PZ Myers. 2004 Jul 10. Fahrenheit 9/11. <http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/fahrenheit_9_11/>. Accessed 2008 Dec 04.
Posted on M00o93H7pQ09L8X1t49cHY01Z5j4TT91fGfr on Saturday, July 10, 2004
Fahrenheit 9/11
Yes, I liked it very muchI saw Bowling for Columbine on DVD last year. I had been in no rush to see it, since most of what I'd heard about it before was that the NRA hated it, gun nuts were furious, Michael Moore was a sloppy fabulist doing a hatchet job on our constitutional right to bear arms, etc., and honestly, I just don't have a strong stake pro or con on the gun issue. But when I saw the movie, that wasn't it at all—it was saying some fairly difficult things about how the culture of violence wasn't reducible to single, simple causes, whether they are the NRA or video games, and Moore was actually saying favorable things about responsible gun ownership. I also half expected to see Moore stick a knife in Charlton Heston's kidney, but again I was disappointed.
Now look at the rhetoric we see directed against Moore for Fahrenheit 9/11. He's an America-hater. He's a Bush-hater. It's a smear job, an innuendo-laden, misleading aggregation of falsehoods. He rants hysterically against his own country and paints George W. Bush as the devil incarnate. That's what I expected. That isn't what I got when I finally saw the movie today.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is an intensely patriotic movie with nary a rant in sight, and the emotion the filmmaker left me with wasn't hatred for Bush, but concern for the ordinary people who were his subject. That's my strongest impression of the movie: it was largely focused on people in the US and Iraq who have to deal with the execution and wrenching consequences of this war. It is an emotional argument, showing us people who have lost children or husbands or wives in the war or the terror attacks, or frantic, grief-stricken old women and children held at gunpoint, but it's a valid point of view, and one that is particularly potent because it has been withheld from us before. Why should people be complaining about this? That innocents will be killed and maimed ought to be a legitimate and important factor in the calculus of going to war. The crime is that it was neglected beforehand, hidden in absurd claims of 'precision' bombing and 'surgical' strikes.
And what about the treatment of Bush and his cronies? Again, it wasn't the demonization I expected. The most memorable images are of Bush and Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz doing nothing: they are sitting vacantly, being preened for the cameras. No rubbing their hands together while cackling with malevolent glee, no conspiratorial whispers, no dead babies being filleted for breakfast...just banal mediocrities going about the bidness of making a very, very good living, not really thinking about much of anything, and not really caring much about the painful consequences of their war. Bush comes off as nothing but a superficial tool for his corporate benefactors. Moore is, if anything, charitable to these people.
I've heard a lot of claims lately that the film is inherently dishonest, full of something the right-wing calls "innuendo". That must be a new term for "uncomfortable facts", because that's what I saw here. For example, in the war in Afghanistan, Moore talks about a profitable natural gas pipeline that was going to be built across Afghanistan, to the immense benefit of Halliburton and other well-monied Bush benefactors. Right-wingers gasp, "He's implying that Bush sent the nation into war for this pipeline? How dishonest and simplistic!" But Moore says nothing of the kind. Calling it phony innuendo is an attempt to distract us away from those "uncomfortable facts": yes, there was profit to be made in the war, and plenty of opportunists ready to cash in. And yes, Bush and Cheney practiced a kind of casual corruption, handing out obscenely lucrative contracts to their cronies. The pipeline does not have to be the sole reason we went to war (nor was it, nor does Moore suggest that it was) for the greed we witness in these backroom bargains to be reprehensible.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is a good movie, and the right documentary for our times. It's great journalism of the kind we're so unused to seeing: instead of this mush-mouthed, fake "fair and balanced" nonsense that panders to untenable absurdities by equating them to strong evidence in the name of "equal time", it is a work of advocacy supported by facts. Critics could argue with the interpretation of those facts, but I've seen little of that from them—it's all been vilification and denial.
The outrage over this movie from the right is almost inexplicable. It's simply nothing like the manic botch it has been described as. There is an explanation, of course, and I think I saw it in a comment from Ken MacLeod that "The trouble with liberals...is that they often mistake a fight for an argument, and the right never does." Moore has made an argument, emotional as it is, and he has done so without hatred, without once screaming for the head of George W. Bush on a plate. Moore's critics are seeing an argument forcefully made and projecting onto it their own expectation of the next step, what they would do if they had these kinds of observations about an opponent at their disposal.
