But you forget, my friend, that the role of the small, individual shareholder in the modern corporation is to shut up and do what the Board and the representatives of institutional investors say. Those wise men in suits know what’s best for all shareholders, large and small–well, large anyway.
And hell, if you’re going to be critical of any single aspect of gun use in America, why not just go out and join some goddam hippie organization like Greenpeace, rather than poking your nose in where you don’t belong.
Your job, as a small shareholder or a single member, is to do what your betters tell you is the right thing.
Not necessarily, heck look at religious work on the bible where the sources are bibles in English and other people’s work on them. Heck, when I was getting my minor in Medieval Studies I was lucky to get second or third hand sources at times. First hand experience isn’t the end all and be all, I don’t need to see The Birth of a Nation to talk about it being racist…
The images and the complete text of the interview do not suggest that Moore faked the scene. They suggest just the explanation that I proposed earlier. Of course, if Moore is a liar then there’s no reason to take his word for how things really went down, but you can’t just pick out the one line that seems to support the theory that the scene was faked while ignoring the quotes that indicate an alternative explanation for the apparently inconsistent shots.
Well, that’s the thing, ain’t it? How do you meassure truth?
Your major beef with Moore seems to be that you believe he staged part of the segment with Heston. Well, if that’s it, I can tell you that your average local news station does the same thing every day.
So I maintain that it’s the end result that counts and I view all ‘facts’ in media with a wary eye.
I’m still asking why you started this thread. What’s your motive? What do you want to say? If it’s only “Moore staged that interview”, my response is: “So what. that’s common practise”.
no, you’re wrong. You do not have a view on BfC. You have not seen BfC. You, at best, can only repeat the views and opinions of someone else. It is not your opinion. when you have seen the movie, then you can say anything you want, because it will be YOUR opinion. How hard is that for you to understand?
Jesus.
But you don’t. We’re not talking about the name of the movie, we not talking about the DVD cover or the movie poster here, were talking about the entire content of the movie, the views it presents and the arguements it makes.
You cannot call someone a liar and claim to hold a valid opinion of something if you refuse to view the source at first hand.
you can try all the diversionary tactics concerning the Nazi’s all you want, but I would still make the same criticism of you if you said “Birth of a Nation” is full of lies if you refused to watch it yourself.
the Data is there for you to analyse yourself, but you refuse to simply because someone else told you not to. Are you really that much of a sheep?
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If you haven’t seen the movie, how do you know that the arguements you have seen aren’t manipulated themselves? I’ve already shown you several examples from the one suite you kept referencing, and thqt was only with 10 minutes work.
If you were UNABLE to see BfC first hand, I would accept that you can only make your argument based on second hand sources. The fact that you refuse to, and keep calling him a liar, makes your opinion invalid.
I never thought either Heston scenes were one continous shot, it always came across as two different peices there.
So, he’s bias. So’s the news. I remember actually watching the news on the ABC one night, one story was how a guy tried to HELP his neighbour by chasing a thief, and accidentally got shot by police and the thief was later arrested. A simple mistake.
BUT, the story on channel 7 was how the NEIGHBOUR broke into his house and was shot while trying to evade the police. The moral of the story, don’t trust your neighbours. Not only that, channel 7 uses the words horrific, shocking, terrible about as much as they can.
The news distorts the facts. They edit to try and make it more “entertaining”, or they just embelish wherever they can. If the news programs can do it, then so can Michael Moore.
I was questioning the point of providing a source if it didn’t help my argument anyway. As far as outsourcing, do a google search and see for yourself what the first point of criticism usually is - domestic job losses. The people in Flint, Michigan weren’t working for less, they weren’t working at all.
And there are three different versions, all from Moore, of the explanation for the Heston interview, two of which contradict the third that you put forth, not to mention the notion that Moore would’ve had to have committed a felony to do as he claimed. Yes, I heard your proposed explanation. Now you’ve heard, a second time, why I reject it. Are you done?
Okay, well, I have my evidence that Moore’s a liar. Where’s your evidence that the local news stations are?
Actually, no. I’m not terribly interested. You just asserted that the end justifies the means, and that means I can’t view you as a worthwhile contributor to this discussion. My justification for started the thread is explained in the first post.
Guess what? My primary criticism is directed at one portion of the movie which I have in fact seen. The clip that I’ve repeatedly mentioned?
You can whine about context if you like, but I don’t buy it.
Ah-ha! I see the problem right here. No, we’re not talking about the entire content of the movie. And I’ve asserted repeatedly I’m not concerned with the views it presents. My concern is with Michael Moore. I have used a specific scene in Bowling for Columbine, that I have seen, coupled with an interview he gave, to assert that the man is a liar.
Are you reading a different thread? No one told me not to watch Bowling for Columbine. And I’m not refusing to watch it. It should be at my place from Netflix by this weekend. Am I confusing you with my single-speak here?
I saw one item that, if your assertion were true, would be a clear untruth. And I’ll look for it. When the movie gets here this weekend. “The fact that I refuse to”… are you maybe reading this thread from secondhand sources?
