the Academy gave the award for "Best Music — Original Song" to a film that used an unoriginal song, such as "Jingle Bells." Such an award would show that the Oscars are based on Hollywood politics rather than on artistic merit. The presentation of Best Documentary to Michael Moore for a film based on so much untruth has proved the same thing.
Some readers may doubt that Moore intentionally created an entire film whose subtext so thoroughly contradicts its literal text and that so effectively mocks its audience and its creator. My response is that we are long past the era of being chained to an artist's precise intentions. Georgia O'Keefe is said to have denied that her flower drawings were evocative of female genitalia. Does that mean we should pretend that O'Keefe paintings are not overflowing with female genitalia?
The fact is that a mockumentary larded with untruths and brazen self-contradiction is gobbling up documentary prizes: a special award at the Cannes Film Festival, the National Board of Review's "Best Documentary," the International Documentary Association's choice for best documentary ever, and the Academy Award for Best Documentary.
Countless actors and producers may have railed at the Academy for poor taste, but no artist has ever demonstrated the film elite's hyper-partisan preference for political correctness over truth as thoroughly and well as has Michael Moore.

UNFAIRENHEIT 9/11 – The lies of Michael Moore

By Christopher Moore


One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.
Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.
He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."
The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.
I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in ther place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.
Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …
And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal's group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports.


THIS FILM COULDN'T BE MOORE WRONG

Jun 30 2004
WHY BUSH CONSPIRACY THEORIES DON'T ADD UP
By Christopher Hitchens

SCIENTISTS have a contemptuous expression for a theory they know is sheer junk - they say it is "Not Even Wrong".
Documentary films are not exact science - but that in no way liberates them from the need to respect the truth.
Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 is so distanced from the constraints of fact that his claims roam into the realms of fantasy. They need to be challenged.
He has a message for the poor dupes who thought the international intervention in Afghanistan was a punishment for state terrorism and a rescue operation for an enslaved society.
You poor fools, he says. Don't you know it's all about the Bush family's business dealings? The big secret is that the Unocal oil company wants to build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan.
A long, boring and convoluted section of this movie is devoted to making - or trying to make - this point.
But it all falls to the ground if you know one simple thing - Unocal's Afghan proposal was abandoned in 1998, and has not been resumed.
The proposal explains nothing about how the Taliban took over the country, about how al-Qaeda took up residence there and about how the war with Islamic jihad got started.
The theory is Not Even Wrong.
But it's hastily succeeded by another theory, which is that American foreign policy is secretly controlled by Saudi Arabian oil interests.
That's funny: the Saudis were very strongly opposed to the invasion of Afghanistan, and so critical of the invasion of Iraq that they forced the United States military off their territory and into neighbouring Quatar.
How come George Bush keeps doing the opposite of what his masters dictate?
Oh never mind, it's only worth making points like this, or asking such questions, if one takes Moore seriously. And to do this would be a mistake.
He'll say whatever jumps out of his mouth. Pick up the July issue of Playboy and see the long interview he's just given.
Here we learn there are only 190 al-Qaeda terrorists in the world, and the job of killing them should be sub-contracted to the Israelis.
Again, that's funny, even if unintentionally, since Moore usually rants against any American support for Israel.
And I have him on video, debating with me a year after September 11, saying that Osama bin Laden should in any case be regarded as innocent until proven guilty.
Yeah, well, that was then and this is now, and tomorrow he'll be spouting some new and even madder conspiracy scheme.
The film doesn't even try to keep its "story" straight.
We are told that Saddam was harmless - that he never harmed or tried to harm any American. Then we are told that Bush hates Saddam because Saddam tried to assassinate his daddy.
Well, George Bush Sr is an American isn't he? And an attempted murder of a former President is a serious thing, isn't it?
Not in the childish, jeering universe of Michael Moore it's not.
Somehow, also, the whole of Saddam's record of crime and violence and terror gets completely left out of the account.
Then again, in the film the most ridiculed member of the Bush administration is John Ashcroft (who may well deserve it). But it's then said that none of those who favour war are willing to send their own children. Well, John Ashcroft's son is in the US Navy and has been in the Gulf.
By Moore's playground logic, that would make Ashcroft OK. But surely that can't be right?
Oh well, on to the next random accusation or crackpot theory.
You have probably heard a good deal about Richard Clarke lately. He is the former head of counter-terrorism for the Bush administration, and he's become quite a critic of the Iraq war.
Moore interviewed him at length several months ago. The film makes the breathless accusation that the White House allowed several members of the bin Laden family to leave the country in secret in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks.
But between the film's showing in Cannes and its general release, Mr Clarke has stated on the record that he, and he alone, cleared those flights.
So either Moore, when he had the chance, didn't ask the man who knew, or he did ask him and didn't like (and didn't use) the answer. In any case, he's now caught with his enormous pants completely down.
When this happens, and it happens a lot, Moore tends to take refuge in mumbles about artistic licence.
But when he's in front of an audience of yelling juvenile supporters, he shouts that this film is the truth and nothing but the truth.
Yet nothing can stop even the dumbest of his fans asking a few questions.
If there were too few terrorist alerts and warnings before September 11, why is it wrong to have more of them now?
If these warnings only create "fear", as Moore asserts, then what do we say about his own claim that the United States is run by a secret cabal that is in league with the terrorists?
Is this perhaps designed to spread reassurance?
The movie is full of falsity and wind, some of it too silly for words but some of it sinister and some of it nasty.
The most objectionable single thing is Moore's gross exploitation of a woman from his home town in Michigan who lost her son in action in Iraq. Her misery and grief is milked beyond embarrassment.
Not long ago, Moore said those who are blasting and maiming and beheading their way across Iraq, and trying to prevent it from having its first-ever free election were the Iraqi revolution.
"The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy'.
"They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen [the civilian militia of the American war of independence], and their numbers will grow - and they will win."
Moore complains all the time that the funerals of fallen Americans don't get enough publicity.
I think he should jam on that baseball cap of his, shamble off to a few of these ceremonies, and get himself filmed while he cleverly explains this secret, known only to a favoured few, about the liberation forces that are killing British and American and Iraqi servicemen.
If he had the nerve to do that, I might join in the current witless chorus about his supposed "courage".