MacLeod goes on to cite a relevant article by Alan Wolfe in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, A Fascist Philosopher Helps Us Understand Contemporary Politics.
Conservatives have absorbed Schmitt's conception of politics much more thoroughly than liberals. Ann H. Coulter, author of books with titles such as Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism and Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, regularly drops hints about how nice it would be if liberals were removed from the earth, like her 2003 speculation about a Democratic ticket that might include Al Gore and then-California Gov. Gray Davis. "Both were veterans, after a fashion, of Vietnam," she wrote, "which would make a Gore-Davis ticket the only compelling argument yet in favor of friendly fire." (Coulter recently displayed her vituperative talents by calling former Sen. Max Cleland, a triple amputee, politically "lucky" for having dropped a grenade on his foot while serving in Vietnam.) Liberals, by contrast, even in their newly discovered aggressively anti-Bush frame of mind, stop well short of Coulter's violent language. Interestingly enough, Schmitt had an explanation for why conservative talk-show hosts like Bill O'Reilly fight for their ideas with much more aggressive self-certainty than, say, a hopeless liberal like Alan Wolfe.
Schmitt argued that liberals, properly speaking, can never be political. Liberals tend to be optimistic about human nature, whereas "all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil." Liberals believe in the possibility of neutral rules that can mediate between conflicting positions, but to Schmitt there is no such neutrality, since any rule -- even an ostensibly fair one -- merely represents the victory of one political faction over another. (If that formulation sounds like Stanley Fish when he persistently argues that there is no such thing as principle, that only testifies to the ways in which Schmitt's ideas pervade the contemporary intellectual zeitgeist.) Liberals insist that there exists something called society independent of the state, but Schmitt believed that pluralism is an illusion because no real state would ever allow other forces, like the family or the church, to contest its power. Liberals, in a word, are uncomfortable around power, and, because they are, they criticize politics more than they engage in it.
There's a horrible willful blindness held by conservative extremists that allows them to fiercely condemn even mild opposition by moderates while tolerating and encouraging amazingly deep-seated viciousness by their own. I think it reflects a difference in purpose. The Coulters and Hannitys and O'Reillys are rallying their allies. They have pulled out their crayons and drawn cartoons of liberals, complete with horns and bloody dripping fangs, and wave them before their fellow conservatives and said, "Here is the Other. Aren't they awful? We have to destroy them!" And their fellows agree, the demonic beings in those cartoons sure are evil, and of course what they must do is obey. When they show them to liberals, they get nothing but bafflement: "Are these people nuts? Why are they claiming I hate America and love terrorists?" We find it hard to take them seriously.
Michael Moore has done something that hurts. He has drawn a cartoon to rally the liberals, all right, but dang it, he had to go and make it cut too close to the truth. When conservatives see it, they have to take it seriously. Bush isn't drawn with fangs...merely as a failed businessman who got a lot of helping hands in his career, and is currently repaying his debts from the public till of the country he runs. So now they are struggling frantically to pretend that yes, he did make a movie as over-the-top hysterical as the least of the rantings of a Coulter or a Hannity, so that it's safe to ignore it.
He didn't. They can't.
It's not a tale of evil. It's about incompetence and greed and poor stewardship of the country, about the lower and middle classes struggling to do their best while the wealthy smirk and get wealthier, and the current administration has been caught dead to rights. The reason it is anathema to conservatives is that it is believable. It rings true.
It gets my unreserved recommendation.
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Bravo !
#: Posted by on 07/10 at 10:09 PM
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"The Coulters and Hannitys and O'Reillys" Speaking as a politics junkie, Coulter and Hannity are a much worse class than O'Reilly. I don't like O'Reilly, but the Coulters, Hannitys, Savages, etc. are really terrible people, the kind who don't seem to be completely joking when they say they would like to see liberals dead. Savage has told gay people to 'get AIDS and die', and Coulter suggested that executing liberals might have some benefit. O'Reilly's just a pain in the ass, as far as I can tell.
#: Posted by on 07/11 at 01:09 AM
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They have done a remarkable job of demonizing liberals. There are a few reasons, I think:
1) They have repeated a few simple messages incessantly for years.
2) There are always numerous examples of nitwit leftists they can focus on.
