I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of time lately debating with folks about whether or not Moore is “right”. Some hard core Moore fan will bring up a topic that Moore apparently “opened their eyes” to, and then I spend a week or more researching the subject, just so I can report back with what I have learned about the subject. Invariably, each time I look into the nuts and bolts, without exception, I have found that the story reality tells, and the story Moore tells never, ever jibes.
But more often lately, I have been getting a new answer. “Yeah, okay, so he skewed some facts in the movie, but his overall message is still right.
This bugs me. This bugs me a lot.
I have dissected Moore’s film to death as have many others on this site and other places. Throughout everything I have read, I can only find two of points Moore made were completely accurate. The first, that if you’re going to be so gross as to slather saliva all over your comb and then run it through your hair, you’d ought to make sure the cameras are turned off. The second, John Ashcroft is a lousy singer.
But are either of those things bad enough to scream “regime change” from every campus across the fruited plain? Of course I’m being facetious, but really , what else is there?
Was it those 7 minutes when Bush was scared stiff in his chair, which turned out to be five minutes while Bush was waiting for the “all okay” from his staff to excuse himself? (After all, there was a probable assaniation attempt on his life just a few hours earlier.)
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the oil pipeline that Bush helped the Taliban build through Afghanistan, which turned out to be a natural gas pipeline and was scrapped in the planning phase during the last administration?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the haunting scene of the Army reservist Peter Damon, who has lost both his arms and was being “left behind” by the Army, who turned out to be mad as hell for being included in Moore’s movie without his permission ,and in fact supports the President and the war, and loathes Moore. Not to mention Lt. Col. Chester Buckenmaier, the anesthesiologist who treated Damon at the 21st Combat Support Hospital in Iraq, who stated
“I was appalled. This was Joseph Goebbels-type propaganda,”
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was is the revelation that Bush somehow finagled a job for his cousin to sit at the decision desk at Fox news to call the election for him, but it turned out happened to be that his cousin was a 23 year veteran election analyst who, along with a group of others ( dems and repubs)called not the election, but their announcement of the results as reported by VNS four hours after the last poll closed?(they were also the last to retract Gore’s name as victor)
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it that damning headline that showed Bush has lost the recount, which turned out to be a total fabrication, based on an op-ed page in an obscure newspaper?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it those dastardly Marine recruiters who were caught slinking away from the more affluent mall to go recruit from the other less affluent mall in the suburbs, which as it turns out was exactly the opposite as we learned with a little research.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the scene with the Congressman who avoided Moore’s question “Why don’t you sign up you child to go fight in Iraq?”, who it turns out doesn’t even have a child?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the revelation that Bush personally authorized the Saudi Flights while airspace was closed when it turns out that Richard Clarke admitted doing it and they actually flew out after airspace opened, which the 9-11 commission confirmed this as well.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was is the revelation that the Saudi embassy gets special protection from Bush, when it turns out that any embassy gets Secret Service protection if they request it.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the imagery of a jocular prewar Iraq with kids flying kites and people sipping tea in the market just before American bombs rained down on them, when it turns out that Iraq was actually torturing those men and those kids were lucky to not be in “kids prison” with their friends as a punishment to their parents.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the crass statement Bush made about stopping terrorism during that montage of politicians talking about the Iraq war, and then he ended it with that “Now watch this drive” statement, when in reality that statement was made before the Iraq war , and he was talking about the problems in Israel, and the terrorist attck in Isreal that morning?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the shocking revelation that not one single Congressman or Senator read the Patriot act before signing it, despite the obvious fact that Congressmen and Senators wrote the Patriot act, which was largely made up of RICO laws, with “and terrorists too” tacked on the end of each of them?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was is the scene where Moore describes Bush’s Presidency as “having not been able to get anything done” before 9-11, yet in reality, he got the largest tax cut in history passed and passed the largest bi-partisan educational bill in history?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the scene where Jeffery Tobin states that “If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.”, despite that a recount was conducted,(no “if’s Jeffery) actually five times, and in all but one, including the one that Gore asked for, Bush won?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it that quote from the Washington Post that incorrectly stated that Bush spent 42% of his first 7 months on office on vacation, but that time included weekends, time he spent in church, and time at Camp David with foreign leaders.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it Moore’s statement that, after becoming despondent because of his failure to pass anything, ( see above) Bush spent the “rest of the month of August at his ranch in Crawford”, despite the fact that he traveled to five different states in just one week in late August?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it that Moore tried to prove that the administration was trying to tie Iraq to 9/11 with this quote from Condaleeza Rice :
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11.”
