IMO, Stephen Whitty said it best, in his review of Fahrenheit 9/11:
I have the same feelings about George W. Bush, but whenever he says something, I don’t automatically dismiss it as false – I go to the SDMB, find out what’s the truth behind the matter, and then dismiss it as false.
I give Moore the same (dis)courtesy, which is more than most of his detractors do – who, ironically enough, are usually the same folks who accept Bush’s pontifications without question.
Last I checked, even Spinsanity.com couldn’t find any factual errors with Franken’s book. Definitely worth a read, IMO.
I don’t think he’s carrying Kerry’s water, but he is certainly pissing in Bush’s. Take, for example, the charge he makes that Bush let the Bin Ladin family go home shortly after September 11. He makes a really big deal out of it both in the film (so he says) and in interviews. But there isn’t anything remarkable about that, unless it is Bush’s kindness and compassion toward innocent people who otherwise might have suffered the wrath of idiots like Moore, who apparently blames the whole family for the sins of its lone black sheep. It wasn’t a good time to be Arab in America, much less Arab with the name Bin Laden. Moore is a dick.
Having read through the National Review article, I don’t really see any evidence of lying, just a lot of whining and handwringing about selective editing and things that “Moore implies without saying,” (and I hate to be tautological, but if he didn’t say it it can’t be a lie, can it? Cuz he couldn’t have said what the article admits he didn’t say, if you get what I’m saying).
Nice try, but I’s still got zero lies on my scorecard.
Here are a few quick observations regarding the falsity of this “wonderful review.” The author refers to 56 deceits. Here’s a deconstruction of the first six – I suspect the rest will be just as dubious.
This is a deceit? Moore opens the film by describing this as a “dream.” I really don’t understand calling this any shade of lie, and opening with such a dubious assertion calls this author’s credibility immediately into question.
Here the author is again being deceitful. He attempts to counter Moore’s discussion of “calling the race for the other guy,” with discussion about retracting the call for Gore. Not the same.
As is evident in the linked article, and in the article under discussion, there was a call made for Gore based on the VNS numbers. Polling estimations are made by asking people when they come out of polling places who they voted for, no? Given that hundreds, if not thousands of people came out of the Broward County polling places having believed that they voted for Gore when they actually voted for Buchanan, it makes sense that asking these people who they voted for would make it seem like Gore would win.
The point that Moore makes in the film and that this “reviewer” washes over is that VNS did call the race for Gore, and then retracted this. VNS never called the race for Bush. Despite this, Fox News Channel did, the others followed suit, and then retracted this call. In the days that followed, public opinion was crucial – so important that the republicans had their operatives posing as protestors in that famous picture in the hallway, and made up all those “Sore Loserman” signs.
This one is already under discussion in GD. I have not read Toobin’s book, but I will try to do so this weekend to assess the validity of this assertion. It is worth noting that this reviewer has cropped the quote to exclude the issue of “statewide recounts” that is in the Toobin quote, and then used limited recount claims to refute the misstated assertion. Deceitful.
It lauds them? How? I cannot find deceit #4. It can’t be the following:
Has any president ever faced such a protest and had eggs thrown at their limo? The reviewer goes on to assess the rest of this deceit by saying it was true, but it was the fault of the Democrats in the Senate. He even notes that Jim Jeffords left the Republican party. His primary argument for the deceit of Moore’s claim appears to be that the tax cut passed.
I think the following is supposed to be “deceit” 5.
[quote]
Did Bush’s approval ratings begin to sink? Not really. Moore shows a screen displaying Bush with 53% job approval on May 3, and 45% on September 5. Strangely, the screen shot includes no source for this alleged poll.[…]
According [to Ruggles’ chart of “major polls”], never during 2001 did Bush’s approval rating fall as low as 45% in any of the polls.
Easily found at PollingReport.com is this poll. I agree that it would have been helpful for Moore to cite it. Moore’s general point about a decline in Bush’s polling numbers, however, is easily supported by a review of the other polls archived at the site.
