I’m not sure that Cafe Society is the appropriate place to call fellow members cowards, even when you’re hiding behind a winkie. I can criticize anything I please, just as you are criticizing me despite that you have never met me. But as it happens, the only portions of F9/11 that I have ever criticized are those that I have seen — mostly as portions that Moore himself has brought to his interviews. Therefore, your characterization of me is not only hypocritical, but false.
I think it takes much more courage to stand up and speak out amidst all the jingoistic flag-waving and the “if you’re not with us, you’re against us” and “if you’re against the war, you’re supporting the terrorists” and “if you’re against the war, you’re not supporting the troops” and “if you criticize the pResident, you’re un-American!” mentality that’s infected this country since 9/11.
Michael Moore is a true patriot who loves this country deeply (just not the administration), and I’m proud of him.
And Liberal, I don’t remember the thread and I’m not going to go look for it, but your arguments were about a bit you saw out of context and so I’m with rjung. You’re criticizing a movie you haven’t seen.
Back when the movie came out, the Bush-Saudi ties were, or were almost, considered a conspiracy theory. Now we know that Moore didn’t even go far enough, thanks to Senator Bob Graham’s book Intelligence Matters.
Back when the movie came out, it almost seemed absurd that the government was trying to keep us scared on purpose, but since then there have been numerous ‘terra lerts’ that were almost certainly politically motivated. I’m not going to go get links right now, but here’s a nice video that serves the purpose well.
Link
Back when the movie came out, the thought of a soldier speaking out against the war was shocking. Now they’re everywhere.
Link
Link (referenced here)
Link
Link
Military families are speaking out.
Other veterans are speaking out.
Diplomats and Military commanders are speaking out.
Intelligence people are speaking out.
Big-time Republicans are speaking out.
John Eisenhower
Ron Reagan
A lot of people are speaking out.
Has anyone actually seen the DVD? Seems to me this thread is filled with speculation and innuendo…
Speculation and innuendo about what? That the DVD exists? That the contents are real?
I myself don’t have it yet. I was going to get it, but my husband, who’s been out of town on business, picked it up and will be bringing it back with him Friday.
See post #9.
For the record, I didn’t support the invasion at the time, ie while it was being considered. I’m no great Bush fan either. I have been told I hate America on this board, although I must hasten to add I don’t take such words to heart from people who don’t know me. I actually think the world needs America and owes a great debt to it for all it has done for peace and justice during the last hundred years, despite such things as Vietnam. I have always been pro-US and anti-UN in broad terms.
The loony talk which you quote above is just that, loony. I came across it when I visited California last year and I was just left shaking my head.
All talk of patriotism concerns me. My own take on the difference between nationalism and patriotism is that nationalism is “love” for one’s country that leads one to hate other countries, while patriotism is love for one’s country that leads one to respect other countries and seek the best for them too.
Of course Bush is playing 9/11 for all it’s worth and that needs to be understood. But Moore (who, note, shows no footage of the actual 9/11 attacks in his film - just some of the aftermath - pretty cunning in itself - especially in a film with 9/11 in the title) attempts, to my mind, to insinuate that Bush welcomed 9/11 (much as Maggie Thatcher might be said to have welcomed the Falklands War) as restoring his fortunes when he was so little-boy-lost that all he could do was take vacations, and further that he somehow brought it about.
It was this that left me with a bad taste in the mouth after watching the film. The editing of the various montages and quotes is manipulative, and when you’re accusing another of disingenuousness, the last thing you should do is to copy them and descend to their level. I feel this is what Moore does.
As for filming veterans and grieving and disillusioned families of dead servicemen in their moment of loss, I kept in mind the context as I watched this. Many British widows of those who died in the Falklands War as well as in the Gulf War (1991) have gone on record as saying it was a waste of life and that the wars were unjustified. If I had lost my wife, I’d likely say the same thing. Whether I was right though remains another matter.