When in fact, the entire quote was :
“Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It’s not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York.”
?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the revelation that the Right Wing Carlyle Evil Empire hired Bush’s father as a consultant, while omitting the other Evil Right Wing investors, such as billionaire George Soros, Alice Albright, daughter of Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s former Secretary of State; Arthur Lewitt, Clinton’s former SEC head?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it that Amnesty International designated “human rights violator Saudi Arabia” ( a distinction they share with Iraq) invested 1.4 million in the BDM which was owned by Carlyle Group, where the President’s father was a consultant, despite the fact that former president Bush didn’t join the Carlyle advisory board until April, 1998—five months after Carlyle had already sold BDM to another defense firm?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it that crass statement from Bush that Moore showed us: “Some people call you the elite, I call you my base” as he stood there among a bunch of rich folks, despite that the uncropped shot of that speech showed that Bush was sitting next to Al Gore at that fundraiser, not for a campaign, but for a children’s hospital where they raised 10 million for the charity?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it Moore’s revelation that Bush was closing down Veteran’s hospitals, despite the fact that the hospitals being closed down were in areas of shrinking populations and being replaced with new Veteran’s hospitals. He also increased funding for all VA hospitals.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it Moore’s revelation that a majority of the folks purged from Florida’s voter rolls before the election in 2000 were Black, despite the discovery that in fact less than half of the folks purged were Black?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the sad footage of the Military funeral at Arlington national cemetery that Moore didn’t have permission from the family to use? The family refers to Moore as a maggot that eats off the dead.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the footage of the goofball with the parachute escape system who didn’t give Moore permission to use his image or his name? I read he just filed a lawsiut.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it Moore’s statement that
“No President had ever witnessed such a thing on his inauguration day...”
in reference to the protests at Bush’s inauguration, despite the fact that Abraham Lincoln actually had to sneak through Baltimore after his inauguration and the city wouldn’t even provide police protection?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the astonishing before and after transformation the Moore showed us of a happy, Patriotic Military Mom before and a emotional shell of a woman after her son was killed in Iraq, despite that the happy scenes were filmed after her son was killed also?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it the creepy blackout scene with just the sounds of the planes crashing on 9/11 that Moore blatantly stole form another documentary in his typical unimaginative fashion?
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it those references from Craig Unger’s Book , House of Bush , House of Saud, which was refused publishing in Britain because of their libel laws, which means you can’t publish outright lies over there without being sued? Moore uses this one book as the only source for many of his “shocking revelations”.
Nope, that can’t be it.
Was it those interviews with soldiers that Moore took without from George Gittoes’ movie, The Soundtrack of War which made Mr Gittoes very unhappy “because their interviews were taken out of context,” and stated “Michael got access to my stuff and assumed that I would be happy for it to be in 9/11. I would actually have been quite happy for it not to be in 9/11.” Luckily for Gittoes, Moore ended up paying him $50,000.00 a month or so after F911 came out. He soon stopped complianing about his footage being mis-used.
Nope, that can’t be it.
It can’t be any of that stuff. So what exactly is it that Moore is right about? What is Fahrenheit9/11 right about? More importantly, if Moore is right about his “message” than why in the hell would he need to use peoples images without their permission, edit speeches, use creative cropping to change the reference of the real scene, fabricate newspaper headlines, quote from a book so dubious that it can’t even be published in Britain, use quotes out of context, change time lines, steal scenes from other movies, switch the economic demographics of malls, tell half stories, and all of the other visual tricks he uses?
If Bush is as bad as Moore says he is, if our troops are that bad, if America is that messed up, why didn’t he just come out and prove it? Why all the tricks? Why the innuendo? Why the implications? Why not just prove it?
You know why.
Update*
Yes, you have my permission to reprint this, e-mail this, or link this.
Update2* I just went in and fixed all of my sloppy typos. ugh! How embarrassing!
Update3* I just fact-fixed the “now watch this drive” part , as I had attributed it to the wrong date. Thanks to a keen eyed reader.
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