I read all the relevant quotes on the “Bowling for Truth” site (and I must point out that the links are dead so I cannot check the context of the quotes), and I do not see the contradiction. They vary a bit, but stories always vary in retelling. All are consistent with this sequence of events: Moore went to L.A. to film the South Central segment and to find the manufacturer of the gun, while there his crew convinced him to go by Heston’s place, and Moore decided that he would try to offer Heston the gun.
What the brain trust behind “Bowling for Truth” doesn’t seem to realize is that 1) a filmmaker can have two reasons for wanting to visit a location and 2) the second quote doesn’t say he travelled to LA to see Heston, but that he travelled to L.A. to trace the gun to its origins and then decided to try to present the gun to Heston.
*Or so “Bowling for Truth” says, and since the site contains other falsehoods why should I take their word for it? Perhaps the description of the relevant gun laws is correct, but there’s no cite. And re-reading the Moore quote, he doesn’t actually say he bought the gun in California. He says they wanted to trace the gun to its origins, and he says he had the same model of gun that was used to kill the girl. He doesn’t say that he bought the gun in California rather than bringing it with him. He doesn’t even say whether they ever actually visited the gun manufacturer at all. Maybe the rest of the interview clears this up, but like I said, the link is dead.
Anyway, even if he did commit a felony, that’s hardly as bad as potentially deceptive film editing, is it? At least that’s the impression I’ve gotten from you.
*If you’re admitting that you’re believing what you want to believe and not believing the only possible truthful explanation, then I’m done.
With that bolding added, I can see that my phrasing was not as clear as it might have been. Allow me to elaborate.
The theory YOU BELIEVE, the one that holds that Moore is a liar, is not the only possible truthful explanation. You believe that theory because you want to believe it, not because it is the only possible truthful explanation.
I did not wish to imply that the theory I presented is in fact the only possible truthful explanation, not least of all because I do not believe that to be the case. I believe that there is insufficient evidence to make a determination as to what really happened, so none of us here are capable of saying what the only possible truthful explanation is. However, in the absence of such evidence I think the ethical thing to do is give Moore the benefit of the doubt.
Allright, that’s a bit better then. Yes, there are other possible explanations. Though Moore’s response in the interview seems to indicate he got the gun in California, it’s not explicit. Nevertheless, the other two versions of the story do contradict his statements. Which means the reasonable thing to do is (for me) to doubt Moore’s word on the subject.
Again, I don’t see the contradiction. He mentions different parts of the story in the different quotes on the site, but that’s not the same thing as contradicting yourself. I would expect him to tell the story different ways at different times, especially in response to different interviewers and different questions. Moore offers two different reasons for being in L.A., but they aren’t mutually exclusive. It’s unsurprising that a filmmaker would hope to get more than one scene out of a trip to another city.
The only contradictions between the second quoted story and the first and third come if you accept the “Bowling for Truth” interpretation of the second story. In the actual quote Moore does not claim he thought up the idea of visiting Heston himself, he only says that he wanted to give Heston the gun. He must have had plenty of time during the drive over to come up with that. He also does not he say he went to L.A. intending to visit Heston. “The reason we were in L.A. was because we went out to the gun manufacturer that made the Saturday Night Special that killed the little girl in Flint. So, I wanted to trace the gun back to where it was originally made. It was one of the ideas for the film that didn’t end up in the film, but that’s why we were out here shooting.” Only after that does he talk about visiting Heston, so I don’t see how the “that’s why” could reasonably be taken to refer to Heston and not the gun manufacturer.
Ugh. I hate looking at the design of that site. Curse you for making me go back there to fetch these.
The third interview version:
So here, he’s done with LA after shooting the South Central stuff. He’s leaving town, and there’s a spontaneous suggestion from his crew to get a Star-map and find Heston’s place, which Moore does not agree with at first. He had no plans to do anything else in LA.
From the second interview :
Maybe you parse this differently than I, but it sounds like Moore here claims he was planning to give Heston the gun for a bit longer. It sounds like he wanted to go see Heston. Certainly doesn’t seem consistent with the above.
Moore doesn’t say anything about when he decided he wanted to present the gun to Heston. The quote doesn’t tell us how far in advance he made the plan, so there is nothing to contradict the possibility that the idea only struck him after the crew suggested the visit to Heston. Maybe that was the very reason he agreed to the visit. Or perhaps he had come up with the idea to present the gun to Heston long before, at some point during the two years he attempted to get the interview, but didn’t think he’d ever be able to do it until the crew convinced him to make a last in-person attempt to see Heston.
You can interpret or spin the quote to make Moore look like a liar, as “Bowling for Truth” has done, but it isn’t proof. It’s not even good evidence. All we have to go on here is a single sentence, and it just doesn’t contain the necessary information. Given the seriousness of the accusations against Moore, I’d need a heck of a lot more supporting evidence than this to make me willing to treat them as true. I have read the “Bowling for Truth” site, and the evidence ain’t there. Maybe it’s convincing enough for you, but I don’t think the information available is sufficient for one to fairly and reasonably condemn Moore’s work or character.
