Fahrenheit 9/11

[crawjo]

I'm not going to go see Michael Moore's probably-noxious new film, but I loved Christopher Hitchens' review of it in Slate. I also love that Michael Moore is threatening to sue any journalist who dares to "defame" his masterpiece. Oh, that man of the people!

Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT

Moore: Trying to have it three ways

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 Munich 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 their 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.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.

[Stuckinagroove]

I'm not a fan of Moore, but I can't wait to see this film- if only out of curiousity.

[Sergio Zamora]

I wasn't particularly interested in seeing it, but now I am because that sleazy, traitorous, pathetic has-been disliked it so much.

[Sergio Zamora]

Originally Posted by crawjo

"Traitorous"? How Ann Coulter of you.

Not exactly the word I wanted to use, but that's what came out.

[crawjo]

Of course, Hitchens is a snob and a hypocrite. But regardless of what you think about him, the above review is also very logical. I haven't seen the movie, but his characterization of Moore's style of argumentation rings true and sounds very much like what he did in Bowling for Columbine. If I go see this movie, I am afraid that I will vote for Bush simply to spite Moore. So here I will just give Moore free advertising by starting a thread about it, and you all can go and watch it for me. It will be good for my health. To borrow from Dennis Gonzalez, if I see Fahrenheit 9/11, I might have a stroke.

[john williams]

Needlessly verbose.

I don't particularly like Moore's cheap journalistic approach, however, Hitchens seems equally amateurish.

He makes sweeping statements about 'pacifists' (read anti Iraq war II).

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 …

Yes of course. I'm far more likely to be critical of the 'side' I'm a part of because having an understanding of my own culture, I'm in a better position to criticise. Its sort of useless and silly to carry on about the evils of terrorism. That's what many of the prowar folk fail to understand. The anti war folk I know hate the actions of the terrorists as much as anyone else, but because they despise the actions of their own culture and see themselves as unwilling participants it grates a lot more. The anti war folk only see escalation/worsening, and the war on terror is viewed as a ludicrous concept, at least the ones I know. Nothing the US coalition has done has lessened the threat of terror, its only going to get worse.

Too many lies now, no-one on 'our side' has any credibility.

None of this of course makes MM's movie any good either. I will view it with a critical eye.

[Ron Thorne]

I doubt that I'll be a fan of either. However, it's very interesting to me that it's the filmmaker, not the critic who is being largely ridiculed here.

"If I go see this movie, I am afraid that I will vote for Bush simply to spite Moore." - crawjo

Gee, I hope that's a loopy joke, for many reasons.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Ron Thorne

I doubt that I'll be a fan of either. However, it's very interesting to me that it's the filmmaker, not the critic who is being largely ridiculed here.

"If I go see this movie, I am afraid that I will vote for Bush simply to spite Moore." - crawjo

Gee, I hope that's a loopy joke, for many reasons.

There is no doubt that Hitchens is ridiculing Moore, whom he despises, but the article also contains a lot of very logical attacks on Moore's argument. So far, no one here has questioned his logic.

[Al in NYC]

Ummm... I think I'll wait until I see the movie to pass judgement on it.

[stonemonkts]

Originally Posted by crawjo

Moore is an obnoxious, arrogant, hypocritical man.

I'll watch it if only to see the outtakes of Bush on/off camera prove that HE is as you describe Moore )obnoxious, arrogant, etc..).

I think Moore is a jerkoff but there are always at least a few moments in his "documentaries" which make them worthwhile viewing.

[Ellery Eskelin]

Originally Posted by crawjo

There is no doubt that Hitchens is ridiculing Moore, whom he despises, but the article also contains a lot of very logical attacks on Moore's argument. So far, no one here has questioned his logic.

I don't have the time or energy to dissect the review but it's certainly not what I would call dispassionate. I don't know quite enough about Christopher Hitchens to hazard any guesses but I do get the feeling that there may be more at work here than simply Hitchen's dislike of this film. Some of the reasoning seems based on assumptions that I have the feeling that Michael Moore would take exception to.

As for myself I find passages such as this one to be overblown:

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 allows only two responses to that section of the film, both suited for Hitchen's criticisms but neither strike me as a particularly nuanced response. I haven't yet seen the film but I have the feeling I'll be able to reach my own conclusions and that there's the possibility that they may not match Hitchen's or Moore's. So I'm not as impressed with this review as you are.