3) Many people don't have liberal values, and if the bill of rights were put to a vote, we probably wouldn't have it.#: Posted by on 07/11 at 01:14 AM -
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I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with your assessment of this movie. When even Paul Krugman has to grudgingly admit that "Viewers may come away from Mr. Moore’s movie believing some things that probably aren’t true", and that "Fahrenheit 9/11 is a tendentious, flawed movie", and when someone as impeccably liberal as Brad DeLong has to admit that, as much as he enjoyed it himself, he wouldn't recommend watching the movie without some advice beforehand as to where and how it misleads, I'd say that this is one case where there's actually something pretty rotten at work.
I think it's beholden on us all to try to occasionally put our own dearest political beliefs to the test, and in this case, that would mean actually giving Mr. Moore's work closer scrutiny than it seems to deserve *precisely* because its message appeals so strongly to one's own views. I'm by no means a conservative, but I think it's too easy to simply dismiss all conservative complaints about Fahrenheit 9/11 as just so much partisan rage without seriously examining their gripes about the movie.
A movie doesn't have to tell any outright lies to seriously mislead, and the best works of propaganda make sure not to do so, as anyone who's seen, say, "Triumph des Willens" will aver. Every single frame in Mr. Moore's movie might be factually true and it could *still* be a blatant piece of propaganda, and that it confirms what many liberals already believe about conservatives isn't an argument against this possibility but one *for* it.
I hope I can now retreat into lurkerdom without being savaged as a "Bush shill" or a "neocon" by some of the more committed partisans who visit this site. I just think it's important that one apply the same standards of objectivity in one's politics as in one's science, and it's perhaps even more important in the former case than the latter, seeing as the political decisions of those we choose to lead us can touch all our lives in a manner that few scientific ideas can.
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----#: Posted by Abiola Lapite on 07/11 at 04:32 AM -
After reading that last post, and based on the reviews by many of the so-called liberals and anti-Bush faction, I can't help thinking there is a whole lot of people who are so concerned with presenting a balanced viewpoint not only factually (which, from everything I've read, is not an issue with this movie) but in terms of nuance and opinion that they are willing to re-elect Bush for another four years as long as no-one can accuse them of being anything less than spotless examples of the loyal opposition.
I'm curious how many of the crucial undecideds in this election are being dissuaded from seeing this movie (and thus seeing a view of the war that is different from that provided by Whitehouse and the majority of the US media) based on reviews by people who say they want Bush out but are unwilling to present a united front, instead engaging in nitpicking and sniping at the one anti-Bush voice that has arisen above the din of Limbaughs, Coulters and O'Reillys?#: Posted by on 07/11 at 07:13 AM -
Abiola, you're doing exactly what Wolfe and MacLeod were describing: you're treating a fight as an argument. Right now you want to stop the contest with our opponent and huddle up with our allies to quibble over details. Meanwhile, they're going to just take the ball and run to the goal.
We could sit here and cuss out Moore because he some people might think we went to war in Afghanistan over a gas pipeline when we didn't, and he should have put a big disclaimer there, but that's irrelevant. If there hadn't been a pipeline at all, if the players in Afghanistan hadn't been associated with the contractor, if Moore had lied, I'd agree with you: we have higher standards than that. But he didn't. He reported the facts of the case. That it wasn't the outright evil of starting a war to further fatten his fat cat friends, but was only the repugnant corruption of taking advantage of the war to help out his profiteering cronies, does not change the fact that it is corruption and profiteering.
This smacks of the "we may torture people, but we aren't as bad as Saddam" argument. Why are we liberals expected to perfectionists in our style of discourse while the conservatives so grossly compromise the standards of our country's actual behavior?
And sweet Jebus, but don't compare Michael Moore to Leni Riefenstahl when you've got Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Sean Hannity right there, peddling hate speech and lies as shills for the government. This country has a lot of house cleaning to do, and we don't get it done by first picking off the advocates for social justice because they are insufficiently pure, while letting the mad dogs off the hook because, well, no one expects mad dogs to be tidy and respectful. -
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I'd like to respond to the following comments.
"This smacks of the "we may torture people, but we aren't as bad as Saddam" argument. Why are we liberals expected to perfectionists in our style of discourse while the conservatives so grossly compromise the standards of our country's actual behavior?"
I'm not preaching a gospel of perfection, but I do believe that one ought to hold to certain standards of conduct regardless of what one's opponents may do. In that respect, I think it is those who say that Moore's attempt at misleading the public is somehow justified by the greater evils of the right, who are actually in the shoes of the "Abu Ghraib isn't as bad as Saddam" camp. If disreputable behavior is justified because "the other side is worse", what grounds do we have to criticize Lynndie England and her superiors?
