He never said we should attack Saudi. He pointed out that it was Moore (among others) who told America about Saudi Arabia’s involvement with 9/11 and our administration’s coddling of them. You took him completely out of context by removing his comments about Moore, and then misrepresented what he said. That is a classic straw man tactic.
At the same time, incredibly, you’ve managed to also employ a red herring argument about some guy’s actions in Nicaragua over a century ago. Thus:
Jesus Christ. You’re a mid-90s throwback. Red Herring arguments are still being used on message boards? People still fall for them?
I reject your ridiculous notion that the argument is in any way a red herring.
First of all, if the Saudi government was NOT responsible for the hijackings, why SHOULDN’T we be friendly with them? At the time, it was not an unreasonable assumption that we were going to need their help to find the network behind the attacks.
Second, there is NOTHING irrelevant about an historical precedent for the situation. The fact that you find historical precedent irrelevant says more about your brand of reasoning than anything else.
No plans to see it. I heard a radio ad for it describing it as a comedy promoting family values, or something like that (I don’t remember the exact words), so I have no interest. Pretty much the last thing I want to go see is a comedy with a conservative agenda.
The movie caught my attention after reading an interview with David Zucker complaining that “Republican is the new gay” in Hollywood. Poor thing.
It’s noteworthy that the Invisible Hand of the Free Market, that never-failing indicator of what’s good and what isn’t, seems to have placed this laugh riot at a rather modest 9th place on its opening weekend. It was, admittedly, competing in a field of such long-awaited cinematic blockbusters as “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”, so there is that consolation. With a box office take of $3.8 million, even with a respectable 1600 screens showing it, it’ll be a while before the $20 million production budget comes in.
(For those interested in such matters, that’s roughly $2300 per theater. The other political piece in play at this time, Maher’s “Religulous”, has pulled $3.5 million - in 500 theaters. Or, roughly, $7000 per theater.)
They’d better have a good DVD distribution deal - perhaps a two-for-one with “Expelled”?
It finished ninth this weekend with gross receipts of $3,810,000.
I give it a C-. Watchable, but just barely. It has some great bits–the scene with Dennis Hopper shooting zombie lawyers from the ACLU had me rolling in the floor–but too many of the gags fall flat. If you lean heavily to the right, you might want to rent it when it goes to DVD. Otherwise, give it a pass.
Well, here is a link to rottentomatoes, if you want to avoid Daily Kos: An American Carol. When I looked at it, it was at a slightly less than stellar 16%.
That said, Neidermeyer: Man of Iron should be hysterical.
All this bickering is evidence of why it was a horrible idea to make the main character Michael Moore. How many of you would go to the theatre to see it if it was Generic Liberal? I would. David Zucker is hilarious. We all love Airplane!. Now his movie is all about another guy who does or doesn’t speak for liberals and does or doesn’t hate America and is or isn’t a fat slob and damnit if you see it/don’t see it you’re a mean/gay/mindless/elitist/hillybilly/asshole ah hell, screw it, let’s just wait for the DVD. Or maybe they’ll show it on tv sometime.
It turns out that the lousy box office may not have been because the movie stunk up the place–it was FRAUD! And SABOTAGE!
Got that? It’s a CONSPIRACEH! The pimply-faced teenagers have joined forces with the MSM and the terrorists to make their cinematic opus look like a flop! How else do you explain the success of Beverly Hills Chihuahua?
And can you imagine sound and focus problems at a modern multiplex? It had to be on purpose!
Having worked in several book stores, I saw clerks and managers who put conservative books in the most obscure places possible or even not put them out on the shelves at all, claimed the books were out of stock when asked, and “lost” the order forms when customers tried to special order the books. I don’t have hard time believing that some people working in theaters might try to sabotage the receipts for a movie if they didn’t like its politics. (That said, the film really is surprisingly inept for people who were supposed to be professionals.)
Unfortunately, the movie fails in implementing the essential element of satire – the kernel of truth. The movie depicts a filmmaker who is trying to get rid of the Independence Day holiday. How does this work as a satire or parody of Michael Moore? Regardless of what you think about his movies, the policy positions and political opinions that Moore espouses are quite mainstream. To depict him in this way just fails as a caricature – it makes the filmmaker look foolish.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that some people sold tickets for other movies instead of AAC, or deliberately left it out of focus, or whatever. Hell, I would have been tempted.
But I can’t believe it happened on a level that made any difference.
From the people who brought you “Scary Movie 3” comes a parody of A Christmas Carol, but with a faux Michael Moore as Scrooge in a conservative morality farce!
How could that not be a box office smash?
Jesus. Even if I had Ann Coulter tattooed on my left butt cheek, read nothing but the Drudge Report and had FOXNEWS on my TV 24/7, I’d avoid this like the plague.
I mean, is there anybody, liberal or conservative, who actually wants to see more Michael Moore?
Well, Zucker was part of the team that gave us Airplane! and The Naked Gun, so I figured there was a chance he might hit another one out of the ball park. Instead, the film has a rushed feeling to it, like it was all slapped together at the last minute in a huge hurry. Some of the gags work, most don’t. It feels like a Three Stooges two-reeler that somebody tried to expand to feature length, but couldn’t come up with enough good material to do it. Some of the material would probably have worked very well as sketches on *Mad TV *or Saturday Night Live, but there’s not enough to sustain a feature film, and the production values are pretty poor. Like I said earlier, if you lean pretty heavily towards the right, you might get a few laughs out of it. Otherwise, leave it alone.