But having not seen the film I can't say much at this point. I'd be interested to see a response by Moore. I know he's addressed past criticisms on a case by case basis maintaining that the facts in his films are 100% true (his claim, not mine). Not that this has settled things but he's the guy to address the criticisms since it's his film to defend. Maybe that's why he's so prickly about his threat to sue. I'm guessing he wants people to know he's serious in his factual info and claims against the Bush administration since he knows he's going to get a lot of facile criticisms and accusations both about the film and him. He's certainly put himself on the line.

Beyond the issue of facts I think we all know that Moore's films are less documentaries that attempt to be a nuanced multi-perspective portrayal of an issue and more a matter of raising and stressing issues that he feels need airing. For me it's kind of like reading The Nation. There's stuff in there that I balk at (it's all editorial after all) but I know there will be issues raised that are not easily brought out into the open in more mainstream media. So I consider the source and try my best to make my own judgment.

I will see this film.

[jesus marion joseph]

I suspect I will see the film also, if only to try to reconcile the seemingly incongruous views regarding it. Having seen Bowling for Columbine, I can understand many of the points Hitchens makes about Moore's style as a documentarian. I generally don't see movies at the theaters (too expensive and inconvenient for me), anymore so I'll probably wait until it hits Netflix to view it.

[clinthopson]

The LA Times has a similar column today:

THE BIG PICTURE
Truth teller or story stretcher?
Controversial director Michael Moore defends "Fahrenheit 9/11."

By Patrick Goldstein, Times Staff Writer


After spending two hours at lunch with Michael Moore the other day, the biggest shock for me was learning that when it comes to "Republican hacks" — his phrase, not mine — the man he seems to loathe the most isn't George Bush but Jay Leno. "He's banned me from his show for 10 years," contends Moore, who does a wickedly funny Leno impression. "Then, after my Oscar speech, I thought he went out of his way to incite violence against me by showing 'Michael Moore's house' being blown up. It was a frightening time for me — my house in Michigan was vandalized. And he'd have James Woods and other guests on and incite them to criticize me."

Tugging on his signature baseball cap, this one with a "Made in Canada" logo, Moore says Leno changed his tune, inviting him to appear after the filmmaker's incendiary "Fahrenheit 9/11" documentary won the coveted Palme d'Or at the Cannes film festival. "Of course I said no." According to Moore, Leno isn't the only lofty TV icon to freeze him out. He says the last time he was on "The O'Reilly Factor" he cut Bill O'Reilly to ribbons and "Bill doesn't like that, so I got banned from the show." Of course, says Moore, "now that it will help his ratings, he wants me on."







The story isn't quite so simple, as I learned when I got O'Reilly on the phone. "Moore was never banned, and he's welcome to come on anytime," he said. "I guess that's part of his charm. He's going to say bad things about me to get publicity. I have to admit — left-wing bomb throwers sure know how to do good marketing."

O'Reilly went to a screening of the film, though because of its late start, he had to leave early to honor a prior commitment. (His mini-review: "It's what I expected — Bush and his crew are a satanic cult, and we live in a police state.") On his way out, he bumped into Moore and asked if he would be coming on the show. He says Moore responded, "Yes, I am." So far Moore's handlers are hedging, saying they haven't committed.

The Leno camp also offered an account at odds with Moore's. They said that far from being banned, Moore was invited to appear after Cannes and was asked to be on the show twice in recent years, most recently after "Bowling for Columbine" won the Oscar for best documentary and Moore gave an inflammatory acceptance speech. After hearing of Moore's charge about showing his house being blown up, Leno went back and watched the tape, which he said shows not a house but a shack in the desert being hit by a missile. Through his publicist, Leno said, "If the jokes bothered him, I wish Michael would have called. Or he could have come on the show. I was just telling jokes about what made headlines, and that included him."

Leno's producer, Debbie Vickers, added: "Michael may feel he has a feud with us, but I know of no feud we have with him."

For the record, I have no feud with Moore nor any beef with his politics. When it comes to having the opinion that the Bush camp misled the country about its invasion of Iraq and the way the war on terror has been used for naked political purposes, we're in complete sync. What worries me is that if the charges Moore makes about his showbiz adversaries are unverifiable, what are we supposed to think about the important contentions, such as the Bush administration's cozy ties with the Saudi government?

