Posted on 05/18/2004 10:52:04 PM PDT by kattracks
Michael Moore is at it again. The fat, fraudulent filmmaker's latest hit piece, "Fahrenheit 911," apparently focuses on how the Bush administration has botched the war on terror. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Moore's film "reduces decades of American foreign-policy failures to a black-and-white cartoon that lays the blame on one family." Naturally, the Europeans love it. Many critics say that Moore's film is the front-runner to receive the prestigious Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; Moore's smear job received the longest standing ovation of any film in festival history, clocking in at 20 minutes.
In the United States, it's unlikely Moore's film will be quite as popular. American college campuses, however, are a different story. Despite blatant manipulation and falsehood, Moore's two previous films, "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," are hugely popular, both in the classroom and outside it.In a political science class I took during my first quarter at UCLA, Professor Jurgen Essletzbichler showed "Roger and Me" over the course of a few class sessions. The point: to attempt to show the "downside of globalization." It was simply one in a long chain of indoctrinating tactics used by Essletzbichler to get his anti-capitalist point across. Throughout the class, Essletzbichler posted graphics attempting to explain principles of industrial capitalism. Such graphics included a fat-cat industrialist standing atop a globe and urinating on the bottom half of the globe (this represented trickle-down economics) and a fat-cat industrialist riding in a carriage with a skeleton symbolizing death.
"Roger and Me" has also been assigned in non-film classes at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, University of New Mexico, University of Alabama, University of Tennessee, University of California at Santa Barbara, Clarkson University (Potsdam, N.Y.), Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, Wash.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Georgia, University of Washington, University of Virginia, University of Arizona, and dozens of other institutions of higher learning. A quick google.com search of syllabus plus "Roger and Me" nets 398 hits.
Amazon.com lists "Ohio Universities," "Michigan Universities" and UCLA as areas where "Roger and Me" is especially popular. All this despite the fact that Moore deliberately ignores certain pertinent information and scrambles his chronology, seriously calling into question the credibility of "Roger and Me." But let's not get too picky here. As Professor Edwin Jahiel of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says, "the job comes with editorial slants and exaggerations -- but the underlying truth is solid."
"Bowling for Columbine" has been an even larger hit on America's campuses. This aggregation of staged scenes, slick cuts and obvious misrepresentation has made its way into college classrooms throughout the United States. A google.com search using search terms syllabus plus "Bowling for Columbine" yields 576 hits.
Moore's anti-gun diatribe is utilized on campuses from Purdue University (West Lafayette, Ind.) to Michigan State University, from Northern Kentucky University to Ball State University (Muncie, Ind.), from Southwest Missouri State University to University of Wisconsin at Madison. Shockingly, Amazon.com lists "Oregon Universities," "Maine Universities," "University of Minnesota," "Kent State University," "Boston College," "Oregon State University," "California State University," "City University of New York," "Columbia University," "Oberlin College," "University of Alaska" and "Arizona Universities" as areas where "Bowling for Columbine" is particularly popular.
Moore's books also find nice, comfortable spots in student backpacks. The google.com search for syllabus plus "Stupid White Men" plus "Michael Moore" returns 134 hits. Moore cohort Al Franken receives wide play in the classroom as well, but that shouldn't come as a surprise, considering that Franken was given a Harvard academic fellowship to research his massive tome, "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them."
Where are the conservative books? Nowhere to be found. A google.com search of the terms syllabus plus "Slander" plus Ann Coulter returns a mere 31 hits. A search for syllabus plus David Limbaugh plus "Absolute Power" garners five hits, none of them actually class assignments. Even Bernard Goldberg's "Bias" returns only 70 hits in a similar google.com search.
If anyone ever doubted that colleges are more similar to France than they are to mainstream America, Michael Moore's reception on campus should quell those doubts. As long as there are universities, Michael Moore and his ilk will never go out of business.
©2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Someday, we're going to have to take out the trash. In MM's case, we'll need a front end loader.
Actually, what we'll need is the modern day equivalent of Princess Leia...
After all, wasn't she the one who offed Jabba the Hut in ROTJ? The mighty Jabba, most feared in the fictitional Star Wars universe, was felled by the chain that he used to enslave the good public servant Leia...
What might be the parallel here? I'm sure there is one, but I'm too tired to think of it now, and I have work in the morning. I can't wait for my vacation in 2 months, when--at least for a week, work won't get in the way of my FReeping!
See above. I'm not in a mood to be kind to the traitor-slug.
One can only wish that the "Fat Fury" will expire from explosive adiposis.
Actually my understanding is that it is not how "the Bush administration has botched the war on terror" but how "the Bush family aided and abetted the families of Islamic terrorists".
Michael Moore is not a fan of the War On Terror. He would not have supported any preventative arrests of the 9/11/2001 hijackers. He won't vent his anger at Bill Clinton for failing to act, rather he will vent his anger at any member of the Bush family who ever associated with someone of Middle Eastern decenet.
If the Bush family was such buddies with the Saudis and the Saudis sponsored this hit, what is the connection? George W. Bush miss a protection payment? George W. Bush was getting cold feet?
Then again, these are the same people who insist that George W. Bush is both a moron and an evil mastermind.
Here is a photo of the American-hating elites cheering this film at their antiBush rally:
The release date on this 2 DVD set was postponed at least twice. Political Correctness has long suppressed many of these shorts (including Der Feruher's Face, which has a caricature of Tojo).
Walt Disney put his studio behind the war effort and made a number of promotional films (educational films for the military, for the public, and war bond rally shorts). He also backed the making of a feature based on Victory Through Air Power which did help to persuade President Roosevelt to consider other tactics in fighting WWII.
I don't think that the Disney family or studio wanted to be seen supporting the wrong side of WWIV.
'Victory Through Air Power' was critical of old war methods but it was not in any way an indictment of Charles Lindbergh, US imperialism, Henry Ford, "Roosevelts' Jews", etc. as a "contemporary Michael Moore" would have challenged (opinion or fact, right or wrong).
Another good DVD to hunt down (which may be out of print) is the complete Private SNAFU shorts. These were produced by the staff at Warner Bros. for the military (and written by "Dr. Seuss").
When Tim Robbins' speaks of "a chill wind" he needs to do some research to see just how tight a grip the US government wanted during WWII. The left has chosen sides in this war and they chose the wrong side. They do provide aid and comfort to the enemy. They have helped fabricate lies and blown some actions way out of proportion with ZERO criticism of the other side.
I do find it ugly though that someone at the Disney corporation saw fit to paraphrase Leonard Maltin's statment that "the Disney Studio was virtually taken over by the military" as a part of the war effort to "the Disney Studio was taken over by the military" for the back of the packaging.
Walt Disney also drafted many mascots/logos for military divisions.
"Bowling for Columbine" has been an even larger hit on America's campuses. This aggregation of staged scenes, slick cuts and obvious misrepresentation has made its way into college classrooms throughout the United States.
Of course it is popular with young people. It is irreverent, it has pop culture cartoons, and it deals with an event that happened while many of them were in high school.
I think the accepted party line explanation for the apparent incongruity is that GWB is a moron and Cheney is the evil mastermind. On the other hand, ascribing both traits to a single person is not really a problem. Logic has never been the strong suit of the left.
They may also be subscribing to the "rope-a-dope" theory of playing dumb.
I also have never seen it on a store shelf. This is why I think it may be Out of Print (OOP).
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