We’ve covered this before, as well. The issue as to how weekends are treated is foolish. Does anyone honestly say “I’m going to take a 12 day vacation” when they will be away for 16 days, because they are subtracting weekends? If I pay to go on a cruise, I damn well better get Saturdays and Sundays included! Nobody contests the characterization of Bush’s vacationing more than other presidents, they just worry about how vacation days were treated.
That’s what you get when you can only catch him on the golf course. There is no comment in this review about a clip in which Bush stammers to try and answer a question about what he’ll be working on during his working vacation.
Oh Hector, please deconstruct the whole thing and put it on a web page so it can be linked. Please? (I know, unfair, it’s not my free time I’m asking you to give up)
The web site states: “[This is a preliminary version of an article that will be published on National Review Online.]” so we’re going to be hearing a lot more about it.
As far as deceit 2, you still haven’t addressed Moore’s spin that he presents CBS and CNN calling the race for Gore, then saying Fox News Channel called the race for Bush, and the other networks changing their tune. He leaves out the fact that Fox called the race for Gore too. Then they retracted the call and at 2:16 (when most of America was asleep) called the race for Bush (which they later retracted).
To me, calling the race for Gore before the polls closed in Florida’s panhandle, which no doubt caused Bush to lose thousands of votes, is a much bigger story than Fox News calling the race for Bush when not only had all of the polling closed, but the majority of America was arguably asleep and not even paying attention.
We won’t discuss Deceit 3, since you haven’t seen the book (nor have I, although I do remember the results of the independent recounts done after the fact that showed Bush winning Florida).
I think Deceit 4 is referencing Moore’s assertion that Bush had trouble getting some of his legislation passed and his judge appointments through. The author’s changing of “appointments” to “confirmations” is picking nits IMHO, but he does make a good point that Bush was able to pass much of his important legislation.
As for Deceit 5, Bush’s polling numbers, I found the same poll at PollingReport.com, and I can’t follow your math. I read it as:
10/3-7/01 76; 9/5-9/0144; 8/8-12/01 43; 7/12-16/01 45; 6/7-10/01 44; 5/3-7/0151; 4/6-10/01 43; 3/8-12/01 48; 2/15-19/01 47;
I’d also point out that these are (as I understand it on PollingReport.com) favorablitity ratings, not job approval ratings. Also, this is the only poll I see on the site during this time period where the numbers are anywhere near this low. A bit of selective editing from Moore.
As for Deceits 1 and 6, it is all in the impression Moore gives. He presents an image, and infers one meaning, but doesn’t state the meaning. This is misleading.
I’m talking about the list of 56 deceits, committed by the author of the linked-to article above. What are you talking about?
How would the point be changed by including all of that? The point would remain – initial calls for Gore were made by VNS, which all the networks reported. VNS never called the race for Bush. Yet for some reason Fox did, followed by other networks. How would this point be changed by including any other information?
[…calls 10 minutes before polls closing text deleted for irrelevancy…]
What was the “much” legislation?
His point is that Bush was able to pass two items. Does this suffice for “much,” in your opinion? Is the essential point of this “deceit” valid? No. Michael Moore’s point stands unchallenged.
A bit of difficulty on your part, actually. You are correct that the issue pertains to “job performance.” Why did you go to “favorability” numbers, use them to suggest I was wrong, and review them to suggest Moore was selective? Try reading the right numbers. Here’s a specific link. Scroll down to the poll I drew your attention to earlier.
Huh? In “deceit” 1, he clearly states his meaning. He describes it as a dream. Perhaps people were also confused when he rolled the footage backwards? Perhaps people thought that there were fireworks that recede into the ground, and that everybody on the stage decided to move real funny-like too?
As to “deceit” 6, Moore explicitly names his source, the WP article. The article says Bush spent 42% of his time at vacation spots. It describes how it included weekdays. I have not heard one argument against this point that attempts to suggest Bush didn’t spend a lot of time on vacation. What do you think? Perhaps he might have chosen to have a meeting with someone about the PDB on August 6 if he wasn’t away in Texas. Might have tried to talk to Tenet. Got together with Richard Clarke. Could have been helpful, n’est pas?