I'm not the only one to wonder if Moore is a truth teller or a serial exaggerator. The Internet is jammed with sites devoted to debunking his films and books. Michael Wilson has just finished a documentary, "Michael Moore Hates America," that interviews various detractors, one of whom tartly notes, "He's positively brilliant at creating the false impression without uttering a false word." ReganBooks has just released "Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man," which rakes the filmmaker over the coals a thousand ways. The book argues that Moore fits the definition of a narcissistic personality disorder, which authors David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke describe as a pathological combination of overwhelming egotism and self-loathing.

After that, being lampooned by Jay Leno doesn't seem so bad after all, does it?

Some attackers are simply trying to smear Moore. Among them is Move America Forward, which has organized a campaign to stop theater owners from booking the film — which opens in New York on Wednesday and in Los Angeles and the rest of the country Friday — making the preposterous charge that it's an Al Qaeda recruiting tool. But other critics can't be tarred as knee-jerk ideologues. "You don't have to be a right-winger to be offended by misinformation," says Paul Slansky, a New Yorker humor writer and author of "The George W. Bush Quiz Book," a collection of damning facts and observations about Bush. "He plays fast and loose with the facts, the perfect example being in 'Columbine' where he implies you can go into a bank and come out with a gun, as if it all happened then and there. The facts are always bent to support his agenda. Once you're caught in a lie, it calls all the other stuff into question."

Moore says he invited fact checkers from the New Yorker to "tear this film apart and find something wrong." Sound familiar? When it comes to bending facts to fit an agenda, Slansky could just as well be talking about the president. In fact, Moore and Bush friends and foes see them in a strangely similar light; their admirers hailing their straight-shooting integrity, their enemies decrying their deception and opportunism.

Moore also hired an independent fact-checking firm that he says was "totally impressed — they said, 'Hey, the Saudis even gave more money to the Bush circle than you say they do.' " But can "Fahrenheit 9/11" stand up to rigorous scrutiny? Being skeptical, I gave Moore the opportunity to respond to some questions about issues he raises in the film, starting with a segment of the movie in which Moore makes a series of connections between the Bush family circle and the Saudi elite.

Question: You make a big deal out of the fact that Saudi nationals and the Bin Laden family were given special privileges to fly and leave the country in the days after 9/11. Many people, including the 9/11 Commission, have disputed that, as well as whether the Bin Laden relatives had any connection to Osama. What's your case?

Moore: "The issue is over the interpretation of the facts. Other people started to fly on Sept. 13, but not on private jets. Everywhere you look there was favoritism to the Saudis. As for the Bin Ladens, can you imagine the FBI saying to Lee Harvey Oswald's wife or mother, 'Is there anything we can do for you?'

You don't know that there's no evidence of links between Osama and his brothers. It's basic police work. You say, 'Will you stay in touch with us when you go back to Saudi Arabia?' They just asked for their passports, did a quick check and that was it? After 3,000 people died, couldn't they do a little arm twisting? At least a little pinkie twisting?"

Q: You mock the "coalition of the willing" by only showing the tiny countries that have voiced support. But you leave out England, Spain, Italy and Poland. Why?

Moore: "This film exists as a counterbalance to what you see on cable news about the coalition. I'm trying to counter the Orwellian nature of the Big Lie, as if when you hear that term, the 'coalition,' that the whole world is behind us."

Q: You make it seem as if the Democratic opposition were totally silent about the war. Why don't you have one clip of Howard Dean, whose antiwar campaign was on the front pages for months?

Moore: "I'm showing the Democratic leadership in Congress being submissive. I don't just imply — I say the Democratic leadership was a bunch of wimps. If Howard Dean was making this movie, he'd show the same scene of those guys being silent."

Q: When you show footage of Bush in the National Guard, you play an excerpt from Eric Clapton's "Cocaine." Isn't that a cheap shot?

Moore: "I was in the editing room and there were too many documents and words in that scene, and I wanted some music to spice it up. It's an amazing coincidence that I would land on that song, isn't it?"

Q: You make the point that the Bush administration has a special relationship with the Saudis. How is that any different from the special relationship many Washington leaders have with the state of Israel?

