The most effect it will have is by maybe getting people to care enough to vote, either way.
Oh, and we’ll have to hear a lot of rightie whining.
I’m not a real big fan of Moore- I think he is guilty of playing statistics like a harp - but his underlying point is sound.
I’m a reasonably intelligent person. I know a cheap shot when I see one, and I’ve seen Moore take a few in his documentaries. I’ve noted them, and considered them in my judgement of the issue at hand. I think that many people are just like me.
As a reasonably intelligent person, when a claim he makes piques my interest, I research it further. I think that many people do the same.
I think that most people watching this movie take it with a grain of salt. We’re cynical; we’re used to the fallibility of the media. Sure, there are dimwits who come out of the theater believing everything they heard, but the same can be said about any documentary or news outlet. “I saw it on CNN” seems to be all the evidence some folks need as to an item’s veracity.
But let’s give people some credit. Just like watching Harry Potter won’t turn your kids into devil-worshipping warlocks, neither will watching Moore’s films turn anyone into a raving liberal overnight. At most, it will stir up question and debates, which are certainly a good thing.
You know Excalibre, you couldn’t be more wrong in your assumptions about me. And it doesn’t seem like you gave my posts more than a cursory glance.
I think it’s great that someone like Moore exists, because he is a good counter balance to the BS coming from Rush Limbaugh & co.
I think both Moore and Rush (& Hannity & …) distort some facts or numbers to make their case.
The difference is that people on the left recognize Moore’s errors and say stuff like “yeah, he may distort some facts, but some of his main points are correct”. On the other hand, people on the right don’t publicly aknowledge how biased Rush & co are and never say stuff like “yeah, he distorts facts”. I’m not saying that this holds for every member of the Left and Right, but as a general rule it is true. To put it another way, there are lots of people on the Right who think “Rush is God”, but not a lot of people on the Left who think “Moore is God”.
In general, Rush & co are the “bad cops”, in the “good-cop bad-cop” strategy of the GOP (where the “bad cops” are the ones who distort facts and sometimes lie). The Left needs some “bad cops” to offer some balance, and Moore is one of them.
Whether Moore’s movie will have any effect remains to be seen, but in my opinion it should have at least some effect. Those dittoheads didn’t turn that way overnight.
I would venture to say that Moore won these awards at least partially for being ideologically correct in the eyes of the voters.
That’s what I get for posting before reading the entire thread. I see upon further review that this ground has already been covered.
In an attempt to plow some fresh ground, let me throw this one out for you…The kind of people that will seek out something like the Moore film are likely to be intelligent and politically aware. The people who have never seen the inside of a voting booth are all at Spiderman 2. Given this, I don’t think that the movie will change any minds. Some will go to it for affirmation, others for something to complain about. But I don’t see anyone coming out the theater saying “My god, he’s right! I have to oppose the Republicans and all they stand for! How could I have been so stupid?!”
How about the other group the people that go to be entertained. Moore’s work from Roger and me to TV and on has always been entertaining IMO. I don’t watch Moore’s work to inform me of politics I read papers and look at the news for that. Moore shows me specific incidents that I’ve never seen before and interviews with people but mostly I find his rabble rousing funny and enjoyable.
Whatever about the States I guarantee they’ll be queuing outside the cinemas in Ireland. He’s very very popular over here. He’s had quite a big profile since his TV shows were shown on BBC and CH4. His in your face attitude to people in authority works very well over here as from what I see we’ve got a healthier disrespect for officialdom than our American cousins.
I read 'em several times, actually. You stated clearly that you didn’t have much of any firsthand knowledge of Michael Moore - you stated that your opinion came from reading editorials in the newspaper, and you didn’t say anything about hours of painstaking research to confirm their validity.
You said you don’t necessarily even intend to vote, and I made some assumptions there. I know a lot of non-voters - it’s endemic in my age group. A few of them are genuine centrists, who support and oppose the various principles of each party in fairly equal amounts. The vast majority, though, are people who simply don’t know enough about politics to participate. The ones who claim that their votes don’t count, the ones who claim that both parties are the same, the ones who manage to convince themselves that not voting sends some sort of message - these people can justify nonparticipation all they want, but that doesn’t change it into a reasoned political view. It’s still just trendy apathy and excuses for laziness.
