Campaign 2008, in the (sizable) wake of Michael Moore

Great Debates
1

If this has already been discussed in one of the other threads, apologies; I skimmed them and didn’t see it.

This thread is about what effect, if any, Farenheit 9/11’s (commercial) success will be on future political campaigns. To prevent hijacks, this thread is NOT about the following things; if you wish to discuss them, open your own thread or reopen an old one.

  1. Whether or not Michael Moore is fair or honest; he isn’t. And no, neither is Rush Limbaugh.
  2. Whether or not he can or should say what he does; Free speech.
  3. Whether or not people who attack him are censors; free speech cuts both ways.
  4. Whether Farenheit 9/11 is a violation of campaign-finance laws. :rolleyes:

After dismissing #4, though, it does lead me to two questions. Many people (including myself) opposed campaign finance reform under the idea that there will always be money in politics, and it will always find a way, and that all we can hope for is transparency. I think there is some validation of that idea in the proliferation of advocacy groups like moveon.org and its conservative counterparts, which have enabled money to flow to groups that aren’t “officially” endorsing a candidate (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Now then, ISTM that Michael Moore will have imitators in the future, both on the left and the right. First off, it must have made boatloads of cash: documentaries aren’t expensive to make. Secondly, especially if Kerry wins (but even if he doesn’t) Moore can claim (rightly) to have reached a new demographic who otherwise might not vote at all, and most intriguingly, one that may not watch news, read the paper or listen to talk radio. That’s a damned enticing target for any politica strategist.

So, question #1: Will we see an increasing politicization of popular culture? It need not be something as obvious as giving some guy a hundred grand budget to go be the Michael Moore of the right. It might be more subtle (“Free Safety: The Pat Tillman Story,” directed by Bruce Willis and presented by the Heritage Foundation.) Toby Keith made some coin with his “boot in your ass” song; presumably there’s nothing stopping him from putting out a whole album of conservative country rock in Summer 2008. What if Richard Mellon Scaife offered Kid Rock a half-million to do a single? (I trust all can imagine the liberal counterparts to these.)

Some might say they’d risk offending their fans; but 21st century marketing is all about knowing your niche; and it ain’t like Tom Selleck has any other career ahead of him anyway.

And if question #2 is: the answer to #1 is Yes, is it a good thing? I’m going back and forth on this. On the one hand, maybe it’ll get more people involved in the process, and promote healthy debate; on the other hand maybe we’ll just see all pretensons of fairness and objectivity out the window and our civic discourse get even more polarized and insular than it already is.

Thoughts?

2

  1. Yes. But besides a few serious blowhards on each side, many will make such films, music, etc for the sake of profit rather than out of serious partisan commitment.

  2. Good or neutral thing. The odds of politically charged popular culture getting worse than its current state are on par with those for speed-of-light travel in the near future - it might be possible somehow, but it will require immense effort.

Fairness and objectivity? Heh. Take this board. Don’t bother searching for them outside precise scientific threads.

3

I don’t think it’d be a bad thing. There’s too much political apathy in this country, especially among young voters, who one might expect to be the most likely group to be motivated by pop culture.

4

We already have, for the past ten years – look at the rise of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the right-wing media noise machine for examples.

The only thing Michael Moore has done that is in any way novel is that he’s a rabble-rouser for the “other” side (well, that, and apparently he checks his facts better than his conservative counterparts do). As Mr 2001 notes, this will probably be a good thing, because we the civilians will finally see something resembling a balanced pimpsmack between the two sides, instead of one group of bastiches yelling at a second group too scared to fight back.

Of course, the downside is that there will be even more spin and counterspin for us to sort through in an attempt to find the truth, but that seems to be an irreversible result of our addiction to 24/7 news coverage.

5

furt: Now then, ISTM that Michael Moore will have imitators in the future, both on the left and the right. First off, it must have made boatloads of cash: documentaries aren’t expensive to make.

The trend is already here, cf. the documentary about Kerry’s 1972 Congressional campaign made by a top Bush fund-raiser.

I’m not sure, though, that we’ll see lots of documentaries having a similar impact. Political documentaries may not be all that expensive to make (although the $6 million budget for Fahrenheit 9/11 still isn’t everybody’s pocket change), but they’re not easy to make well. And they’re not like TV ads that people see almost inadvertently, for free, while they’re watching something else; to get people to see a film documentary like F9/11, you have to make them want to go into a theater and shell out their own money for it. And that generally requires that the film be interesting, well-done, and/or highly controversial.

Campaign documentaries that are basically just ninety-minute attack ads, on the other hand, aren’t likely to draw in the crowds. Since filmmaking talent, experience and creativity, as well as political eloquence, don’t necessarily become more common just because there happens to be a fad for political films, I predict that we are not likely to see a large number of good campaign documentaries. And therefore IMO they won’t be successful enough overall to become a standard campaign tool.