Moore: One big difference is that Israel is a democracy and Saudi Arabia is a brutal dictatorship. They celebrated New Year's Day a few years ago by chopping people's heads off. Maybe I missed that when it happened in Israel. Anyway, the support Bush and the Republicans feign for Israel is because Israel is near our oil. If the oil wasn't there, I bet those same Republicans wouldn't [care] about Israel."

It was a vintage Moore performance, like his films, full of cheeky humor, arresting detail and passionate rhetoric. For me, the problem with Moore is that if you judge him as a documentary filmmaker, his work is undermined by too many shaded facts and slippery conclusions. But if you judge him as a political satirist, he's a supremely gifted bomb thrower. After all, there is nothing in "9/11" that's any more outrageous than what you can hear any day on Rush Limbaugh's or Sean Hannity's radio shows.

We seem to love rabble-rousers of all political stripes. But if Moore is going to bash Bush as a liar and ridicule the news media as lap dogs, his case needs to be airtight. When you're a fearless muckraker, you look awfully silly stomping around with big gobs of mud on your own shoes.

At least the writer had the initiative to talk to Moore.
With righties like Limbauch and O'Reilly engineering their opinions, Moore just fights back with the same ammo.

[Ellery Eskelin]

I find articles like this to be unsatisfying...there's the assertion by Moore that he was banned from certain shows...there's the response from those shows that he wasn't banned...it's just one claim against another. The writer should go back to Moore and say "hey, the shows claim otherwise, what's the deal?"

And I don't know what to make when sources in the article use examples like the scene in Columbine where Moore gets a rifle at the bank to claim that Moore was caught in a lie. The source (Paul Slansky) says it didn't happen that way in spite of the fact that on Moore's web site he claims it's 100% true he's that he's got plenty of evidence that this is exactly what the bank offered and that it's exactly what happened and that he has film to back it up.

Shouldn't the media be digging a little deeper? Aren't we just being manipulated by this kind of stuff?

[Noj]

Originally Posted by crawjo

I'm not going to go see Michael Moore's probably-noxious new film, but I loved Christopher Hitchens' review of it in Slate.

Some make up their minds before seeing any evidence.

Why dig deeper when one can wholly dismiss the overall issues for the nitpickiest of minute details?

[hornplayer]

Originally Posted by crawjo

Moore is an obnoxious, arrogant, hypocritical man. These faults could be forgiven if his movies made the least bit of sense, which they don't, which is all the reason to dislike him even more, in that his subpar efforts get rewarded with international acclaim.

Gee, Crawjo, why don't you tell us what you really think?

[Gentle Giant]

Personally, I prefer my directors to stay behind the camera rather than in front of it.

That said, be advised that Moore is a filmmaker, not a journalist (hence words such as "journalistic" to describe his approach). If you want journalism, read the NYT or watch Frontline. If you want what is essentially a political stand-up routine, watch a Moore film.

That's not a criticism, incidentally. A good political comic's routines begin with a factual basis, then uncover an ironic twist, and leave you thinking about the issue. The same goes for Moore's films. They could be a lot tighter and more intellectual, but they aren't built on imagined scenarios. If Bush comes across as an idiotic fuckwad in the film, it's because he is.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Noj

Some make up their minds before seeing any evidence.

Why dig deeper when one can wholly dismiss the overall issues for the nitpickiest of minute details?

I don't think that what's been posted here about Moore constitutes "nitpicky, minute details". By your measure, the fact that there have been no WMD found in Iraq is a "nitpicky detail". The fact that we may have violated international treaties dealing with the treatment of prisoners is a "nitpicky detail" too, don't you think? I mean, if the guy is trying to influence a national election by way of a movie that's being billed as a documentary, don't you think he's open to inspection and, possibly, criticism?

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Ellery Eskelin

I find articles like this to be unsatisfying...there's the assertion by Moore that he was banned from certain shows...there's the response from those shows that he wasn't banned...it's just one claim against another. The writer should go back to Moore and say "hey, the shows claim otherwise, what's the deal?"

And I don't know what to make when sources in the article use examples like the scene in Columbine where Moore gets a rifle at the bank to claim that Moore was caught in a lie. The source (Paul Slansky) says it didn't happen that way in spite of the fact that on Moore's web site he claims it's 100% true he's that he's got plenty of evidence that this is exactly what the bank offered and that it's exactly what happened and that he has film to back it up.