Moore gives them a voice and it’s a powerful voice as he clearly believes the war was unnecessary and should never have happened. There, we are in agreement. Where I find Moore’s work in this regard repelling is that he appears to forget that a soldier’s job is to fight (well, that’s part of the job description), he takes advantage of people as their weakest, and he feigns compassion for their situation. If the last statement is too strong, then I’m reminded of the person who when told by someone he didn’t know “I feel your pain” responded “Go and feel your own pain”.
I am glad Moore exists and that he creates the stuff he does create. Of course, I support and uphold his right to do so. The greatest service his output can perform is to generate debate and to enable people to focus on and come to understand the pervasive influence of film and the mass media.
I think Moore simply takes the position that a soldier’s job is to defend – and that since Iraq was an artificial threat, there was no need to jepoardize the lives of servicemen over it.
Unless someone here has psychic powers and can tell us if Moore’s compassion is genuine or not, this is just so much groundless speculation, IMO. I know he’s done some fundraisers and charity drives for the soldiers in Iraq in the past (IIRC, last June he was asking folks to send books to the troops so they’d have stuff to read); shall we speculate if those efforts were faked as well?
I haven’t seen too much “jingoistic flag-waving”, but then again I live in NYC. Moore made a terrific film, but as far as I could figure out he believes that the Bush administration engineered the entire Afghan invasion just to be able to build a pipeline across the country and bring in less than a billion; and that anyone who volunteers for the military is a desperate working-class loser. The latter of which I know is not true, since my brother’s a reservist and both our parents have Master’s degrees. So, I watched the movie once, shrugged, and walked away. It’s skillfull and manipulative and noisy and funny, but it’s just a movie.
Quick warning: I’d be careful about following all those links; Equipoise linked, without any warning, to a graphic picture of a dead child in another thread.
Cool. The DVD sold over 2 million copies its first day.
I don’t think he believes that at all. I do believe that lower-income youths are targeted. Would you say the recruiter section is staged?
I warned with the words “Iraqi dead” and “Murder” so it isn’t as if I gave a link saying “Bunnies! Flowers!”
roger thornhill, thank you for the post. I would just disagree with your opinion that Moore has no compassion. Lila Lipscomb has said in several interviews that Moore was deeply compassionate toward her, and deferred to her at every turn. There’s not a second of her section that she didn’t WANT put in there. She said he was very sensitive and caring.
I’m off to see Howard Shore and the Lord of the Rings symphony, but I’ll try and find a link if I can.
If you see the film and it motivates you to vote, you are making a difference. If you encourage somebody else to see it, you are making a difference. Where’s the “blindness” come in?
Amen! 
Yes . . . but under the circumstances, Moore was under no obligation to make a “balanced presentation” in the sense you’re describing. Neither Moore nor any of his fans have any illusions about what kind of ruler Hussein was. The whole world knows about his torture chambers, mass graves, and use of chemical weapons on rebels. Moore was merely giving play to another side of the story, one equally real and very important: Prewar Iraq was also a stable, moderately prosperous, industrialized country where millions of ordinary people were just trying to live their daily lives as peacefully and pleasantly as they could. They might not have liked their government very much, but they never asked the Americans to shell, bombard and “liberate” them.
All talk of someone’s “compassion” comes down to guesswork, as we just can’t know other people’s hearts. It’s one of my beliefs that many of us don’t really know our own hearts either. Anyway, it’s easy to confuse sentimentalism with compassion - I believe there is in all of us the possibility of having much sentimentality and little true sentiment.
I didn’t say that Michael Moore has no compassion. In the context of my deliberately provocative contribution, I made generalisations in the hope that they would make a point, which happens to align with my feelings after confronting Moore’s work. With the bearhugs and all, I still obtain the impression after watching 9/11 and Columbine, that there is an element of showmanship in his compassion as with other manifestations of his personality.
