wonderwench

roflmao! You barely know me, but thanks!

silent_jay

This is an odd discussion, anger\disgust whatever you want to call it, , never seen his work, never seen this film in particular yet it's all lies ,I just don't know.

I downloaded and watched the film tonight and I have to say the man has a point, the facts are right there , but hey if you never see the film you'll never know.

Just my 2 cents.

__________________
Absence makes the heart grow fonder

powerclown

Moore is for the Working Man!
Moore is for the Downtrodden!
Moore stands for the Repressed!
Moore stands against Corporate Greed!

Well, maybe. But he's also a mulitmillionaire capitalist (which is ok). But a mulitmillionaire folk hero who lives the life of a king? He spent $20 million just to promote the movie. He better be careful lest he becomes that which he mocks. He stands to make at least $50 million if the movie grosses more than $500 million worldwide. Is that a man of the working class? He is a great manipulator of the working class' emotions, thats for sure.

Moore's no dummy. He knows that he could never make a movie like this anywhere else BUT in America. For all his blustery indignation, you just know he would never choose to live anywhere else that couldn't provide him the standard of living that America does.

What makes this all so lame is the fact that there happens to be a presidential election in 5 months.

tecoyah

I fail to see where the movie debases "America", Bush is not America, Bush is a man.

If anything the movie is an attempt to help the country become a better democracy/republic, as there can be no healthy democratic process without adequate information.

As for the sarcasm you portray at the beginning of your post, he is certainly no longer downtrodden, but his movie does address much of the rest.

__________________
Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

Charlatan

Hatred or violence aside (as I don't agree that those are his intentions)... I don't see a problem with stirring up the people...

Right or wrong, sometimes eyes need to be opened and attention focused... Sometimes you need to pay attention the "man behind the curtain."

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

losthellhound

Michael actually threw his support behind Clarke.. He will most likely support Joh Kerry as Clarke has

__________________
"Life is possible only with illusions. And so, the question for the science of mental health must become an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that reflects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live?"
-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

kutulu

I heard he went to a Dean function intending to support his campaign but left quickly thinking that Dean was a real asshole.

The actual fantasy world is the one where people actually believe the crap you're throwing on the wall there. There are very few people that actually believe that totalitarian regimes are some paradise. That's just the conservative response that talk radio shows repeat day after day and then their parrots chirp it over and over again.

If that's what you really think the liberal opposition to this war is, then you have no idea what it really is.

At the same time, if you think that we American's are totally blameless you need to do some research.

wonderwench

Crap to some is fertilizer for thought to others.

The problem with the liberal outlook is that it often condemns America for not being perfect while excusing or ignoring far worse behavior in totalitarian regimes.

Case in point: the lamentation over the thousands of unintended civilian casualties at the hands of American in Iraq and Afghanistan and the long silence about the millions murdered by Saddam's regime.

cthulu23

Not true...many peace and justice advocates, as well as human rights groups, railed against the Hussein regime. As I've mentioned in other threads, such "bleeding hearts" groups get very little attention in America. If we look at the history of American aid and foreign policy, we can see that many times the money flows to some of the worst despots or buchers in the world (Duvalier, Somoza, Hussien, Mobutu, etc). Through all of this, "liberal" rights groups have screamed and shouted about the horror being wrought. Personally, I find it a little irritating to be accused of moral inaction by some American conservatives that have shown little interest in these issues in the past.

wonderwench

It was an unfortunate aspect of the Cold War that we aligned ourselves with totalitarian despots. It is, however, quite easy to condemn those alliances with the advantage of 20-20 hindsight. At the time, the spread of Communism was viewed as a more serious threat.

I agree that some liberal groups have been vocal about the horrors and atrocities commited by despotic regimes - but sadly, many of the so-called liberal leadership and media are not among them.

cthulu23

We aligned ourselves with despots long before the cold war, and we've continued to align ourselves after the fall of the Soviets. What we've seen is the triumph of realpolitick over ideology. Bush gave foreign aid to the Taliban pre 9-11 and Clinton wasn't shy about cozying up to butchers, either. Neither side is very concerned with the suffering of others around the globe. Our leaders aren't above using that suffering as a convenient smoke screen, though.

Edit: and to get back to the point of my previous response, you should use caution when accusing "liberals" of actions that your own side is guilty of.

wonderwench

Yes, we aligned ourselves with Stalin in order to defeat Hitler.

What we've seen is that the world is an imperfect place with many risks and dangers. Sometimes we have to associate with appalling people in order to combat even more appalling people.

You'll get not argument from me on ceasing the vast majority of foreign aid donations. Most of it ends up shoring up tyrants.

cthulu23

I think that we should shift the focus of our "foreign aid" to actual aid to real people. We don't really give much humanitarian foreign aid per capita...I believe that we are ranked somewhere around thirtieth among industrialized nations. We are number one in military aid, however, which tends to flow to the very tyrants that you mentioned. Why not give that money to some non-tyrants? It's not as if we can't control who we give it to. We are also the number one arms merchant in the world, but I digress....

It seems that you agree with the bipartisan tendency to overlook atrocitites for economic/political motives. As such, it is a bit unfair to accuse Democrats of looking the other way when the party that you support does the very same thing. This triumph of realpolitick is one of the many reasons why I cannot call myself a member of either party and why many Americans are quite suspicious of humanitarian justifications for the war.

hammer4all

Maybe we should all just use that rationale.

silent_jay

So people shouldn't care about the civillians killed by American's in Afghanistan and Iraq, but the one's that Saddam killed should be the focus.