Shouldn't the media be digging a little deeper? Aren't we just being manipulated by this kind of stuff?

It has been established that the scene where he gets the gun at the bank was a set up. The bank said so. They said that Moore came to them and they agreed to do a scene in which he walks out of the bank with a gun. In real life, you could get a gun, but the way it worked was that you opened an account and you got a free certificate for a gun at a gun store. You then had to go to the store and pass the background checks and so forth and then you got the gun from them.

Scenes such as this are rather silly, compared with the larger innaccuracies in the film. You can start with the title. The killers didn't go bowling on the day of the shootings. You can also add the scene at the Lockheed Martin plant, where Moore implies that they manufacture missiles. That plant makes rockets for sending satellites into space.

He also doctored the Willie Horton ad in the movie. And his actual arguments are entirely inconsistent with one another. But aside from that, it's a great work of art.

[Noj]

Originally Posted by crawjo

What are the "overall issues"? That the Bush family is connected to the Saudis? That Bush is an idiot? That the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were all about oil? I've heard it all before.

And I think Hitchens revealing what Moore's arguments were in 2002 are telling. Back then, it seems, he disagreed with waging any war against bin Laden. Now it seems that, conveniently enough, his argument shifts so that we aren't paying enough attention to bin Laden.

I find Moore to be a despicable, hypocritical man. And I don't need to watch another one of his films to confirm that he is an idiot, just like I don't need to read Hitler's Mein Kampf to know that he is an anti-Semite.

You've heard it all and seen it all before. Is it true or false? What bearing does it have? Any? Just facts that can be ignored--we're on the right path, no doubt about it...?

Originally Posted by JMJ

I don't think that what's been posted here about Moore constitutes "nitpicky, minute details". By your measure, the fact that there have been no WMD found in Iraq is a "nitpicky detail". The fact that we may have violated international treaties dealing with the treatment of prisoners is a "nitpicky detail" too, don't you think? I mean, if the guy is trying to influence a national election by way of a movie that's being billed as a documentary, don't you think he's open to inspection and, possibly, criticism?

I don't follow. Yes, I do think he should be subject to criticism.

It's driving you up a wall, isn't it, crawjo? This is already a very successful film--expect even more signs of success. Of course the gun scenario was set up, but the fact is that a bank was giving away guns in order to attract business--that's really all we need to know. Point made by Mr. Moore.

It's too bad that you will only be able to discuss what is said and written about the film. Many of us will thus be in a far better position to give an evaluation, or to either agree or disagree with your preconceived notions.

[jesus marion joseph]

Originally Posted by Noj

You've heard it all and seen it all before. Is it true or false? What bearing does it have? Any? Just facts that can be ignored--we're on the right path, no doubt about it...?



I don't follow. Yes, I do think he should be subject to criticism.

I guess my point was that the inaccuracies rise to something more than "nitpicky details", especially in the context in which the film has been made, and the "controversy" surrounding it.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Chris A

It's driving you up a wall, isn't it, crawjo? This is already a very successful film--expect even more signs of success. Of course the gun scenario was set up, but the fact is that a bank was giving away guns in order to attract business--that's really all we need to know. Point made by Mr. Moore.

It's too bad that you will only be able to discuss what is said and written about the film. Many of us will thus be in a far better position to give an evaluation, or to either agree or disagree with your preconceived notions.

Yes, I suffered the same thing during the craze over the Titanic movie. I leave it to others to watch bad films for me. Last year I finally forced myself to watch "The Birth of a Nation" and that's about all the vile propaganda I can handle for the foreseeable future.

[Ellery Eskelin]

Originally Posted by crawjo

It has been established that the scene where he gets the gun at the bank was a set up. The bank said so.

Where is that documented? I'm not contradicting you, I just wanna find out.

Originally Posted by crawjo

The killers didn't go bowling on the day of the shootings. You can also add the scene at the Lockheed Martin plant, where Moore implies that they manufacture missiles. That plant makes rockets for sending satellites into space.

He also doctored the Willie Horton ad in the movie. And his actual arguments are entirely inconsistent with one another. But aside from that, it's a great work of art.

