Posted on 6/28/2004, 12:00:50 AM by BenLurkin
I'm probably going to wait until the DVD arrives. Maybe I'll let a Democrat pal put down the change, then I'll toss 90 or so minutes of my life that I'll never get back watching "Fahrenheit 9/11." The graceless filmmaker Michael Moore lifted the title from Ray Bradbury without bothering to ask. But that is par.
Yeah, I'll probably watch the thing until I cannot stand it, and walk out like the viewers who voted with their feet in Lancaster at the local cinema on Friday. Why watch at all? The news gatherer in me tells me I should have baseline knowledge about the sundry and topical.
The part of me that's a veteran and concerned enough about national security to pine vainly for domestic safety tells me I wouldn't cross the street to watch Michael Moore bleed to death.
That, too, is a graceless sentiment. Compassion requires rendering first aid. And pity.
I will watch this crummy film at some point and fill the need to, by my own eyes and ears, describe that which fills me with loathing and contempt. I just don't want to shell out eight bucks.
Loathing and contempt for what? Not for Moore personally. Not for his ideas, which are his own business in this great country of ours.
It is just that I am filled with base loathing for the way Moore exploits the material of facts and misshapes and distorts them in service of ideological pap. To call this "9/11" thing from Moore a documentary is to call Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" a testament to strength and joy.
Hey, I saw "Bowling for Columbine" with my kid before he joined the Marines and enjoyed it in parts, save for where he was battering Charlton Heston in his dotage. Big man, Moore.
Riefenstahl, of course, allowed herself to be used as a propaganda artist for the Nazis. For the rest of her debased career and life she laid claim that her intent only was to make a great looking movie. That it helped sell the Third Reich was so much collateral damage. A darling of Hitler, she said she never was a Nazi. People just didn't understand.
Moore isn't a Nazi, but he's a student of fascist cinema.
He doesn't even have the Leni dodge of saying the work performed was an exploitation of his intent. Moore is accomplished and knows what he's doing. His film is a weapon.
Moore, at least, is straightforward about his purpose. He said his work represents his personal effort to influence the election so that President George W. Bush will be rejected by the voters.
Win or lose on Bush,"Fahrenheit" won't move the needle a silly millimeter. It's an exercise in preaching to the choir, the 45% that fills the "Anybody But Bush" pew. The other 45% is "Bush by God," and 10% in the middle are the politically contested turf.
Bush aside, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is no documentary. It's an exercise in agitprop and manipulating facts until you get to "The Big Lie." The big lie, in this case, is to get people to believe Bush's Saudi connections - which are indeed questionable - makes the president somehow culpable for 9/11. "Fahrenheit" is a dishonest partisan rant disguised as an exposition of facts.
Do I know enough not having seen it yet? Moore is expansive in his own description of his work. My sorrow? He's going to make a lot of money. And so will his distributors.
You know, if the right wing talk radio crowd were to make their own "documentary," it would tilt as far away from fairness and balance as the Moore exercise. Well, maybe not but when you begin with the "liberals hate America" premise, the dialogue is pretty poisoned to begin with.
This mutuality of contempt describes the descent into the abyss represented by the polar extremes that have turned political discourse into an exercise in hatred. It does this country no good.
Either extreme is free to rant, but let's not dignify the rant with the documentary label.
It is like calling barbarians who behead their captives "militants." Militants are people who carry placards in marches. The major news services, and I include The Associated Press, demean language when they refer to the cretins who decapitate their terrified victims as "militants" instead of terrorists. They are the barbarians who herald a new dark age.
Terrorists are not militants. Moore is not a documentary filmmaker. He is a propagandist.
A couple of examples of the intellectually fraudulent nature of the Moore "documentary" is offered up by columnist Jonathan Foreman:
Moore obsesses on moves by Bush to get members of the bin Laden family out of the country in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
"Moore's favorite anti-administration interviewee is former National Security Council aide Richard Clarke. Yet the film never mentions that it was Clarke who gave the order to spirit the bin Laden family out of America immediately after 9/11. Moore makes much of this mystery; why didn't he ask Clarke about it?"
Foreman continues:
"In a 'congressmen with no kids at war' stunt, Moore claims no one in Congress has a son or daughter fighting in America's armed services." He moves about, exploiting a serviceman in uniform, urging lawmakers to volunteer their children for Iraq. This no doubt would surprise Sgt. Brooks Johnson of the 101st Airborne whose father is Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., or for that matter, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-San Diego, whose son is with the Marine Corps in Iraq. Foreman relates that Sen. Jose Biden and Attorney General John Ashcroft also have sons on active duty.
Of course, all of this prattle demeans the service of the sons and daughters in active service - and for that matter the grandfathers and grandmothers in the National Guard and Reserves - who dedicate their lives and risk same so that the Michael Moore characters of the world can sleep safely at night counting their millions within our relatively peaceable shores.
Moore the champion of the common person? Money taken in by this film really is, by definition, filthy lucre.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" is no documentary. It's an exercise in agitprop and manipulating facts until you get to "The Big Lie."
"I wouldn't cross the street to watch Michael Moore bleed to death."
LOL, AMEN to that. What a line, me neither.
The part of me that's a veteran and concerned enough about national security to pine vainly for domestic safety tells me I wouldn't cross the street to watch Michael Moore bleed to death. Oh, I would, and this might be the one way Moore gets eight bucks out of me.
Blah, I just heard the bafoon on ABC Radio. He said he never expected his movie to do as well as it did this weekend and he hopes it changes people's mind on who to vote for and how he really wants to get those who normally don't vote to vote. He also said while he doesn't want to tell anyone who to vote for, he wants to make sure Bush is not our president in January. This is my summary not his word.
I think most of the people who go see this are those who are on his side anyways. Does he really think he is so powerful he can use his garbage lies to change how people vote!!!!! I am so mad and I made a promise to myself to ignore anything on him going forward but he is EVERYWHERE!!!! I can guarantee Drudge will be talking about this tonight to. I wish he would just explode and go away
bttt
It's more like "Triumph of The shrill", a film by Lumpy Riefenstahl.
I wouldn't want to encounter him wearing a thong on Santa Monica beach!
The best way to beat this fat piece of s--- is to simply ignore him. Don't boycott theaters, don't write letters, don't do anything. Only brings more hype. Fatso is on the radio saying how he would never have gotten this type of sales without the conservative attacks bringing more attention to the movie.
It is refreshing though to see the truth told somewhere at least once for each person to see.
Mikey, just in case you ever again need to drive a speaker truck around DC spewing your nonsense...for reasons that should be obvious, the next one probably should not an ice-cream truck.
I agree with you too. He was the story of the week. Next week the libs will have more garbage to report on.
It does frustrate the heck out of me though.
lol. Not even the new 'anti-butt" laws would help ya there, either...
LOL!
The main difference between Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" and Moore's "Farenheit 9-11" is that Riefenstahl was a brilliant cinamatographer while Moore's work is amateurish. However, both works are propaganda pieces of the first order.
P>There may be a lot of truth to that.
So does this mean that if "Fatandweight 911lbs" is successful, Moore-on will gain another 1000 pounds? It seems with each movie he releases he gets fatter and fatter. I guess Micheal found out he can eat more twinkies from the benefits of capitalism. Just wondering when he is going to pay 70% of that money to taxes like he said he wants to do on Bill O`Reilly. So if he takes in 20 million, let`s see him write a check to the US treasury for 14 million, otherwise he may fail to keep up his image of hypocrisy.
ping
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