6

Is that a fat joke? Classy, dude…

7

This part, at least, is nothing new. There were loads of country songs with extremely conservative messages during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, etc, and country artists have been active in endorsing conservative candidates (and even running for office) from the very beginning.

8

Agree in part, disagree in part. Fox News is a news network. Some are appalled/delighted by their POV, just as some are appalled/delighted by the editorial biases that every media outlet has, but its not new, and hasn’t done much to reach people not already “into” the news and inclined to their POV.

Limbaugh, OTOH was not entirely original, but close enough, and he has succeeded in politicizing an entire segment of the media, much to the advantage of conservatives. Perhaps my question could be phrased as “will Michael Moore do for the movies what Rush Limbaugh did for talk radio?”

9

Moore has won several awards and had a reputation that preceded him. Like him or not, no one could argue that he was a bad filmmaker. If Rush Limbaugh or Tom Selleck make a liberal bashing documentary, its just not going to work the same, no matter how much cha-ching is put into production.

#1 People will try and fail.

#2 Yes. Its fun to watch people make fools of themselves.

10

What are they going to make a documentary about? Kerry and Edwards in a homosexual plot to repeal tax cuts for the rich and destroy the institution of marriage? Or point out that Kerry is rich? And tall? And Moore is fat?

11

Well, I haven’t seen it (I do know Le Monde has said that it won at Cannes for political reasons); but I’ve seen his other work, and it seems a little ridiculous to suggest that no conservative filmmaker could even be close to as good.

12

Like so many things from the right, I’ll believe it when I see it.

13

[QUOTE=furt]
Well, I haven’t seen it (I do know Le Monde has said that it won at Cannes for political reasons); but I’ve seen his other work, and it seems a little ridiculous to suggest that no conservative filmmaker could even be close to as good.

[QUOTE]

I liked F911 but I don’t think it was a cinematic masterpiece. It’s prerelease hype is what made it so successful. Who out there, good or bad, Oscar/Cannes winner or unknown, liberal or conservative, can generate the hype Moore enjoyed? Not impossible but very unlikely.

14

Not to get too Cafe Society here, but artistically, I think the biggest strength of Fahrenheit 9/11 is in skillfully balancing the various facets of the topic: if the movie was merely a dry recitation of facts, or an emotional appeal against the war, or a two-hour rant, it would have left a crater bigger than Gigli. Yet, by balancing the issues with a deft use of comedy and an underlying theme of patriotic optimism, Moore ends up with a movie that’s simultaneously horrifying and uplifting. Like Life is Beautiful, IMO F911 manages to tackle a depressing subject and still leave the viewer feeling energized and hopeful at the end.

15

My favorite part was the John Ashcroft music video of him singing that horrible song, “Let the Eagle Soar” that he wrote himself. The video is online somewhere, if you want to download it.

16

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot recently. I’ve been under the impression for a while that one of the reasons we don’t see a lot of progressive alternatives to people like Rush Limbaugh is that media companies haven’t believed that such alternatives would be commercially viable. Michael Moore may have just changed that. The media may now see progressives as an unexploited niche. For example, Air America Radio might be picked up by more local stations now that those stations see that there is an enthusiastic audience for progressive viewpoints. TV news channels may start looking for progressive talk show hosts. Hopefully they’ll be calm, intelligent and thoughtful as opposed to some of the current right-wing hosts; but somehow I think we may end up with our own illogical opinionated blowhards.

If we end up with mostly intelligent and thoughtful discussion, then of course it’s for the better. If we get opinionated blowhards - well - I guess it’ll at least balance things out a bit.

17

No. Movies with enough “mass appeal” to worm their way into popular culture are primarily made to cash in on people under 30. Since there aren’t a lot of hard bodies or explosions in political “documentaries” (I suppose we could have Reno and Kerry do a love scene backlit by footage of 9/11, but most people would find that in poor taste) I don’t see politics making much headway in popular culture. Culture, sure, but not popular culture. I know that Moore’s movie is doing well for a “documentary” but can its sales even hold a candle to something truly popular culture like Spiderman 2 or ** Shrek 2 **? Hell, even The Day After Tomorrow has already made $100 million dollars more than Fahrenheit 9/11 cite and you hardly heard anything about it.

Perhaps if Johnny Depp ran for office and someone made a documentary about that…I’d consider voting for him, depending on his platform…but then, I’m under 30 :slight_smile:

18

Polarization will increase, but not due to Moore’s film. We’ve now got two dimetrically opposed camps of roughly equal size, until one side or the other begins to dominate, polarization will continue. The House is pretty well split near the middle , so is the Senate, and the Presidency was gained through questionable means by the candidate that came in second in the popular vote. Moore’s film is a symptom of the polarization, not a cause.

Is it a good thing? I doubt it. Politicians of both stripes are much more interested in belittling the opposition than in actually working together to solve the nation’s problems.

19

Or, hopefully, some of the better progressive talk shows.

20

Yeah but South Park often does too. Life Is Beautiful is in its own league. IMO even Moore would tell you that.