Bowling For Columbine: Fact or Fiction

Great Debates
1

Fenris and I were chatting a few days ago and he brought up that he had read Micheal Moore’s Bowling For Columbine was supposed to have been rife with fabrications and outright lies.

http://www.gopusa.com/opinion/cm_0428.shtml

http://www.moorelies.com/

http://www.revoketheoscar.com/

http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel040403.asp

Now… all of the detractors who write about Moore on the above links I’d say are staunch Republicans, and as polarized as Moore is.

What I’m not seeing from these separate articles is citations and proof. Though they all link to each other.

From Kopel’s piece in the National Review:

Um. No.

It wasn’t just Southeners who lost the war. It was also bigoted Northerners. How do I know that? In researching a major project I had to do on the Klan when I was a freshman in high school, I went into the archives of the Oshkosh Public Library. In black and white, I saw the small piece buried back in the paper about a cross burning the Klan did on Jackson Street. When was in? 1880. It may be nine years later than the KKK Act, but in those times of news not travelling so quickly, it’s interesting to see that it wasn’t just a Southern thing.

The 1880 incident was not the first either.

Right there I see shoddy research. Or just posing opinion/belief as fact. Isn’t that what Moore’s accused of doing?

I don’t have an agenda here of supporting Moore, bashing Republicans and the NRA, or decrying the President.

What I care about is truth.

Did Moore lie in Bowling For Columbine? Can someone prove to me that he DID lie?

I’d appreciate if this thread didn’t become yet more pointless Moore bashing. We’ve seen it in the Pit as well as other forums.

All I am concerned about is: did he lie?

2

You didn’t actually look at any of the cites, did you? I spent all of one minute doing so, and here you go: Moore is a liar, a moron, and a Grade A dorcusmalorcus.

I bet if you try some of your other cites, you will find plenty of evidence that Moore is at best, a fucking moron, most likely, a liar. (The very name ‘Bowling for Columbine’ was from Moore’s assumption that the shooters went bowling before they shot up the school; They did not. From one of your cites.)

To reiterate, read your cites.

**

That is a bizarre statement. How do I know that? Common sense.

3

Mockingbird, check out this site. This is perhaps the bext summary of the flasehoods in Bowling for Columbine I know of.

I don’t know the political affiliation of David Hardy, the author of the page I linked to, but he does provide citations for the vast majority of his points. He also goes into a great deal of detail about the construction of deceptions in Bowling for Columbine. As a former video/film producer, the section about Charleton Heston’s faked speech in the film was particularly enlightening. I remember thinking that it was probably faked when I saw the film, and it was nice to hear that I was right. That sort of thing is frighteningly wasy to do, with simple tools and careful editing.

I’m not a bit surprised that Moore used deceptive editing and staged scenes in Bowling. He’s an entertainer, not particularly interested in the truth so much as he’s trying to prove his personal agenda. He’s the left’s answer to Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter. I take pretty much everything he says with a grain of salt, unless it’s proven by an independent source.

And just so you know, I’m a relatively staunch “liberal,” opposed to most of Bush’s policies and definitely against the war in Iraq. I don’t necessarily disagree with what Moore is trying to say, but I find his techniques deplorable. To call Bowling for Columbine a documentary is simply incorrect. It’s entertainment, pure and simple, and not even that great at that.

4

We’re debunking one thing at a time.

Your common sense can go next.

5

Try this on for size, OP:
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html

6

So, basically, you say that Charleton Heston did NOT say “This country was founded by white man”, which is, with the context around it, quite racist? How did Moore fake it? And why did Heston not sue him?

I agree that Moore uses popularism and
methods working with emotions rather than intellectual reasoning, so I always said that Moore is the counterweight against Bush & Co. Perhaps thats not too bad, I guess there are lots of people who fall for the emotional arguments of the government around terrorism, so why not let play Moore the other string? But I admit that this is a touchy subject.

One other thing though: As a foreigner I am convinced, that Moore is right in one point: There is a culture of violence in the media in the US, which I did not yet find in other countries.

7

If you’ll read the page I linked to (and the speech transcripts it, in turn, links to), you’ll see that Moore constructed the speech presented in the film quite out of context and in such a way to leave the viewer with a distinct impression of Heston’s supposed racism, which the original transcripts do not suggest.

Is Heston a racist? I don’t claim to know him that well. However, Moore’s obvious play to cast him as one (largely successful, apparently) through out-of-context quoting and a false speech construction is what I find despicable.

Mind you, I’m no fan of Heston or the NRA, but Moore’s tactics are no way to engage in reasoned criticism.

Good question. Why don’t you ask Heston? He probably could have done.

Because it’s bad tactics, whoever is using it. I prefer honesty and reason when I’m trying to convince someone of a viewpoint I hold. Using emotion is sometimes helpful, but using outright deception simply isn’t in my playbook, and I tend to look down on anyone who does use it, be that George W. Bush or Michael Moore.

In short, when someone says that they are representing “the truth,” I expect them to do so. I don’t cut one guy a break because his opposite number is using poor tactics. Is that too high a standard?

8

Wasn’t Heston one of hollywood’s earliest supporters of the civil rights movement - before it became fashionable to support it?

9

Check out Avalonian’s link. That’s the one that convinced me to “elevate” Moore from fucking asshole to fucking lying asshole. The guy in the link goes almost frame by frame showing how Moore created his propaganda.

Fenris

10

It’s pretty obvious when watching BFC that the Heston Speech is made up from different speeches.

11

IIRC, Heston was a big civil rights supporter quite early on in the movement. He’s the opposite of a racist.

12

P.S. From Heston’s speech at Harvard

(On a personal note, I marched with Dr. King in the late 1950’s, yet some people on this board have called me a racist.)

13

This is a very good point. And even though I agree with you in principle, I wonder how much of a dialectic pro and contra approach, listing “all” the facts or at least a great many facts from both sides, can be done in a normal length movie?
Sure, if Moore had 10+ hours to work with, it could be pulled off, but with time constraints like these, you probably need to edit out a lot of unfavourable stuff in order to make a point.

Still, it’s a good idea to point out errors in the movie and criticize Moore for not doing a dialectic approach.
However, ignoring the whole movie because of that, would also be wrong. There are a few worrying issues here and it can’t all be made up. A critical eye should be applied to both erronous issues and good points made by the movie, imho.

14

Sure, Moore is an asshole. Fact, fiction, whatever, I think his whole purpose is to disturb the shit, and make people think.

And look: its working.

15

But they (we) are only thinking about what a lying asshole he is.

16

Unfortunately, no. There have been a number of posters (especially some of our cuz’s across the pond) who have referred to BfC (as factual evidence) while positing anti-gun/anti-NRA arguements in some of the latest gun debates.

17

Heston made his racist comments in the interview with Moore, not in any speech. There was nothing deceptive about it. Most of the so-called “debunking” of BFC is total shite. There were accusations for instance that Moore staged the scene where he received a gun in a bank. Those accusations were false. Moore was also accused of lying about the Columbine killers going bowling on the morning of the killings. There is conflicting eyewitness testimony on this but several witnesses did tell Moore that they had seen Klebold and Harris there that day. What we’re left with is some selective editing of speeches which are basically irrelevant. Moore is a genius who shows the right-wing in this country for what it is and the only way they can respond is with lying, slandering hatchet pieces in lying, slandering, right-wing rags.

18

BTW, BFC is not an anti-gun movie. Moore never once tries to make any case for banning guns. The movie is about violence and, specifically, it asks questions about why America is the most violent country in the world.

19
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And DtheC has spoken. As usual, content=0, vitriol=off the scale.