How do you know any of this is true? I've see the assertions but haven't seen any real followup. Moore seems willing to stand by his assertions. In fact, he addresses each of your assetions on his web site on a page devoted to just such critisism:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

Now I don't know what to believe at this point. But that was my point. The press isn't really doing a stellar job of clearing any of this stuff up. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Hitchen's piece you posted doesn't really help me come to any conclusions. What's needed is some real journalistic followup.

From what I have heard about Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and seen (a few clips), and based on other works by him, which I have seen, I think your comparing Fahrenheit 9/11 with Birth of a Nation is both unfair and silly.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Chris A

From what I have heard about Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and seen (a few clips), and based on other works by him, which I have seen, I think your comparing Fahrenheit 9/11 with Birth of a Nation is both unfair and silly.

Yes, I thought you would appreciate that type of comparison.

[Dr Dave]

If Christopher Hitchens is so afraid of this film that he had to write all these mighty paragraphs condemning it, then I am absolutely going to have to see it.

PS: Moore is a muckraking rabble-rouser, and I doubt whether he'll let the facts get in the way of driving home a point. He claimed (in a recent story in the NY Times) that he'd scrupulously fact-checked everything in the film. That hardly means he's not made an overtly partisan movie. I think you guys are nuts to quibble over that bit; he's never had any trouble stretching the truth before, and I doubt he had any trouble in this instance, either.

What will be more interesting to see is whether audiences accept his general premise, not the details of it. I mean, this approach worked well for the Bush Administration itself for quite a while ("Trust Us To Do What's Right" was their main slogan, no?). Turnabout is fair play, fellas and gals

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Ellery Eskelin

Where is that documented? I'm not contradicting you, I just wanna find out.



How do you know any of this is true? I've see the assertions but haven't seen any real followup. Moore seems willing to stand by his assertions. In fact, he addresses each of your assetions on his web site on a page devoted to just such critisism:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

Now I don't know what to believe at this point. But that was my point. The press isn't really doing a stellar job of clearing any of this stuff up. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the Hitchen's piece you posted doesn't really help me come to any conclusions. What's needed is some real journalistic followup.

Well, there's no need to fact-check the internal inconsistencies in the film...but as for the bank scene, the webside bowlingfortruth.com interviewed the bank employee shown in the movie:

Indeed, there's more, a lot more, to this story. In an interview, Jan Jacobson, the woman at this bank shown in the movie, says they were filmed for about an hour-and-a-half during which she explained everything to Moore in detail. But, the way things were presented in the film, Jacobson says, it looks like "a wham-bam thing." She says she resents the way she was portrayed as some kind of "backwoods idiot" mindlessly handing out guns. She says Moore deceived her into being interviewed by saying of their long-gun-give-away program: "This is so great. I'm a hunter, a sportsman, grew up in Michigan, am an NRA member." She says: "He went on and on and on saying this was the most unique program he'd ever heard of." This is the first example of how Moore completely deceives and manipulates his subjects to be made to look stupid in his film. Unfortunately, it is not the last and more unfortunately, an ignorant audience plays patsy to Moore's dishonest depiction.

Jacobson says the movie is misleading because it leaves the impression that a person can come in, sign up and walk out with a gun. But, this is not done because no guns are kept at her bank, although one would think so. She says that ordinarily a person entitled to one of the long-guns must go to a gun-dealer where the gun is shipped.

In fact, despite what BFC wants us to believe, Jacobson says there are no long-guns at her bank. The 500 guns mentioned in the movie are in a vault four hours away. But wait a second... Didn't I see some long guns sitting right there on the rack above her shoulder? Yes - you're not going crazy - those guns you saw (as shown in the picture up the page) are models.

She says that Moore's signing papers in the film was just for show. His immediately walking out of the bank with a long-gun was allowed because "this whole thing was set up two months prior to the filming of the movie" when he had already complied with all the rules, including a background check.


That's one of the biggest problems I have with Moore's methods. He tends to put ordinary people on screen and manipulate images so that they look like idiots.

[Jon Abbey]

Originally Posted by Ellery Eskelin

What's needed is some real journalistic followup.

unfortunately, we've got just about as many "real journalists" in this country as we do "real politicians".

[Dr Dave]

Well of course Moore is going to be manipulative. He's not there to be buddies; he's there to make a point that easily translates to film.