E per concludere una battuta fulminante di C.Hitchens a proposito del “nostro eroe”.

Alla domanda sul motivo percui gli europei amassero tanto Moore, C.Hitchens rispose:

“Gli europei pensano che gli americani siano grassi, volgari, avidi, stupidi, ambiziosi, ignoranti, eccetera. Perciò, come loro americano-tipo, se ne sono scelto uno che incarna realmente tutte queste qualità”.

[italoconservatore]

In Origine Postato da antonio
il punto e' che uno intellettualmente disonesto come te non puo' dare pagelle ad alcuno.

eheh uno posta articoli di centinaia di righe e tu rispondi con una riga, peraltro di insulti. Tipico sinistro che non sa o non puo' confutare.

[Amati75]

Luca mica ti aspetterai che intervrrano dicendo, si hai raigone c'e'lo siamo beuto tutto quanto...no impossibile.. us questo tema avro' aperto 4 o 5 3D... gl'interventi mirano TUTTI a uscire fuori dal tema.. non ripsosndo se non ripetendo le stesse identiche cose.. che gl'hai smontato. con i fatti, post addietro.. insomma.. per farsi due risate nel vedere gl'arrampicmaenti sugli specchi va bene, se speri in una discussione seria... non te l'aspettare.

[Luca_liberale]

In Origine Postato da antonio
il punto e' che uno intellettualmente disonesto come te non puo' dare pagelle ad alcuno.

In cosa sarei intellettualmente disonesto scusami????

Dimmelo.

Io la pensa, evidentemente, in maniera molto diversa da te, ma non mi sembra di aver mai propalato notizie fasulle.
Del resto non sono nè un giornalista, nè un regista.
Non ho nessun "potere mediatico", espressione tanto cara a chi si professa di sinistra.

In cosa sarei, quindi, intellettualmente disonesto????

Puoi citare qualche mio intervento che ti abbia dubitare della mia buona fede?

[Luca_liberale]

In Origine Postato da Amati75
Luca mica ti aspetterai che intervrrano dicendo, si hai raigone c'e'lo siamo beuto tutto quanto...no impossibile.. us questo tema avro' aperto 4 o 5 3D... gl'interventi mirano TUTTI a uscire fuori dal tema.. non ripsosndo se non ripetendo le stesse identiche cose.. che gl'hai smontato. con i fatti, post addietro.. insomma.. per farsi due risate nel vedere gl'arrampicmaenti sugli specchi va bene, se speri in una discussione seria... non te l'aspettare.

No, non me lo aspetto, ma mi piace definirmi un ROMPICOGLIONI SISTEMATICO.....


è più forte di me......

[S.P.Q.R.]

In Origine Postato da Luca_liberale
In cosa sarei intellettualmente disonesto scusami????

Dimmelo.

Io la pensa, evidentemente, in maniera molto diversa da te, ma non mi sembra di aver mai propalato notizie fasulle.
Del resto non sono nè un giornalista, nè un regista.
Non ho nessun "potere mediatico", espressione tanto cara a chi si professa di sinistra.

In cosa sarei, quindi, intellettualmente disonesto????

Puoi citare qualche mio intervento che ti abbia dubitare della mia buona fede?

ora ti danno del bananas

[Luca_liberale]

In Origine Postato da Malik
Smettila banana. Sei solo un servo di SB ...un covo di servi che hanno fafto solo leggi per SB ...con l'amico Bush che ha fatto la guerra lla'Iraq senza le ADM ...ma il tuo SB ...è mafioso e aveva un mafioso a casa sua.

BANANA

AHAHAHAHAHAH

E io sarei intellettualmente disonesto???

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Il tuo non è, invece, un problema di onestà, ma di difficoltà di comprensione.

Scusami sai, ma te le cerchi.....

Sai cosa cazzo me ne frega a me di Berlusconi......

Se uno non è appiattito sulle tue posizioni pseudo-culturali, diventa automaticamente un sostenitore di Berlusconi???

Ma come sei messo?????

Ma che modo di s-ragionare è mai questo???

Ti podrei scusare solo se tu mi dicessi che hai meno di 16 anni.....

Altrimenti sei solo un povero MENTECATTO.

[Amati75]

In Origine Postato da Luca_liberale
AHAHAHAHAHAH

E io sarei intellettualmente disonesto???

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Il tuo non è, invece, un problema di onestà, ma di difficoltà di comprensione.

Scusami sai, ma te le cerchi.....

Sai cosa cazzo me ne frega a me di Berlusconi......

Se uno non è appiattito sulle tue posizioni pseudo-culturali, diventa automaticamente un sostenitore di Berlusconi???

Ma come sei messo?????

Ma che modo di s-ragionare è mai questo???

Ti podrei scusare solo se tu mi dicessi che hai meno di 16 anni.....

Altrimenti sei solo un povero MENTECATTO.

Luca, Malik stava facendo ironia...

In Origine Postato da Malik
Luca_Liberale hai capito un cazzo ma fa nulla.


fattelo spiegare dal banana SPQR

Malik ancora c'è qualcuno che non ti conosce

[Luca_liberale]

In Origine Postato da Manuel
Malik ancora c'è qualcuno che non ti conosce

Mi pare evidente......

Se scherzavi (Malik).....ti chiedo scusa.....