If I sound like I made some incorrect assumptions, feel free to correct me, but I can’t come to any very flattering conclusions of you based on what you’ve written. And I try to encourage people to shake off the laziness and apathy that makes them nonparticipants, because no matter what people say, there’s nothing less subversive than not voting. Not voting is the ultimate act to ensure that the system stays the same, and to ensure that power remains with the various corporate interests/party loyalists/freemasons/space aliens who you’re convinced run the government.
The differences between the major party candidates are night and day, and if you’re actually having trouble making up your mind at this point, it’s because you’re uninformed.
Ack, missed this in my last reply.
What I said was that anyone who makes public claims that Michael Moore is lying is pushing an agenda. You know, a political agenda - just like every editorialist, every talk radio host, every political commentator. They all have agendas. Everything you see in the media is done in order to promote some cause - whether it’s voting a certain way, tuning in next week for another all new episode, or buying disinfectant wipes for your kitchen counter. This is basic media literacy. People who claim Michael Moore is lying are no more noble and unbiased than anyone else in the media - isn’t that obvious? If you think I insulted them by saying they have a purpose to their writing, you don’t understand how the media work at all. They’re all trying to convince you they’re right. Both sides. So believing one side without finding out what the other side says means you’re credulously handing over your brain to them.
If you don’t like Michael Moore, don’t see his films. I didn’t say you had to. But what I said, I said in reply to Max’s assertion that, despite not knowing anything about Moore except what he read in a newspaper editorial, he was still pretty sure Moore’s a liar. Aside from the issue of the veracity of anything Michael Moore’s said, he admitted to believing something someone wrote without any reservations or critical thought, and without giving himself the opportunity to decide - you know, by seeing at least one of Michael Moore’s movies sometime?
I dunno where you got the idea that I think there’s some kind of conspiracy. If there is a vast right- or left-wing conspiracy, it’s probably got bigger fish to fry than this. All I said was that everyone who uses the media does so for a purpose. Isn’t that obvious? When NARAL buys commercials on TV, it’s to promote the political cause of legal abortion. When the ACLU publishes a pamphlet telling you what to do if you’re arrested, it’s to promote active exercise of ones civil rights. When Michael Moore makes a movie, it’s to promote a pretty solidly Democratic Party political agenda, in large part by attempting to discredit the other side. And when someone writes that Michael Moore lies in his films, it’s an attempt to discredit him. You see? Having an agenda has absolutely nothing to do with conspiracies or whatever other paranoid fantasies you might have.
This is an illustration of the sad state of media literacy in this country - apparently, a lot of otherwise-reasonable people don’t understand that the various voices in the media speak in order to further some goal. This is basic, and if you don’t understand it, you’ll never be able to make a reasoned opinion of what’s going on around you. You have to understand a person’s agenda in order to evaluate what they’re saying, and to contextualize it with what the other side’s saying. How does practicing basic media literacy equate to statements that there’s a conspiracy afoot? I don’t understand where you got that out of my statement at all.
The point is you can’t believe what anyone on TV or in the newspaper says without any critical thought. Whether it’s PETA, Right to Life, the Sierra Club, or the US Army, their publications are going to reflect the information that furthers their own agenda. This shouldn’t be news to anyone.
It will have little to no effect on the election. I’ll be watching spiderman 2. I might even take some time aside to make funny faces at those purchasing tickets to see a Michael Moore film.
Just for the record, who exactly are the “good cops” on the GOP side…i.e., the ones who don’t distort facts and sometimes lie?
No, what I said was:
I also forgot to mention that I’ve seen Roger and Me, but that’s easy to forget because it’s a terrible movie based on a totally flawed premise.
Clearly my experience is enough to form an informed opinion about Moore and his adherents. I’d watch his show every week with my liberal roomate and I’d point out the flaws in his premises and how the views he attributed to conservatives were not accurate. My roomate’s reaction was pretty much the same as yours: You don’t know what your talking about. Of course he’s right. You’re just uninformed.