"And sweet Jebus, but don't compare Michael Moore to Leni Riefenstahl when you've got Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Sean Hannity right there, peddling hate speech and lies as shills for the government."
As I'd hope you'd be aware, I've never viewed the likes of Michael Savage and Ann Coulter with anything other than contempt. The difference between them and Michael Moore is that nobody I personally take seriously would ever try to defend the output of rabid slanderers like Coulter et al.
"This country has a lot of house cleaning to do, and we don't get it done by first picking off the advocates for social justice because they are insufficiently pure, while letting the mad dogs off the hook because, well, no one expects mad dogs to be tidy and respectful."
No, but at the same time, it needn't necessarily take much to be better than the other side, so meeting that criterion doesn't say that one has a position worth respecting. To pick an egregious example, Brezhnev was undoubtedly better than Stalin, but he wasn't a "good guy" by any means.
Getting away from the "Nazi/Commie" analogies, the larger point as I see it is this - if the opposition thinks that telling lies for political gain is alright, why should I have any faith in the promises it's making to be better than the incumbent party? Bush claimed before coming into office that he would be "a uniter, not a divider", and that he didn't believe in "nation building", and he's turned out to be the very opposite of what he said he'd be; why should I assume Kerry and company will be any better if their supporters are so ready to engage in the telling of "essential truths", or lies, as such things used to be known?
To trust in the essential goodness of people simply because they belong to a certain party rather than another is to engage in politics as tribalism or a football match; I'd like to see evidence that the deeds will match the high-flown rhetoric, and giving mendacity a pass because it serves one's political goals is the exact opposite of that.
By the way, my point in mentioning Riefenstahl wasn't to associate Moore with Nazism, but to indicate that night can be made to look like day in the hands of a really talented film-maker, without any obvious "lies" being told. To be honest, I don't think Moore is half as talented as Riefenstahl - Bush's administration clearly has a lot of "issues", so Moore's work was half done for him before he began - but a lot of the technique employed by Riefenstahl and Moore (and the Soviet propagandist Eisenstein) are definitely the same, e.g, montages and transitions that seek to suggest things by association, a selective choice of focus, etc.
I suppose Moore knows his target audience, but it's most unlikely to me that Fahrenheit 9/11 will convince any critical individuals who aren't already inclined to view Bush in the worst possible light. If the goal was simply to "fire up the base", then I suppose Moore's movie has been a roaring success, but if the intention was to sway the undecided, his readiness to indulge in conspiracy theorizing, his over-willingness to engage in cheap shots, and his manifest unreadiness to admit that the other side might have been sincere if mistaken, rather than outright malign, will likely lead to precisely the opposite outcome to that intended, by invoking feelings of revulsion at the sheer dishonesty of the whole thing.
The movie would actually have been a more effective demolition job had it at least pretended to try to understand the other side's story, but Moore is either too lazy or too unimaginative to see that - or perhaps he doesn't really care about winning the election after all, just about getting liberals all riled up enough to keep lapping up his literary and cinematic output. A Democratic victory in November would bring with it the need to engage in the practical compromises that are essential to governing, and angry posturing about the nefarious activities of cartoon villains would no longer have quite the same purchase it currently does. A conpiracy theory? Sure, but then again, isn't that the sort of thing Moore's admirers deem acceptable coming from their hero?
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----#: Posted by Abiola Lapite on 07/11 at 09:19 AM -
But here's the thing: I saw the movie. Moore wasn't engaged in "disreputable behavior"! Everybody is assuming he is and saying he was, because the right has made that one of their pervasive talking points that Moore is lying (or 'misleading' or whatever they're saying)...but it's not true. The movie is an honest portrayal of the costs of war at home and abroad, and highlights the people who have profited most from this endeavor.
Did you read what I said about it? "...angry posturing about the nefarious activities of cartoon villains" is precisely what the movie is not about. Nor is it about conspiracy theories. Most of the movie is about the people who have to do the dirty work; the heart of it is about Lila Lipscomb, a woman who is a conservative Democrat, who strongly supported the military and the war. The shots at the Bushites don't show them to be malign, but more tawdry and selfish. The representative image is that clip of Bush declaiming his intent in Iraq, and then telling the reporters to "watch this drive" as he returns to his golf game. That's the portrait of the administration Moore hammers home again and again, and it's awfully hard to argue that it is inaccurate or even misleading. -
Based on Dr. Myers' glowing review, I may wind up going to see the movie after all. I hadn't planned to, not because I have some problem with Moore, but because I'm already loaded with sufficient anti-Bush-administration venom that I don't need anything else to send me screaming over the top. The only criticisms I've heard of this movie that ring true without having seen it - and I don't think they really detract from what Moore was trying to do - are the emphasis on the Bush/Saudi connection (there's a very cozy and very long-standing bi-partisan relationship with the Saudis that extends back long before the current administration)and the failure to even mention the actions of the one country that DID benefit from the Iraq war.