Yes. That point would remain. But that isn’t the point being discussed. The point being discussed is that Moore presents the situation as “the networks called the race for Gore, then Fox called the race for Bush, so the other networks followed suit”. This is technically correct, but Moore leaves out the information that Fox at first called the race for Gore along with the other networks. His portrayal of the events is misleading.
And calling the race for Gore before polls closed is not irrelevant. Maybe to Moore’s film, but not to the voters who were disenfranchised because of the networks’ rush to judgment.
I disagree. He passed the two major planks that he ran on: tax cuts for all Americans, and No Child Left Behind. Those were two of the big ticket items - that is “much” in my book.
Duly noted. I didn’t see the link for the earlier polls. I will say that there were other polls with higher numbers that Moore could have used, or he could have averaged the available polls. But he chose to use a poll that was less favorable towards Bush. Some would consider that misleading, or at the very least, not objective.
I think using the word “vacation” brings up images of the President doing absolutely no work whatsoever for the entire time of his vacation. Do you really think that is the case? If so, I feel sorry for you. Neither am I suggesting that he did nothing but work during his “vacation”. I believe the answer is somewhere in the middle. And as far as the August 6 PDB, hindsight is a beautiful thing, and to second-guess what might have been from the comfort of your computer is another beautiful thing. But if you are suggesting that Bush could have prevented 9/11 based on the vagaries in a brief, of which he receives one every day with countless issues in it, is stretching it, n’est pas?
How? The fact that Fox first calls the race for Gore is irrelevant to his point, which is that the tide was turned by Fox.
He’s making a documentary; he doesn’t have to be objective, merely accurate. So says Roger Ebert, who ought to know.
As you said, this is all hindsight, and we can only agree to disagree as to what the President “should” have done after receiving the PDB. Moore, however, never makes any claim to the rightness or wrongness of Bush’s (non)response. He simply reminds us of the briefing, and lets each of us decide for ourselves whether Bush did the right thing. Just because some folks may draw a conclusion that’s unflattering to Bush does not qualify as a flaw in the movie.
This makes no sense. The footage of September 11 was simply that…footage, which stands very well on its own. The fact that Michael Moore may or may not agree with the threat of terrorism (a claim I’m not sold on just yet), it doesn’t make the footage any less true. This is not deceitful.
“What Moore did not tell” us is that, gasp, there is one person who thinks that Bush’s actions were commendable. Big whoop. I expect many more feel the same way, just as many feel that those minutes were…not so commendable. The fact that one person (an elementary school principal) feels that those nine minutes were well spent does not in any way make Michael Moore’s footage deceitful.
Fox did. No one knows why except maybe Moore. The other networks followed suit after four minutes. (Did he do parallel editing with a clock and a sweating Tom Brokaw?) According to Moore, they did this because they believed that if Fox said it, it must be true. CBS was again the first to retract.
At least she was there. Damnation, you people. You insist that we see the film to criticize it, but you’ll take Moore’s view about events he didn’t even witness. Sychophants.
Well, I disagree about what Moore’s point is, but if the issue is that he left out parts of the story that weren’t necessary to make his point, well, okay. He also left out ABC and CBS calling the race for Gore in the first place as well. OMG!
Well, since the topic is F911, it is irrelevant to the topic, but if you want to talk about disenfranchisement, we can pick that up elsewhere.
Okay, but your book is insufficient to support the claim that Moore’s characterization is deceitful.
In retrospect, I could have made a more specific link in the first place.
I completely agree that he is not objective. The point under discussion is “deceitful,” however. Do you think the mean poll numbers would have been going up for Bush, or would the point be the same?
I’m not sure why you would feel sorry for me. However, I do not doubt that he did some work. I imagine he signed papers and that sort of thing. Frankly, he doesn’t strike me as a very hard working president to begin with. I have no idea what he might have been doing, but the point stands that he is measureably the president most absent from Washington.
I never suggested any such thing. I do suggest though, that he should have talked to the key players about it. It is known that he made little if any contact with those players. His response to the matter displayed disinterest. Perhaps if he had been in Washington, his response would have been equally inadequate. I would at the very least, prefer a president who was willing to show up for work, not operate somewhere inbetween work and vacation.