I remember seeing Moore on Politically Incorrect a few years back. He stated that the US doesn’t need any standing military and the fact that we have one is all part of some vast right-wing conspiracy that he didn’t bother to explain. Now, I know that many liberals feel that the we should spend less on the military, or that it doesn’t need to be as large as it is, but I don’t think that the “average” liberal (if there is such a thing) believes that we shouldn’t have any military, at all.
Really, the guy’s an idiot on his best days and a dangerous extremist on his worst. I really don’t understand why liberals line up to defend him. You’re doing your own viewpoint a disservice.
This is rather cynical because it fails to account for the overall motives of the organizations, which can be wildly different. When a representative of the Sierra Club, or some other reputable environmental organization, is debating the trade association of an industry that is polluting, it’s not appropriate to just sit back and say, “Well, they’re both twisting the facts to suit their own purposes,” as if those purposes are both equally valid. In the one case, you have a group of businesses whose profits may be based on damaging the air we breathe and the water we drink. The environmentalists don’t have a short-term financial stake in the matter; they’re acting on behalf of all of us.
The environmentalists may be playing fast and loose with some facts, and shame on them if they do. But that doesn’t mean that we should declare “a pox on both your houses” and dismiss the whole issue as mere partisan wrangling.
It seems to me that the right has had a disheartening level of success in characterizing such essentially altruistic groups as the Sierra Club, the ACLU, etc., as “special interests,” and spreading a level of cynicism and distrust of all sides of any public debate. In debating circles this is called poisoning the well, and it seems to me to be responsible for a lot of the apathy and low voter turn out we see these days.
Where did I say any of that? My posts are right there. Please post quotes where I said I didn’t know anything about Moore except what I read in a newspaper editorial, or where I said that I was pretty sure Moore’s a liar, or where I admitted to believing something someone wrote without any reservations or critical thought. If your having trouble finding those quotes, it’s because they don’t exist.
The only reason I mentioned the LA Weekly article - which I never said was the only article I ever read about Moore (in fact I said that I had read numerous articles) - was because it’s a liberal publication! Doesn’t it say something about Moore when a liberal writer is trying to convince a liberal audience that he distorts the truth and shouldn’t be taken seriously? It was merely an example. For some reason you zoomed in on that and tried to use it as proof than I’m a foolishly uninformed media illiterate with an irrational dislike of Moore. Had you actually read my post in its entirety and applied any sort of critical thought to it you would have seen that your thesis was completely unfounded.
Oh, and a quick clarification to any LA Weekly readers: I’m not talking about the cover article about Moore from a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t read that yet but I am planning to. The article I’m thinking of is from 2 years ago, after the book Stupid White Men came out.
Roger and Me was about the social effects of GM laying off auto workers in Flint, Michigan. Which actually happened. Where’s the “flawed premise”?
See today’s New York Times review of F 9/11 at
It’s a fast read.
And if the article is true, you’ll probably be impressed with
the fact checking Moore has done in producing this book.
FAHRENHEIT 9/11: The Temperature At Which Freedom Burns.
I’ve found myself a bit irritated because Moore has meddled with one of my sacred cows. No, not politics: literature.
Yesterday, I read an article on Yahoo! about how Ray Bradbury seems to be a bit bent out of shape with Moore for appropriating his book title and tagline (“Fahrenheit 451: the temperature at which books burn”) and has threatened legal action.
Apparently, Bradbury contacted Moore’s people months ago, and Moore only got back to him within the past couple weeks. This has not improved Bradbury’s humor any.
It never occurred to me that Moore would NOT have secured permission to use the title from Bradbury, considering the obvious play on words. And I don’t think “right to parody” applies, considering that Moore’s film is not a parody on Bradbury’s work…
Wonder how that will come out?
I saw the same article, Wang-Ka. I was struck by the statement by the F-911 people that they have the greatest respect for Bradbury, and were all hugely influenced by his work–yet they evidently did not have enough respect for him to call him up when he asked them to. That’s a big strike against them for me.
There isn’t much Bradbury can do about it because you can’t copyright a title.
More accurately the premise was that GM decided to lay off the autoworkers and risk the immense social damage to Flint to improve what were already immense profits. ( I want to say “record profits” but perhaps that is from one of Moore’s TV episodes. )