#: Posted by on 07/11 at 10:18 AM
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Small clarification,
Bush's "Watch this drive" moment came as part of a comment following a Palestinian suicide bombing. I think it's point is to drive home Bush's general callousness.#: Posted by on 07/11 at 11:18 AM - I think the documentary is more important than it is outstanding. Given the box office figures, it's safe to estimate that there's a vast mainstream of Americans for whom the uncomfortable facts amalgamated in the 120 minutes weren't already well-known. That the movie is being slammed for its wall-to-wall lies, when the second half is almost completely standalone news footage of bombed houses and distraught Iraqi and American families, speaks volumes. It's far from comprehensive, but it doesn't need to be. I think the main point of the movie is to get the skeptical mental ball rolling. If one member of that aforementioned mainstream comes out of the theater shaken out of their comfort zone and with a more rounded viewpoint of what's actually going on in the world, then mission accomplished. And only good can come of it.
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That the movie is being slammed for its wall-to-wall lies, when the second half is almost completely standalone news footage of bombed houses and distraught Iraqi and American families, speaks volumes.
Two things:
1 - The problem isn't that the film is telling "wall-to-wall lies", the problem is that it's selective about what facts it chooses to present to viewers, building a very deceitful picture. It is simply absurd to make it out to seem as if Iraq were a paradise on Earth under Saddam's reign before the Evil Bushitler sent his stormtroopes in to massacre the innocent Iraqis and their beloved leader - the relatives of the two million Iraqis killed by Saddam Hussein will testify to that much.
2 - The Lila Lipscomb footage, as emotive as it may be, is also extremely misleading; let's face it, cruel and random deaths are part of any war, however justified or not, and the United States' armed forces is an all-volunteer organization, and one which actually does get to see service often, as anyone thinking of enlisting ought to know. Heck, I knew that much before coming to the US, despite having grown up in a Third World country. Ms. Lipscomb's boy knew, or ought to have known, what he was signing up for when he voluntarily enlisted.
I don't want to spend the rest of the evening on here going at Michael Moore's mendacious movie, but anyone who doubts that there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of the work should at least take a look at Hitchen's critique, or, if Hitchens is regarded as too tendentious a source, this Spinsanity article. The raw truth is that this is a most unsubtle piece of propaganda, and an unreserved embrace of it by Bush administration opponents only serves to discredit them as well in the eyes of the skeptical. Not all friends are worth having.
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----#: Posted by Abiola Lapite on 07/11 at 01:36 PM -
Abiola,
The examples that you site are indicative of the problem with the criticism of moore's film. The fact is, they are precisely the sorts of things that one would attack if one is predisposed to offer balance by criticizing an "ally." That is really the raison d'etre of a group like Spinsanity (I do think what they do is important) and I think we all know that Hitchens has the same contempt for any anti-war argument whatever the content. But in context, the sort of criticisms you raise make very little sense.
The answer to both examples is that Moore is a filmmaker and a documentarian and like anyone engaged in those tasks he is looking for the untold stories (at least anyone who knows anything about what they are doing) and showing us a fresh and important perspective on an issue with which we only know part of the story.
Is it really dishonest to show that before the beginning of "shock and awe" there were innocent people living normal lives whose lives are then ended by our aggression? Is it really? You seem to believe that it is. Fair enough. We disagree. But what of the flip side then? What of the more common portrayal of the war against Saddam that completely elides the loss of innocent lives that are occuring as a result? Should our television news on every occasion where it interviews one of our Generals about a specific action, interview innocent family members of those whose lives were lost when those actions were taken? Are they lying if they do not? Will we be seeing a Hitchens screed decrying this rampant dishonesty.
My point about Lipscomb would be that you simply missed the point. The issue was not that her son lost his life or that he somehow misunderstood the terms of his service. It was that the people who made the decision to send him to war misunderstand those terms. It was that he lost his life in a cause that she and he did not believe in. It was that he was one of very many sons and daughters of the poor who disproportionately give their lives with the hope that at the very least they are defending something important -- that there is no other option. If Moore really believes, as clearly he does, that this war does not meet that criteria, is it really dishonest to show us one of the human consequences of that war? Is it really?