The over-riding sense I get after watching 9/11 is that Moore has a deep-seated hostility towards powerful and rich people; and this in turn leads me to suspect that the root of this lies in the fact that he wants to be one of them. The Bush-on-holiday sequences are weak in my opinion for this reason - Moore just seems to be envious. The Haliburton stuff by contrast is much stronger. The link between war and those who make enormous sums of money from it is always something worthy of putting before the public consciousness.
Postscript
Is there a hint of irony in the fact that Moore is also making a lot of money (and, equally importantly for an already affluent person, gaining great fame, prestige and, arguably, power) from war?
I just saw this tonight - we have a local film group that shows independent movies and documentaries and things when they come out on video, and that was tonight’s presentation. Fair sized crowd, too, at least for us.
I guess I have mixed emotions about it - I mean, I agree with Michael Moore on a lot of things, and I think he makes some interesting points, but the way he frames things is hard for me to deal with. There’s a lot of really clever editing and some funny sound cues and it just seems a little too manipulative for me. I think he could have made a case against Bush that was as strong or stronger if he’d just presented the facts, instead of dressing them up the way he did. Of course, a simple, honest case might not have had the woman in front of me proclaiming that Michael Moore deserves a crown in Heaven, but… I don’t know. I still have to digest it and pick it apart and sort the issues out.
I think Americans are smart enough to sort out for themselves what is crap and what is not. (At least, they should be.)
I watched F/911 and was able to indentify several instances where Moore took cheap shots, and some in which he made very valid points. Hell, I don’t expect everything in a single source to be the absilute truth. I gave up on that years ago. Anyone who thinks that anyone tells the truth 100% of the time is living in a dream world.
That said, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t seen the film in question should criticize it based solely on clips or reviews. It strikes me much like a hysterical mother who wants a book which she hasn’t read removed from the school library because of what she’s heard that it says.
…at least insofar as to how they use their power and wealth to abuse those less fortunate. This is a long-running theme in his works. It’s like the ol’ Spider-Man quote – “With great power comes great responsibility.” Moore gets pissed when those with great power use it irresponsibly.
I think you’re rather stretching it a bit here. This is almost like saying, “Everyone hates George W. Bush because they secretly wish they were POTUS.”
Oh, your criticisms are invalid, you’re just JEALOUS! :rolleyes:
He already is one of them.
I agree with rjung: Moore gets pissed when those with great power use it irresponsibly.
He already had a great deal of money, fame, prestige and power before he even thought about making Fahrenheit 9/11.
To use Moore’s money and stature against him is, well, very very silly. He’s trying to do some good with his money and stature, and is succeding admirably, which always pisses people off.
In other news, Michigan prosecutors laugh at the GOP’s charges.
In a related vein, I went to the bookstore today, flipped through Moore’s two new books, and walked out with Will They Ever Trust Us Again?
Nutshell summary: It’s a good read if you want an uncensored, unsupressed, grunts-eye-view of the Iraq war that you won’t get from mainstream sources. While the sample is obviously biased (is someone who’s staunchly pro-Iraq-war going to write to Michael Moore?), the spectrum of folks who write in is interesting. You’ve got die-hard liberals, grizzled veterans, former-Bush-loving-Republicans-who’ve-finally-realized-they’ve-been-used, and lots of wide-eyed innocents. Recurring themes include inadequate planning/training/equipment, the meaning of patriotism and the proper role of the military, fear of punishment from superiors for speaking out against the President, and the various eye-opening stunts they get saddled with (“When my son was killed the Army would not pay for us to go to his funeral. Several months later they offered us to fly free to meet with President Bush. No thanks.”).
The other book, The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader, is largely composed of stuff you can already find on the internet if you’re inclined – the complete screenplay to the film, references supporting Moore’s factual claims, reviews, quotes, and essays on the movie, and a few political cartoons and opening-night photos. It’s not bad, but IMO not worth the $14 price tag.
Could someone who has seen the DVD give us a review of the special features? Thanks.