One of my pet peeves is when the left decides that using the right's tactics is a good idea. To me, it seems that if one side of the argument is being petty, stupid, or lying it doesn't mean that it's some how fair for the other side to do the same. I remember reading an account of an AirAmerica broadcast where Randy Rhodes totally went off on Ralph Nader, I remember wondering if left wing noise was better than right wing noise. Then I thought again - why can't we avoid the noise all together?
Then, there's Michael Moore. I don't like to bag on the little guy, which Moore certainly is, despite his fortune. He is the outsider, the guy who criticizes the system and for that, I applaud him. But when he plays the game so much that he becomes a hypocrite, that damages his message and with some people, completely underminds it.
In the documentary Bowling for Columbine, he made it look like you could walk into a particular bank, apply for a loan and walk out with your cash and a gun, given away as a promotional item, in a single day. He conveniently left out the part where they made him come back after a few days so they could do a background check on him. (This ended up disputed by Moore, but more on this in a bit, so, keep reading!)
Recently, I read about how, for his book Stupid White Men, Moore made up a conversation with Fred Barnes, a writer for the conservative rag, The Weekly Standard. Who do I read this from? < AHREF=http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/127ujhuf.asp TARGET=_BLANK>Fred Barnes, himself. In fact, when I did stop by Michael Moore's web site to search for a response to Fred Barnes statement, which I couldn't thanks to the site not having a search engine, I found a section called "How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about
'Bowling for Columbine'" that is described like this: "Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos..."
This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. He calls anyone who has problems with Bowling for Columbine a "wacko attacko" which, frankly, makes the title of "Conspiracy Theorist" look downright respectible. This is not the way to come off like the right person. This is the way you contribute to the problem. The section does go onto dispute the scene in Bowling for Columbine where he claims to walk in, opens an account and walks out with a gun. According to Moore, they did an instant background check. I stand corrected...
Now, when I heard he was going to make a movie on 911, I was excited because anyone with an open mind can acknowledge that there was a lot of complacency in the USGov on September 11, 2001 that allowed the attacks to occur. I haven't seen the movie and it's only played a few places, including Cannes, where it picked up the top award. The thing is, it would have done that even if Moore hadn't pulled the stunt he did, which was to accuse Disney of censorship. Of course, this, in itself isn't really a "stunt," but when he accused Disney of censorship was. He just happened to do it in the days leading up to the Cannes film festival. The thing is, Disney has been on the record for a year saying they wanted no part in the film. It was Miramax that picked Moore's film up against its parent company's wishes.
So, it's a shame that Michael Moore doesn't believe in himself enough to just let his work speak for itself. He needs to play showman, like a modern-day PT Barnum, playing on the suckers that are born every minute.
Now, with this feigned shock that Disney didn't want to distribute his film, how do we know he won't omit something else, just to make King George look bad. Just recently, it was reported that Moore had interviewed the late Nick Berg about the Iraq war but hadn't planned on using the footage in his movie. No wonder, Nick Berg was apparently for the war. Why would Moore want to use footage of someone with the opposing viewpoint? Showing or not showing the truth in order to make Bush look bad is not the way to go.
Yeah, like Bush needed any help in that department.
The more I hear about Fahrenheit 911, the more concerned I am about how much truth it really goes into. To me, it sounds like it may just bash Bush to no end.
Believe it or not, I don't think that's a good thing.
I want the truth to come out. This will put King George in his political grave all by itself, most likely. The truth doesn't need some "showman" to come along and give it a make over in order to seem more shocking. The truth simply needs to be exposed.
There's an old saying that truth conquers all. Well, it can't if it doesn't have the opportunity to. Everyone deserves a fair fight, even truth. Left, right, what, does no one in the middle have a voice? Are there no independent voices out there?
Read Fred Barnes talk about Moore liying about him in Moore's book Stupid White Men.
Read about Moore's interview with Nick Berg.
Read about the Disney distribution debacle at journalist Marc Cooper's website.
Read Michael Moore's defense of challanges to Bowling for Columbine at his website.
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