Brent#: Posted by on 07/11 at 03:15 PM -
Abiola- You seem quite determined to hear only yourself, but in your last response you put forth several arguments that are, in your own words, misleading.
1. All sources of information, film, television, print are selective in what they facts they select. Your characterization of the movie's portrayal of Iraq as a "paradise" before the war is an interpretation which states volumes about your assumptions regarding Moore's movie, and very little about the actual movie itself(you did see it, didn't you?). I have seen the movie, and Iraq hardly looked like a paradise to me, however, Moore did use footage of Iraqi's going about the everyday business of being human, raising their children, going to work, the same things that all of us do, making the important point that it is always the innocent who suffer the most whenever countries go to war, and the very salient fact that we have a lot more in common with most Iraqi's than the press would have us believe. Hitchens review is a hack job (big surprise since he supported the war, and this film very much calls into view his lack of judgement and confronts him with the unpleasant realities of the policies which he has so viciously flogged). I have no idea where you got the 2 million dead Iraqi's, but I will point out that if that number includes the Iran-Iraq war, then the US not only armed Saddam (including chemical weapons) but encouraged him to prosecute the war.
2.. I had the opportunity to hear an interview with Lila Lipscomb, and I have to say you have it completely wrong. How, exactly is it misleading? She lost her son, is grieving for him, and in the process feels betrayed because it is becoming increasingly apparent that the reasons we went to Iraq were weak to begin with. She believed that it was unpatriotic to question the rationale for war before it began, but now she has a more nuanced view, and nothing but good things to say about Moore and the process of making the film, including the fact he gave her the right to remove any footage from the film that included her, if she thought it inappropriate.. She is an extraordinary woman, and what matters to the film is her personal journey. The cost of war is extreme, what is your objection to showing its true cost?
The point of Moore's movie is that on both sides of the conflict, it is disproportionately the poor and young and innocent that pay the price for war, and it is primarily the rich who get the benefits. Furthermore, in this day and age, those who make the decisions regarding war are completely insulated from the consequences of their decisions, that would be the point of 1 out of 535 members of Congress with a son or daughter actively serving in the military.
As far as mendacity and intellectual dishonesty go, you have displayed more of it in your posts than Moore did in all of his movies combined, I say this for the benefit of anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Go and look at it, all the footage is real. None if it is filmed on a soundstage, it all happened.. What you make of it depends on what you hope to see, but if you want to see a good film, this one qualifies.#: Posted by on 07/11 at 03:54 PM -
The problem isn't that the film is telling "wall-to-wall lies", the problem is that it's selective about what facts it chooses to present to viewers, building a very deceitful picture.
I should clarify.
That the movie is being slammed for its wall-to-wall lies, when the second half is almost completely standalone news footage of bombed houses and distraught Iraqi and American families, footage which never makes it to daily news reports, speaks volumes.
The Lila Lipscomb footage, as emotive as it may be, is also extremely misleading; let's face it, cruel and random deaths are part of any war, however justified or not, and the United States' armed forces is an all-volunteer organization
True, but Moore makes a salient point regarding the nature of poverty and its role in convincing youths that the armed forces is the only way out, a point driven home by patriotic propaganda and aggressive marketers. Policies of higher-income tax cuts and decreased social security spending do nothing but radically deepen this divide.
Like I originally said, this isn't the most credible, well-rounded doco I've ever seen, but it's Moore. He's a populist, not a rationalist; he's an idealist, not an investigative journalist. It's edu-tainment for the masses. Yep, it's propaganda, but you're missing the point. If every piece of bullshit spewed out by Fox 24 hours a day were as heavily scrutinised as Moore's 2 hours are, our respective democratic systems wouldn't be drowning in oceans of ignorance in the first place, and a character like Moore wouldn't be necessary. -
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As far as mendacity and intellectual dishonesty go, you have displayed more of it in your posts than Moore did in all of his movies combined
It's intemperate and dishonest fools like you who are working overtime to ensure that I won't pull the trigger for Kerry in November, however much I might dislike Bush's policies. You just don't get it, do you?
