This thread has just become another Dope exercise in the *ad hominem * as a comfortable defense of willful ignorance. It’s become a referendum on whether you like Moore or not, and has conveniently displaced any substantive discussion of the issues he raises.
That happens too often around here, IMO. Any thread that touches on a controversial issue is likely to devolve into an examination of the personal worth of each position’s proponents, and discussion of the positions themselves gets dropped along the way.
This is of course what the “conservative media” is trying to do as regards Fahrenheit 911. If they can succeed in keeping the discussion focused on Michael Moore, they can keep people from looking too closely at what Michael Moore says.
I don’t think this is supporting a viewpoint so much as illustrating a viewpoint using the words of another. One might do this because Groening, Chris Rock, or P.J. O’Rourke has already said what you are trying to say in a more concise and amusing way. They aren’t being cited as sources of information, they’re simply being used to add a bit of color.
I heard Moore wanted Bowling for Columbine listed in the “Best Animated Film” category, but the folks at the Academy said that Charlton Heston didn’t have enough musical numbers to qualify, so he had to settle for being pigeonholed in the Documentary category instead.
I think the outrageous/strange/funny/bizarre/whatever thing about this incident is the fact that he got it from a financial institution which on most of the planet Earth is not traditionally associated with the distribution of firearms, not that he got it on day 1 instead of 3 or in building X instead of building Y or for doing task Q instead of task R.
He only got it “from the bank” because he’s a filmmaker and requested in advance that the gun be there for him so he could include it in the movie. Most other customers get the gun from a gun dealer! :smack:
You say the important part is that the transaction is through the bank, and that’s lovely, how does showing a normal (through a gun dealer) transaction change that fact? It doesn’t. It doesn’t detract from that fact in the slightest. However, showing him walk out of the bank doors with a gun suggests that the bank has a room full of rifles for any and all comers, which isn’t true. You may not think it’s important, I guarantee other people do. Is his audience is so dense that they can’t follow a multi-step transaction, thus the need to dumb it down and pretend the guns are stored in the bank? I hardly think so.
What? Has the definition of “lie” changed that much? If misrepresentation is not a lie, then Bush didn’t lie, North Korea didn’t lie, Clinton didn’t lie and OJ didn’t lie!
Moore’s sequence suggested that anyone could do what he did in the film.
Another demonstration of how power corrupts. Michael Moore gets our attention, knows we’re listening, feels powerful.
Then he plays fast and loose with the facts, cause he knows (or thinks) he can get away with it. Anything is OK, cause it fits his agenda.
His crowning achievement, however, is not his films, but his performance at the awards. He showed himself to be a self-absorbed egotist: the rules didn’t apply to him; he’s above the rules; he no longer has to be accountable, or tell the truth, or be fair – he’s got POWER.
Let’s just keep him away fom the “absolute power” button. He will lie to you to get his finger on it.
We call Michael Moore a liar so that people will know the truth.
It doesn’t matter how much of a lie it was. It doesn’t matter if the lie was ‘for our own good.’ It doesn’t even matter what side of the political fence he’s on (albeit he tries to play with the PC side).
What matters is that we know we cannot trust Michael Moore. And particularly we cannot trust him anywhere in close proximity to our brains.
Let’s get some perspective here. The OP as stated is:
Now we know. We call Micheal Moore a liar because he lies. He misrepresents the truth. He misleads people for his own agenda.
We have both vitriolic Moore defenders and vitriolic Moore destroyers and a whole lot of us somewhere in between. I think we answered the OP adequately.
Anyone want to start a thread(s) cheering or chiding Moore?
I read your earlier post, what I said was that they don’t stock guns at the bank branch for distribution to anyone who opens an account, which is what Moore filmed. Being a registered dealer gave the branch the ability to do a background check.
