It’s a wonderful parallel. As we all know, Coulter is a high Administration official running a national propaganda ministry dedicated to serving the cause of Fascism.
And I’ve seen her limp a bit, too.
She’s still young. Give her time.
Eh, she’s nearly 45. Goebbels only made it to 47. Ann’s gonna have to scramble if she really wants to catch up in the Evil Loathsomeness race.
Ooooooh, I don’t even want to think about what Coulter might get up to if she really decided to try to out-evil-loathsome Goebbels before she hits 48. :eek:
Not to Merriam-Webster (nor, of course, to me):
Main Entry: 1doc·u·men·ta·ry
Pronunciation: "dä-ky&-'men-t&-rE, -'men-trE
Function: adjective
1 : being or consisting of documents : contained or certified in writing <documentary evidence>
2 : of, relating to, or employing documentation in literature or art; broadly : FACTUAL, OBJECTIVE <a documentary film of the war>
<bolding mine>
This point has been debated quite a bit on this board – and apart from a few puny assertions that no matter what the dictionary says, everyone knows that documentaries don’t have to be factual or objective because of this or that piece of semantic hair-splitting – the fact remains that it does; and to people with vocabularic discernment ( 
), impartiality is inferred by its use – which is precisely why people such as Moore try to couch their propaganda in legitimacy by using it.
(emphasis shifted by me)
:rolleyes: Yes, you can debate this till you turn chartreuse in the face. But it’s correct to call the film a documentary: if you have to hang your hat on a silly whine like refusing to call it by its genre appellation, your argument’s run out of gas.
Daniel
Perhaps you’d have a point if the genre appellation were worded thusly: “of, relating to, or employing deliberately misleading and/or fictitious documentation in literature or art”.
Remember my mention of semantic hair-splitting? Well, yours is an example. I think the definition’s true meaning is obvious to all but those interested in draping misleading propaganda in the shroud of legitimacy that the word documentary confers.
Well, the MPAA considered F911 a documentary. And given that “documentary” has no legal definition, the definition used by the largest association of film professionals, when applies to film, seems to be as good a one to use as any.
If someone makes a documentary about slavery, and clearly takes the position (in the film) that slavery is bad, does that make that film not a documentary? What if th film includes 2 accidental factual errors? 10? 50? What if they have 2 factual errors that might NOT be accidental? Where do you draw the line?
Your mention of semantic hair-splitting would, in the mind of a more self-aware poster, have been an admission that your argument was weaker than Zima. The definition of a documentary makes no judgment whatsoever about the qualities of the documents on which the film is based. There are plenty of shitty documentaries based on shitty documents, but they’re still documentaries.
Daniel
Well, then, I suppose someone should notify dictionary publishers to revise their definition of the word – given that the one they assign is impossible to apply. :rolleyes:
What? No it’s not! When you add words to it that aren’t there, it becomes impossible to apply. But when you apply it straightforwardly, it accurately reflects how everyone who isn’t hitching the language to their polemical cart uses the word. Everyone but extremist partisans like yourself uses the word “documentary” in a nonjudgmental fashion, such that it applies to good works and shitty works alike.
Daniel
I’m not talking about the definition as I rephrased it; I’m talking about the way posters such as Max contend that it’s more or less impossible to create a 100% factual or objective film or document anyway, so it appears to me that the dictionary definition must therefore be bogus, as no such factual or objective standard can truly exist.
Regarding your assertion that only partisan extremists consider a documentary to be factual and objective, I would wager that if you were to stop the average man or woman on the street and ask if the impression they carry with them is that a documentary is supposed to be factual and objective, the vast majority of those asked would answer yes.
What if you asked “factual” and “objective” as two separate words? What if you gave them my example… “If someone makes a documentary about slavery, but makes it clear through that film that their personal view is that slavery is bad, is it still accurate to call it a documentary?”
So Ken Burns’ The Civil War is factual, and is a documentary, but Birth of a Nation is fictional, and isn’t.
Depending on whom you ask, eh?
You’re simply illustrating my point. I’m not going to get sucked into arguing a version of what the meaning of “is” is all night. My original post was to refute the assertion that it’s “common knowledge” that documentaries are not supposed to be unbiased. I disagree with this statement and assert that to most people the word documentary implies both factual accuracy and objectivity as these terms would be judged by the average reasonable person. I’ll leave it up to you to debate the finer points with the dictionary publisher of your choice.
Sorry, ETF (and you’re gonna love this), but I have to plead ignorance as I’ve seen neither.
I’m sorry, but I’ve just somehow gotten into this annoying habit of applying dictionary definitions to the words I hear. I think it started at school.
Let’s all sing “Ann Coulter is a Big Fat Bitch” in D minor.
But there are a lot of really really really stupid people on the street. There is a game show (I forget the name) where they ask really eay questions of the people on the street, and unless it’s a put on, they really are fucking stupid out there. So, just because the garden variety idiot says something is so, doesn’t make it so.
That’s precisely the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is,
“A political hack creates a movie disparaging his political enemies, using a lot of documents that he takes out of context, leading interviews, and other evidence that he assembles from real life and molds to fit his conclusion. What genre of movie are we talking about?”
If you ask people on the street whether an action movie is supposed to be exciting, tense, and full of big explosions, they’ll also say yes, but that doesn’t mean that a shitheap like Soldier isn’t an action movie.
Daniel
Where is my outrage at Coulter? Probably the same place as your outrage at Gore for his asinine remarks in Saudi Arabia.
:rolleyes: Precisely the sort of bullshit that does not comprise cleaning house, the sort of false equivalencies that allow cowards and cads to sleep at night.
Daniel