I'm sorry, but seeing this mendacious, transparent piece of propaganda excused because it gives conservatives "a taste of their own medicine" only ensures that I'll consign the opinions of those who say such things to the same trashcan I do those who think Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are God's representatives on Earth. If intellectual honesty and objectivity are so easily thrown by the wayside for a bit of political advantage, I don't see what moral standing one has to criticize anyone else for engaging in vicious, lying rhetoric.
Dismiss me as a "conservative" apologist if it makes you feel better, but it's folks like me who'll make the difference in November, not unbalanced partisans like yourself, and the support given by many on the left who should know better to Moore's movie makes me feel disgust at the thought of being on their side. There are more than two parties in America, believe it or not, and even if there weren't, I could always sit out the damned election.
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"If every piece of bullshit spewed out by Fox 24 hours a day were as heavily scrutinised as Moore's 2 hours are, our respective democratic systems wouldn't be drowning in oceans of ignorance in the first place, and a character like Moore wouldn't be necessary."
Shouldn't the emphasis therefore be on seeing that Fox News gets heavily scrutinized, rather than spewing out even more bullshit? Would Professor Myers think it acceptable for biologists to counter creationist lies by telling lies of their own? "Tu quoque" is a logical fallacy, two wrongs don't make a right, and once we go down that road, we're soon in "these people are terrorists, therefore Abu Ghraib is justified" territory.
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No, I wouldn't, and I agree with you that our side must be more rigorous and honest than the other side, for our own self respect if nothing else. (I also don't think you're a conservative apologist).
The thing is, I don't think Moore's movie was dishonest at all. I haven't yet seen anything that indicates he's actually lying or misleading in his picture of the situation—but I have seen a lot of accusations of such. -
I'm truly envious, Abiole.
I didn't get to see the director's cut in which Iraq is portrayed as a land flowing with milk and honey. All I remember is some people at a barbershop, the bride and groom at a wedding, people in cafes, a playground scene, and a kid flying a kite in front of a pretty desolate area of a city (Baghdad?).
Do you happen to know when the director's cut will be released in San Diego? I can't wait to see the legions of Iraqis dancing in the streets, spontaneously bursting into song, while along the sides of the streets the the best chefs of Iraq lay out a seven-course banquet free for each Iraqi citizen.#: Posted by on 07/12 at 11:41 AM -
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"I'm truly envious, Abiole."
Yes, that's it, nothing like cheap sarcasm and not even bothering to spell my name right to sway my opinion. How clever of you.
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I'm sorry, but seeing this mendacious, transparent piece of propaganda excused because it gives conservatives "a taste of their own medicine" only ensures that I'll consign the opinions of those who say such things to the same trashcan I do those who think Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are God's representatives on Earth.
It doesn't seem as if you are paying very close attention Abiola but in the interest of discussion let us try this one more time. You keep saying that the film is dishonest. In one of your posts you cite a couple of examples of this supposed dishonesty. Several people, including myself have pointed out why a reasonable person would not believe that your citations demonstrated such dishonesty. In fact, the original post went over just these points in some detail and made an argument that they in no way demonstrated any dishonesty. Somehow you managed to completely ignore those parts of mr. myers post and our own posts and have simply repeated your contention of moore's medacity without ever engaging any of our counter-arguments. For extra measure you have thrown in a ridiculous straw man about giving conservatives a "taste of their own medicine." I am trying to take your point of view on this seriously and I for one do believe that there is a reasonable argument to be made that Moore takes some liberties that he perhaps should not have, but if you really intend to persuade me or anyone else that this is the harmful piece of propoganda that you say it is, you are going to have to do better. The "you just don't get it" retreat is just lame.#: Posted by on 07/12 at 12:43 PM -
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The thing is, I don't think Moore's movie was dishonest at all. I haven't yet seen anything that indicates he's actually lying or misleading in his picture of the situation—but I have seen a lot of accusations of such.
I suppose this is one of those Rashomon-like things where people take away something very different from witnessing the same event. To me, it looks very much like Moore wanting to have his cake and eating it too, making lots of insinuations that are both unsubstantiated and contradictory.
To give just one example, here's the same guy who's on the record as thinking that the war in Afghanistan was unjustified, and Bin Laden wasn't much of a threat to anyone, and yet here he is now saying that Bush has been too busy going after Saddam to focus on the much bigger threat posed by Bin Laden; these two things cannot both be true at once. In the same vein, one can't claim that American lives were unnecessarily expended on a reckless Afghan adventure, even while insisting that Bush "let" Bin Laden and his cronies escape, as any course of action that would have had a better chance of catching them would have put the lives of far many more American troops at risk; the entire point of America's strategy in that war was to avoid getting bogged down like the Soviets did.