1 - Bank is a registered firearms dealer - Fact
2 - Bank gives away guns to CD buyers - Fact
3 - Bank performs background check at the branch - Fact
4 - Bank normally sends customers to an offsite dealer to pick up guns - Fact
5 - Bank normally gives away guns at the branch - Not Fact
6 - Bank normally stores guns inside the branch - Not Fact
The last three lines get deliberately muddied by the way Moore filmed this topic. The way he filmed it, one would think #'s 5 and 6 were true, as opposed to false. That, to me, is a misrepresentation of the facts, designed to give viewers a skewed view of the situation.
I would like to point out that NOBODY has attempted to dispute facts 1-3, those are freely admitted by everybody, it is 4-6 that are the bone of contention. Nobody said he was a liar because the bank didn’t give away guns, it was because they don’t give them away at the branch, which is what Moore depicted. Saying over and over that 1-3 are true is fine, but nobody is disputing that in the first place.
My gripe with Moore is this: There are smart liberals and stupid liberals just as there are smart conservatives and stupid conservatives. I find I have more in common with smart conservatives than stupid liberals so that’s the way my respect runs. Just because a man happens to have roughly the same political beliefs as me does not in any way affect my judgement of his integrity and intelligence.
Is there any other evidence about the bank scene, other than the biased representation of a single interview on BowlingforTruth? Because it’s obviously in that interview that there’s easily as much wilful misrepresentation of the facts as in BfC.
Not exactly a lie, but you gotta wonder about the morality of a man who would keep quiet about his knowledge of the prisoner abuse scandalsmonths before the story broke as to keep the scoop for himself to boost ticket sales… and then blames his fear of his detractors for "prevent"ing him to release the news.
Sorry, but this guy is a prick. People were tortured for months while he wrestled with his “decision.” Nice guy, Michael!
What about the news media outlets who also had that footage and sat on it until the scandal broke? I mean, it’s not as if Moore filmed the prisoner abuse stuff himself; he got it from some news folks in Iraq, who are just as guilty of “keeping quiet” about the abuse as Moore is.
Heck, CBS delayed reporting the Abu Garade scandal twice because the Pentagon told them to supress it. Do they deserve blame as well?
His ‘keeping quiet’ about prisoner abuse is identical to what journalists and reporters do every day. Why are these things suddenly black-and-white offensive because it’s Moore doing them?
Moore stands to personally profit (as in 7 figures+) from keeping it secret if he is able to release the news on a timetable of his choosing.
Moore, unlike journalists, has no professional ethos regarding backchecking his sources, getting a second source, etc.
Part of Moore’s self-image is that he is morally superior to the Bush administration, conservatives, etc. and that he is a tireless defender of the little man. Except when that defense could cost him a scoop that would result in $X of unrealized revenue, it seems.
“We”? You posted with the title “Think of the OP” and then proceeded to fail to pay any attention to it whatsoever. That’s okay, because almost everyone else did too. I was hoping- indeed, I asked- that this wouldn’t turn into a “I like him!” “I hate him!” thread, but…
5 pages and one actual answer later (thank you, Master Wang-Ka), I’ve decided to stop reading.
My bolding. And this is, presumably, precisely why he couldn’t realise his images (which were of ‘abuse’ rather than ‘torture’. He’d have been jumped all over because of the personal gains he would make and because he is not a ‘professional journalist’, whatever that means.
Don’t get me wrong, I can see where he adjusts reality to make his point but grow up people - everybody does that. You can’t say that just because someone whose views you don’t agree with does it, then it’s bad, but when those who agree with you do it then it’s fine.
And as for this:
I think you did get an answer. It’s that there aren’t any blatantly undisputable lies. As with all things, there are different perspectives and different people trying to coerce you into seeing their point of view.
Try reading my earlier posts. I told you that he IS a liar, and I told you why.
This post was just a follow-up saying "enough already! We demonstrated the OP. We said why he’s called a liar and why.
You referred to the one point that basically everyone else had already jumped on- the bank sequence. You then said it was a lie because it fits your definition of a lie. Great. Only problem is about thirty people beat you to the punch.
It isn’t that you were pissing on the spirit of the OP, while paying lip service to the thread title. Half the people posting to this thread did the same thing.
It’s that you told everyone else to pay attention to the OP…
