The Review
propaganda: (n) the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person; ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one’s cause or to damage an opposing cause
When I saw Bowling for Columbine I was at a small art house theater in Mill Valley, just north of San Francisco in Marin County. Mill Valley is an extremely wealthy area, so I sat there in the dark surrounded by white upper-class hippie millionaires. Tonight I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 in Los Angeles, with a much more ethnically and societally diverse group. I got there about half an hour before the film began, and spent my time in line eavesdropping on other people’s conversations.
There were two cute girls in line in front of me, both white, a blonde and a brunette, who looked to be in their mid 20s. They were chattering on about girl stuff when Blondie spotted a friend and her boyfriend, who had just come out of the previous screening. After exchanging greetings and hugs, Blondie introduced her friend to Brunette, who in turn introduced her boyfriend. Blondie asked her friend what film they just came out of. “Did you see Fahrenheit?” she asked. Yes, replied the friend. “What did you think?” inquired Blondie. “Be sure and bring some Kleenex,” said the friend. Blondie then turned to the Boyfriend and asked him what he thought. “I didn’t really like it,” he mumbled.
“He was a Marine,” the friend offered in way of explanation.
After a while we were ushered into the theater. Seated to my left were two young men who couldn’t have been more diametrically opposed to the two girls I stood behind in line. The boys smelled faintly of marijuana, most likely having indulged in the parking lot before coming into the theater. Both were Hispanic, and dressed in that sort of L.A. “gangsta chic” style that guarantees that they’ll never find employment anywhere other than a car wash or the United States Postal Service.
“Yo man, that shit is so fucked up that I’m not getting to graduate and shit,” said one to the other. “All these motherfuckers that like kissed the teachers’ ass and shit are like graduating, but I’m totally fucked, you know?” Apparently the boys had just completed their senior year of high school, and while one was about to embark on a fun-filled career in the grocery-sacking industry, the other was being forced to repeat the 12th grade.
Remember this conversation; its significance will be revealed later.
So, what did I think of the film? Moore is a master filmmaker. He presents his arguments in a much more clear manner than he did in BFC, for example. Which is not to say that his arguments hold up to any kind of scrutiny, mind you, only that he’s gotten better at making them. Factual cohesion is not Moore’s trademark, polemical invective is, and this film delivers.
One thing that immediately annoyed me about the film was Moore’s voice-over work. In his previous films his narration was done in a normal speaking voice, but in this one he adopts a peculiar whispered cadence, like one you might use when reading a bedtime story to a retarded child.
The film opens with a recap of the Florida election debacle, regurgitating the entire litany of disproved left-wing conspiracy theories. The opening credits show Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the gang being primped and made up before going on television. What legitimate significance this holds completely eludes me, as having makeup applied is a standard part of every TV appearance. The shot of Wolfowitz sticking his comb in his mouth is simply disgusting.
We are next treated to the much-ballyhooed “black frame” sequence. Basically the screen goes black and we are treated solely to the audio of the planes hitting the two towers. (The theater I was in had an incredible sound system, the whole building seemed to shake.) This would have been an incredibly haunting experience had Moore not completely ripped the idea off from Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu’s contribution to the film 11’09’’01 - September 11. Viewers of Moore’s previous film, Bowling for Columbine, might remember the montage of war images shown over Louis Armstrong’s “What A Wonderful World,” a scene Moore completely ripped off from the film Good Morning Vietnam. I would have thought that the Cannes judges might have taken this kind of blatant visual plagiarism into account when lavishing Moore with the Palme D’Or, but perhaps not. If we hold Picasso’s maxim true that “Good artists copy, great artists steal,” then Moore has definitely earned his place in the pantheon of great artists.
Moore next tackles the Bush/AWOL story, another left-wing shibboleth that has been debunked more times than I can even begin to remember. He somehow draws some sinister conclusion from the fact that when Bush released his service records there was a name blacked out. Moore, having gotten a copy of Bush’s records from a different source, had access to the name, a James Bath. It seems that Bath and Bush remained friends over the years, and went into business together, with Bath working as a financial advisor to the bin Laden family as well as investing in some of Bush’s companies. Oooh, can’t you just smell the conspiracy! Two friends from the Texas Air National Guard both go into the same type of business, and end up doing business together! Don’t you see the connection, man?
And then, Mikey points out how Saudis were investing money in Harken Energy when Bush was on the board of directors. Why? Because his father was president at the time! STOP THE PRESSES! You mean that being the family member of someone in a position of political power means that others want to do business with you? Say it ain’t so!
Remember back to the Clinton pardon scandal, if you will. Hugh Rodham, Hillary’s Brother, and Roger Clinton, Bill’s brother, were each paid a dump truck full of cash by petitioners for pardons. It’s all about access, and it’s got nothing to do with Bush. It’s the way our system works. If you want to find fault with the system, fine, but if you think there’s some nefarious aspect to Bush specifically, I assure you that President Kerry will come into office with a long list of blue-blood patrician asses that need to be kissed.
The best part of the film was where Moore started showing all the ridiculous terrorism-related products that became available after 9/11. The two he focuses on are a “panic room,” (sort of a bomb shelter for the new millennium, where you can sit safely “sipping Chardonnay” while the world is destroyed around you,) and the executive parachute, for the busy businessman to use to parachute to safety during the 30 seconds he has between when he notices there is a plane heading for his office building and the time of impact. I would be very curious to see just how well the invisible hand of the free market has rewarded these entrepreneurs. Are they still in business? How are orders for these types of terrorism-related products three years after 9/11? After an initial spike during the nervous months after the attacks, are sales still up? Not surprisingly, these are not points Moore chooses to explore. These sequences are, however, classic Moore, and quite funny.