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-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----#: Posted by Abiola Lapite on 07/12 at 12:52 PM -
Yes, that's it, nothing like cheap sarcasm and not even bothering to spell my name right to sway my opinion. How clever of you.
You have managed to do it again just as I was finishing my previous post. Kevin, despite his use of sarcasm, was engaging your point directly. He is making the argument, as others have, that your description of the few seconds in Moore's film in which we see ordinary Iraqis, as a vision of paradise is, in fact, dishonest. Your response is to avoid the content of his argument altogether and focus on a spelling error and an unkind tone. In your own words:
It is simply absurd to make it out to seem as if Iraq were a paradise on Earth under Saddam's reign before the Evil Bushitler sent his stormtroopes in to massacre the innocent Iraqis and their beloved leader
I won't comment on your rhetorical technique here but I would wager that not one person in 1000 walked out of the theater with the belief that Iraq was a paradise on earth before our invasion but I am sure many did walk out with the true impression that many innocent people lived normal lives before we shocked and awed them into oblivion. None of that excuses Saddam's reign unless you are predisposed to seeing it that way and it seems that you are.#: Posted by on 07/12 at 12:56 PM -
To give just one example, here's the same guy who's on the record as thinking that the war in Afghanistan was unjustified, and Bin Laden wasn't much of a threat to anyone, and yet here he is now saying that Bush has been too busy going after Saddam to focus on the much bigger threat posed by Bin Laden; these two things cannot both be true at once.
Now you are no longer arguing about the film but about Michael Moore himself. The question of whether the film decieves is completely irrelevant to the question of what Moore himself believes or even what he says. The film either proves that its claims are true or it doesn't.#: Posted by on 07/12 at 01:13 PM -
Brent nailed my point exactly.
I had absolutely no expectation that I would sway your opinion, Abiola. My point was to highlight the distinction between what you said the movie was showing and what it actually portrayed. The fact that you have come in misrepresenting the movie calls into question how much we can trust your opinion of it, and I responded in a tone which was consistent with how seriously I take your allegations.#: Posted by on 07/12 at 01:31 PM -
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"Kevin" and "brent",
I've done more to illustrate my point than you two have ever attempted to show how I've supposedly gone "wrong"; believe whatever rubbish you want, ignore glaring logical inconsistencies if you please - one can lead a horse to water ...
Come November, when I pull that lever, I'll have you two obtuse individuals in mind and remind myself *not* to vote for anyone people like you support.
Life is short, and I have better things to do with my time than waste it talking with you two.
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Well you have managed to be correct about one thing Abiola. This was a waste of all of our time.
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Don't bother, guys. He hasn't seen the movie. I saw it last night for the first time, after reading this discussion, and it wasn't the movie he describes.
In fact, the entire movie was so much softer than I expected. From all the republican simpering and whining, I thought I'd be seeing Bandar stuffing wads of cash up Bush's ass like Dorothy refilling the scarecrow with straw.
It was deeply sad, but hardly that offensive or surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the past three years.#: Posted by on 07/13 at 08:11 AM - Yes, the emotional tone was more of sorrow than anger. My wife's comment afterwards was that it was a very depressing movie. My kids, on the other hand, had more of an attitude of "they're doing WHAT to my future?"
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Abiola,
Do you want me to e-mail you with my presidential choice when I make that decision, or will you simply be voting for Bush or Nader (the only candidates I've ruled out so far)?
Covington,
I was well aware that Abiola hadn't seen the movie, because there's no way anyone who actually saw it could have made the claims he or she did about the portrayal of Hussein's Iraq. It sounds as if he or she is repeating the conservative talking point that the movie is nothing more than propaganda on behalf of the enemy, and took the idea of what one would expect propaganda to be like, and then claimed it was a feature of F 9/11.#: Posted by on 07/13 at 11:51 AM -
Come to think of it, I don't know the area where you live. If you would like, you can reply with your district information, I can research all the candidates in your area and give you my anti-recommendations. After all, if you don't have my recommendations, who will you know who to vote against this election?
It's great to see that some people can put aside their own selfish interest in investigating the issues and only voting for the candidates with whom they agree, and instead simply let a spat on a small section of the blogosphere determine their vote. That's really putting others ahead of oneself.#: Posted by on 07/13 at 11:58 AM