Chris Hitchens Vs Michael Moore

[FriarTed]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102723/

On various issues, I find both men insufferable, but Hitchens exudes some British classiness, so it was a pleasure to see him trounce Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11 for Slate.

[Tuckerfan]

Thanks. I found this part rather interesting

In the interval between Moore’s triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush’s former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures.

[hajario]

I’ve always been a big fan of Hitchens.

Moore is the Limbaugh of the left. The drooling morons who lap up what either of those two tools have to say deserve nothing more than our pity.

Haj

[SmackFu]

Can’t these posts stay in GD until someone here has actually seen the movie?

[rjung]

What, and allow facts to derail their fun?

[Psycho_Pirate]

Chris Hitchens has seen the movie.

And besides, Michael Moore never allows facts to derail his fun. Why should we?

[Troy_McClure_SF]

@Psycho Pirate

Chris Hitchens has seen the movie.

And besides, Michael Moore never allows facts to derail his fun. Why should we?

I know you meant that as a joke, but he does make it painfully easy to tear his arguments apart. We might as well get it done all at once, when we’ve all seen it.

[rjung]

Considering that Moore has had Fahrenheit 9/11 vetted for accuracy by a third-party legal team, and most reviews have said the information in the movie is supported by the public record, tearing his arguments apart might not be as easy as some folks think…

[YPOD]

Getting something vetted doesn’t mean it is true, only that the statement has a source or some basis or support outside of the author. You can quote from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and if the quote is there, it can be considered vetted. You also have to consider how something is phrased - if someone were to say that X got a pack of chewing gum from Y, and Z got a billion dollars, and both statements were literally true, you could claim that X and others were given gifts of more than a billion dollars by Y.

Fact checking can be a little more specific, but you run into similar problems. You could claim that 95% of Americans survyed apporved sex between adults and minors - according to the July 2003 North American Man Boy Love Association Monthly Magazine Reader Survey. Yep, that’s what the survey said, so it’s a true fact. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a true statement.

Moore is an entertainer who uses a documentary format, he really should not be considered a documentary film maker. That would be like taking the movie “Independence Day” to be a serious, scientific discussion of extraterrestrial life and potential problems with intergalactic relations.

As an aside, I personally liked Moore’s old TV show, especially the one where he showed a convicted murderer (a white guy) and the actor Yaphet Koto trying to hail a cab. Guess the results.

[WolfpackJeep]

@hajario

Moore is the Limbaugh of the left.

I’ve never heard it put that way before. I like it!

[astorian]

Hitchens’ best observation regarding Michael Moore is this: ask a Frenchman why he hates Americans, and he’ll tell you “They’re fat, uneducated, vulgar, crude, obnoxious and and uninformed.”

Sounds like a PERFECT description of Michael Moore, Hitchens notes- but the French LOVE him!

Apparently, there are GOOD fat, ignorant, obnoxious Americans and BAD fat, ignorant, obnoxious Americans!

[minty_green]

So Hitchens compares Moore to Leni Riefenstahl in the second paragraph of his “review,” and I’m supposed to take him seriously?

I will say one thing about Hitchens, however, and that is that he is a much more amusing drunkard than Dubya ever was.

[Equipoise]

Defending Truth: Slate’s Chris Hitchens does a hatchet job on Michael Moore

Well, it didn’t take long. The partisan hacks were out for blood on Bowling For Columbine within days of its release, but with Fahrenheit 9/11, they’re out before the flick is even in theaters. Slate’s resident Bush apologist (who once did a negative piece about Mother Theresa!), Chris Hitchens, did a total kneecap job on Michael Moore yesterday with an article entitled Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore. In it, he wrote all manner of allegation about Moore’s new film, peeing on it from a great height, calling it “crap”, and alleging that the film shared the same standards as the propaganda films of the Nazis. For a while I thought about responding to Hitchins’ article, being as it is so rife with laughable comments. Then I thought to myself, “No man, that’s one long rambling piece. It’d take forever to disassemble it… it’s a lone voice in the wilderness, it’ll be forgotten soon, let it go.” But then my buddy Chuck Tatum read Hitchens’ piece and took the position that it must be true and that Michael Moore can’t be trusted and that there was no way he would see this film. Well, I couldn’t let that stand, so now, for the sake of all that is good, I must speak out. I’m cracking my knuckles as you read.

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

[ Moderator hat on ] Look, gang, there’s a fine line here. So long as we’re talking about a movie, and related criticisms of the movie, the discussion is OK here in Cafe Society. As soon as this degenereates to a discussion of the politics, or rebuttals of the criticisms, or rebuttals of the rebuttals, this thread belongs in Great Debates.

SO, kindly stay on the “arts and entertainment” side of the discussion, not the politics, and the thread will reamin in Cafe Society. However, I suspect that I’m just delaying the inevitable, and the discussion will become purely political, and then it will be moved.