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The allegations that Moore “lies” in his films virtually always turn out to be bullshit. Careful examination of right wing hit pieces on Moore’s films rarely reveal factual errors (and never once a proven, intentional lie) but always consist of whining about conclusions and tone.
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CNN did not expose any “lies.” CNN admitted that Moore got all his facts right and that they got their own facts wrong.
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Moore does not ask his audience to take his word for anything so his personal credibility is irrelevant and not at issue.
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Moore’s critics have their own agenda too, you know.
I’m really tired of the “Michael Moore is a liar” meme. It’s bullshit. He’s a political editoralist. He has opinions. His films are not objective but they are not meant to be and he makes no attempt to pretend that they are. The attacks on Moore are nothing but an attempt to distract attention away from the issues he’s presenting. The more the right wing, corporate owned, American media tries to demonize Michael Moore,. the less they actually have to focus any attention on how the American health care industry rapes and murders the middle class.
OK, folks…maybe we have a different definition of “lying.” If Moore has scenes in his movie to look as though they are spontaneous occurances (remember, he calls these movies “documentaries”), but they are in fact complete set ups, is that not a lie?
No, it means you don’t understand editing and the term documentary. Do you have examples of these set ups? It’s not Heston holding a gun upo by any chance is it?
Search the Pit. There was a thread about F911 covering all this over and over and over again. After something like 350+ posts nobody came up with anything solid apart from some sloppy movie making.
Hell’s bells, IIRC – don’t have time for a search now – even Lib who spearheaded many of the attacks (mind you, while refusing to watch the movie, but rather based on right-wing smear attacks) ended-up admitting that MM didn’t “lie” in said documentary. Further, I also seem to recall a similar retraction from Airman, who only ended-up watching the documentary because someone else paid for his ticket.
I would cite his visit to Cuba as an example.
You mean, like some guy…can’t think of any off the top of my head, but let’s say “some guy”…who gives a political speech and pretends to be out amongst “the people” but carefully screens the audience to avoid unpleasant truths…
That kind of “lying”?
Sure. That’s not quite the same thing, but I would consider that a form of lying, as well.
He was on a boat. He shouted at the GITMO peps through a loud speaker. He went to a hospital in Cuba and the Yanks he brought with him got seen to.
He never said that it was spontaneous. He never said that the Cubans didn’t know he was coming etc. He just did the same thing he’s been doing since TV Nation days.
The Cuban part is the weakest part of the movie but I’d like to know exactly where the lie is? Can you be more specific?
Don’t you think that setting a scene up to LOOK spontaneous is the same as SAYING that it is?
Why do you think that part of the movie is the weakest?
Fair enough.
Then I suggest to you that Mr. Moore’s intent is to be provocative in a creative way, to provoke debate, which provokes thought. A documentary that strictly adhered to a recitation of facts and figures with scrupulous attention to contrary views on those facts would be as interesting as watching cheese age. There is no clear line between creative and provocative propaganda and sheer bullshit. In my estimation, Moore is far from any such line, if it even existed.
If Mr Moore forces his political enemies to plow through his facts in order to glean some nugget of fudge to belabor him about, he still has forced them to the facts. He believes that to be a positive step, and I agree. Its also sneaky as the dickens, and I rather admire that. Not to emulate, mind, but to appreciate from a discreet distance. Far too dainty to blot my curmudgeon that way.
(probably get me flamed here but…)
The ‘lie’ was in the same place it usually is for a politician…i.e. it wasn’t there really. MM, like any crafty politician, doesn’t come right out and ‘lie’…he spins. Like a magician he shows you an image or a series of images, then he says something that is technically factually true…but combined with the image or with his spin you are supposed to come out of it with a completely different impression than if you simply read the script verbatim (which is exactly how he wants it). I haven’t seen Sicko yet…but I’ve seen most of his other movies and its very subtle (or not so subtle) manipulation of the audience via the same mechanism that Bush et al used on us in the initial run up to war with Iraq…i.e. spin, cherry picking, etc (and in Bush’s case some out right lies…he should have hired MM to do his presentation IMHO, since whoever he had flubbed things pretty badly in retrospect).
YMMV, and I’ll leave you guys too who tore who a new one. Personally I think MM’s outrage was a bit staged…and really, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between what CNN was saying and what MM was saying (more on the order of nitpicks). At a guess MM deliberately chose to take issue because it would get him all this publicity for his movie…and it looks like its working exactly as planned.
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What scene? The scene where he asks the locals is there a hospital near? The point of that was to show that there was lots of medical places around. I didn’t think he then just walked into a hospital he was pointed to.
It was weakest IMO because it wasn’t needed. As I said it was real old school Moore ala Chuckles the corporate crime fighting chicken.
The film worked best when it was showing systems in countries of the same type eg. UK etc. The Cuban thing was just rabble rousing and a way to get PR IMO. It worked like a dream BTW so fair play.
You know all those wildlife documentaries you see. Do you think that the camera is just placed down and nothing is organised or manufactured? I’ve watched “the making of” for lots of them. I don’t see people screaming about them. The only reason people go apeshit about Moore is plain and simple IMO. They disagree with his message and go after the way he delivers it. I’d have more respect if you just went after his politics. At least then there’d be a real debate about the issues and not just a back and forth about his film making techniques.
No. CNN made 2 honest mistakes which they corrected. Moore made a bunch of “mistakes” which he refuses to acknowledge. There’s a world of difference betweeen those two positions.
Oh, John Mace, don’t you get it? Those aren’t mistakes, they are creative techniques.
:smack: I obviously need to check myself into a re-education camp.
I have no idea how “honest” they were but they had no choice but to correct them after they got busted.
Cite? I’m not aware that CNN was able to identify any mistakes by Moore.
The CNN response is the cite.
Look, all they did was show how Moore cherry picks the data, which is a common tactic of people pushing a political agenda. Moore flipped out. Call me when something new happens. The guy is pimping his film, and his little hissy fit is probably working just fine. I remain unimpressed.
Don’t trouble yourself, its all been arranged. But now that you mention it, do you prefer the tofu-intensive vegan diet, or the kosher?
Re: the Cuba scene:
His point was intended to be satirical, not journalistic.
While its true that Moore has a tendency sometimes to undermine himself with this kind of stunt, mostly because it allows his enemies to create distractions and conservative sheep to nod their heads smugly and feel that everything his film is about has now been “discredited,” I think that the overtly satirical tones and contexts which come across in his movies are intentionally ignored by the critics and propagandists who try to characterize things like the Cuba stunt as Moore attempting to make a deadly serious argument when he’s really just staging an elaborate joke. Of course he doesn’t think Cuba is a utopia. His point was facetious – that even an oppressive dicatorship shows arguably more compassion than insurance companies do.
Those critics who pretend not to understand that Moore’s tongue was in his cheek are using the classic passive-aggressive rhetorical technique of pretending to take everything ultra-literally which allows them to ridicule arguments on a superficial level without actually addressing them at all.
When you watch the Cuba scene, you have to imagine there’s a smilie at the end of it.
They didn’t show that any of the data was wrong. They didn’t show that Moore had been dishonest or lied about anything. They didn’t show that Moore was mistaken about anything.