Ask the Kids
Will Mikey’s movie change any minds? The Boston Herald tries to find out.
Jacob Faber, 22, just graduated from MIT. He voted for Al Gore in 2000, and plans to vote for John Kerry [related, bio] in November.
``Now I feel like I have to go out and join this effort that’s trying to unseat this horrible person who stole the presidency from the person who actually won it. The movie will affect the election, I think, less because it’s going to convert people and more because it’s going to do to people what it did to me: Inspire people to do more.’’
Laura Openshaw, 20, just finished her junior year at Harvard. She’s a registered Republican who’s committed to the anti-abortion cause but liberal on such issues as gay rights.
``It was very good propaganda. I wasn’t persuaded. Going into a movie like this, you have to understand that you’re seeing one side of the story, and I think it’s kind of irresponsible for somebody to accept it without knowing all the information on the other side. War is a horrible thing, and I think Moore did a very good job of showing, through the images of Iraq, the people who were killed and injured, both Iraqis and U.S. soldiers. The connection he wanted to make is this particular war is awful and it shouldn’t have happened. That link didn’t happen.’’
Ruth Miller, 19, who will be a sophomore at MIT, hails from a small rural town in Georgia. She calls herself a Libertarian, and is registered as an Independent.
``It’s really refreshing to see someone that, while he’s extreme, he’s extreme on the things I believe in. The movie might have made me a little more favorable to Bush personally. It cast him as a lame-duck president, which is not malicious, he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone, he just didn’t know any better. The strongest emotion I got from the movie was fear. Coming from a small town, I have a lot of friends who joined the military, and I’m scared for them. The quote at the end about continuous war resonated because the movie drew lines between classes, and the group getting screwed all the time was my group. Itwas clear to me this was going to last a long time.’’
Elena Vizvary, 28, is a law student at Northeastern. She voted for Bob Dole and George W. Bush in past elections, and plans to reluctantly vote for Bush in this one.
``Michael Moore was complaining about how the public was manipulated by the media and by Bush’s White House, and I felt that the movie was manipulating in the same way. I came out of it realizing some new information, but I’m taking everything with a huge grain of salt. My question is: If he really wanted to have an effect on the election, why didn’t this movie come out in October? People forget.’’
Eric Osborne, 23, just graduated from Amherst College. A registered Independent, he tends to vote Democratic locally but Republican for national offices.
``Moore’s film makes me laugh and cry. It makes me wonder at the awful things in this world and want to see improvement. But, ultimately, it doesn’t seriously influence my views. My biggest problem (is) Moore’s guilty of the exact crime he accuses the Bush administration of: He blatantly stretches the truth, focuses on small examples to prove a point and never shows that there are two sides to the issues. He accuses Bush of frightening America when in fact Moore’s film is doing just that. John Kerry comes from the same corporate political elite as George Bush and doesn’t seem to offer much of an alternative.’’
Now, this is hardly a representative sample, so take it for what it’s worth. But it does show that just because someone is young does not necessarily mean that they’re going to fall for Moore’s spin.
RSS (Subscribe)