Other reviewers have made much of the fact that Moore goes to great pains to beatify former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke when he criticizes Bush’s response to 9/11, yet neglects to mention that Clarke has taken responsibility for authorizing the release of the Saudis in the days following 9/11. Unlike in BFC, where Moore used incredibly deceptive editing tricks and flat-out lies, F911 did not contain any such obvious distortions. Don’t get me wrong, Moore is still up to his old tricks, he’s just become a much better magician. The bulk of Moore’s lies in this film are sins of omission, and careful word tricks.
As I sat there in the dark I kept wanting to scream out rebuttal facts and arguments to the screen, and this is a point that I want to drive home. The vast majority of people out there, be they liberal or conservative or otherwise, do not get as involved in political discourse as most people in the blogosphere. The analogy I use is with sports or cars. We all have friends who know everything there is to know about sports. They can rattle off every insignificant fact or statistic at the drop of a hat, and are able to do so because they have an interest in the subject and spend a lot of time learning about it. There are people who are the same way about cars or computers. I, for example, know very little about sports. So if I was watching a documentary about sports, without having specific knowledge to the contrary I would tend to believe the facts presented therein. Most of the people watching Moore’s film tonight will undoubtedly take a similar tone towards this film. Since they are most likely not politics or news junkies they lack the information necessary to formulate any kind of a reasonable counter-argument, which is why Moore’s tricks and omissions are going to be effective.
For example, Moore states that since the end of the Gulf War Iraq never killed a single American. Well, that’s the impression he wanted to give his viewers. Take a look at this exchange on MSNBC bewtween Moore and Jake Tapper.
TAPPER: You declare in the film that Hussein’s regime had never killed an American…
MOORE: That isn’t what I said. Quote the movie directly.
TAPPER: What is the quote exactly?
MOORE: “Murdered.” The government of Iraq did not commit a premeditated murder on an American citizen. I’d like you to point out one.
TAPPER: If the government of Iraq permitted a terrorist named Abu Nidal who is certainly responsible for killing Americans to have Iraq as a safe haven; if Saddam Hussein funded suicide bombers in Israel who did kill Americans; if the Iraqi police — now this is not a murder but it’s a plan to murder — to assassinate President Bush which at the time merited airstrikes from President Clinton once that plot was discovered; does that not belie your claim that the Iraqi government never murdered an American or never had a hand in murdering an American?
MOORE: No, because nothing you just said is proof that the Iraqi government ever murdered an American citizen. And I am still waiting for you to present that proof.
Now, try as I might, I didn’t see a single person in the theater holding an open legal dictionary, looking up the technical distinction between “killed” and “murdered.” Moore doesn’t go into any detail to point out this distinction to his audience, though it is obviously a big enough issue that he had decided on this semantic explanation beforehand.
See what I mean? Nowhere in the movie does he mention Abu Nidal, or the suicide bombers, or any of the other well-documented terrorist activities of Hussein’s Iraq. The best argument he can make to downplay Saddam’s threats is this pathetic killed/murdered semantic mumbo jumbo.
Right before showing Bush addressing the nation to inform them that the Iraq offensive had begun he shows us these pastoral scenes of life in Baghdad. Not once does he show (or even mention) the crimes of Saddam Hussein. In Moore’s world Saddam was a harmless puppy, unless of course it’s in the context of Rumsfeld meeting him in 1983, in which case he was a dangerous madman.
One of the most often-discussed scenes in the film is the one of Bush in the Florida classroom the morning of 9/11. When he arrived there for the photo op he was told that a plane had crashed into the WTC. During the event Andy Card came in and told the president that America was under attack. Moore then points out that Bush “sat there reading My Pet Goat to the children for seven long minutes.” Perhaps one’s interpretation of the look on his face is going to depend on their opinion of Bush, but I didn’t get the same impression as so many others. He wasn’t reading the book, he wasn’t even paying attention to it or the children. He sat there, engrossed in thought, for seven minutes. Now, considering that he had just been told that America was under attack, I don’t think that spending seven minutes contemplating your next move is all that inappropriate a thing to do.
My main criticism of the film is, ironically, exactly the same criticism I had of BFC. Moore is quick to point out what Bush shouldn’t have done, but never says what he things Bush should have. For example, take the scene in the school. Should Bush have jumped up and run screaming from the room? Should he have run in the back room and ordered a nuclear strike against Afghanistan? If Moore is so horrified that Bush spent seven minutes thinking things over, why can’t he suggest what Bush should have done at that moment? Moore also never suggests what Bush’s response to the 9/11 attacks should have been, and this is the movie’s biggest weakness. If Afghanistan was invaded to get a pipeline built, and Iraq was for the oil and to enrich the defense industry, then what should the appropriate response have been? Moore doesn’t dare to suggest an alternate plan of action.
Remember the two burnouts that were sitting to my left? When the film was over and the credits rolling, the young man who had just failed the 12th grade turned to his friend and said, “Man, our president is a fucking idiot, yo!” It seems that the master had reached the pupils, even one who just failed his senior year of high school.
By providing such a slick piece of election-year propaganda Moore has created a very effective campaign tool for the Democrats. He knows that the average person viewing the film will lack the knowledge to formulate a counter-argument and thus accept his assertions as fact. And all he has to do is hope that they remain ignorant and deluded until November.
Will it work? I’ll go out on a limb and predict that this is not going to significantly hurt Bush in the long run. I think that there are going to be a number of people who will come out of the theater with an anti-Bush feeling, but that over the next few weeks this will dissipate as they talk to their friends and discuss the movie. Moore will have a short-term gain and Bush will lose a percentage point or two, but I think that Moore will ultimately fail in his quest to significantly damage Bush’s chances.
But we’ll have to wait until November to see for sure.
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