America has lied in bed with more than Stalin to beat Hitler, they funded Ho-Chi-Minh during and after WW2, then went to war, funded the mujahadeen during their fight with the Soviets, then invaded Afghanistan, fundede Saddam during his war with Iran, now occupying Iraq, seems if the American's suppport your cause you'd better be ready for war a few years down the road.

__________________
Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Bookman

We don't pay totalitarian regimes (although our tax dollars most probably do in reality. We pay our government. It is our right to scrutinize our government. We have no right to police the world.

Lebell

Watching to see that things don't get out of hand.


So far you guys have been walking the edge and then drawing back.


That's ok, so long as you don't lose your balance and fall headlong into flaming.


Good luck, Jim!

__________________
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." – C. S. Lewis

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wonderwench

Yes, we made alliances with some appalling people in order to stop the spread of Communism, which we deemed to be a more serious threat.

You are neglecting the vast numbers of countries we have helped with whom we are not at war, btw.

cthulu23

As I've stated in other posts, our dalliances with despicable powers have occured before, during and after the cold war. Let's not pretend that all of America's international faults are the result of responding to communism.

G5_Todd

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*edited by analog because it was all on one long line and messes with the format*

__________________
"....and when you men get home and face an anti-war protester, look him in the eyes and shake his hand. Then, wink at his girlfriend, because she knows she's dating a pussy."

-General Franks

Sty

Can we get back to the topic?

__________________
br,
Sty

I route, therefore you exist

cthulu23

I love how no one questions the agenda of Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc, etc, etc. Only leftists have "agendas."

Really, the question is a no-brainer. He, like any other political pundit type, wants to influence the politics and culture of his country. Not exactly a controversial thought if you believe in free speech. OF all the things that you could accuse M Moore of, coyness isn't one of them.

wonderwench

Oh puh-leeeeze. Criticism of the rightwing pundits is rather an abundant commodity - although I have yet to see a documented critique showing that they are in the same class of Liar as is Moore.

Even his own comrades are concerned:

Baloney, Moore or Less

By Richard Cohen

I brought a notebook with me when I went to see Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and in the dark made notes before I gave up, defeated by the utter stupidity of the movie. One of my notes says "John Ellis," who is a cousin of George W. Bush and the fellow who called the election for Fox News that dark and infamous night when the presidency -- or so the myth goes -- was stolen from Al Gore, delivering the nation to Halliburton, the Carlyle Group and Saudi Arabia, and plunging it into war. A better synopsis of the movie you're not likely to read.


Ellis appears early in the film, which is not only appropriate but inevitable. He is the personification of the Moore method, which combines guilt by association with the stunning revelation of a stunning fact that has already been revealed countless times before. If, for instance, you did a Lexis-Nexis database search for "John Ellis" and "election," you would be told: "This search has been interrupted because it will return more than 1,000 documents." The Ellis story is no secret.

But more than that, what does it mean? Ellis is a Bush cousin, Moore tells us. A close cousin? We are not told. A cousin from the side of the family that did not get invited to Aunt Rivka's wedding? Could be. A cousin who has not forgiven his relative for a slight at a family gathering -- the cheap gift, the tardy entrance, the seat next to a deaf uncle? No info. And even if Ellis loved Bush truly and passionately, as a cousin should, how did he manage to change the election results? To quote the King of Siam, is a puzzlement.

I go on about Moore and Ellis because the stunning box-office success of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is not, as proclaimed, a sure sign that Bush is on his way out but is instead a warning to the Democrats to keep the loony left at a safe distance. Speaking just for myself, not only was I dismayed by how prosaic and boring the movie was -- nothing new and utterly predictable -- but I recoiled from Moore's methodology, if it can be called that. For a time, I hated his approach more than I opposed the cartoonishly portrayed Bush.

The case against Bush is too hard and too serious to turn into some sort of joke, as Moore has done. The danger of that is twofold: It can send fence-sitters moving, either out of revulsion or sympathy, the other way, and it leads to an easy and facile dismissal of arguments critical of Bush. During the Vietnam War, it seemed to me that some people supported Richard Nixon not because they thought he was right but because they loathed the war protesters. Beware history repeating itself.

Moore's depiction of why Bush went to war is so silly and so incomprehensible that it is easily dismissed. As far as I can tell, it is a farrago of conspiracy theories. But nothing is said about multiple U.N. resolutions violated by Iraq or the depredations of Saddam Hussein. In fact, prewar Iraq is depicted as some sort of Arab folk festival -- lots of happy, smiling, indigenous people. Was there no footage of a Kurdish village that had been gassed? This is obscenity by omission.

The case against Bush need not and should not rest on guilt by association or half-baked conspiracy theories, which collapse at the first double take but reinforce the fervor of those already convinced. The success of Moore's movie, though, suggests this is happening -- a dialogue in which anti-Bush forces talk to themselves and do so in a way that puts off others. I found that happening to me in the run-up to the war, when I spent more time and energy arguing with those who said the war was about oil (no!) or Israel (no!) or something just as silly than I did questioning the stated reasons for invading Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction and Hussein's links to Osama bin Laden. This was stupid of me, but human nature nonetheless.

Some of that old feeling returned while watching Moore's assault on the documentary form. It is so juvenile in its approach, so awful in its journalism, such an inside joke for people who already hate Bush, that I found myself feeling a bit sorry for a president who is depicted mostly as a befuddled dope. I fear how it will play to the undecided.

For them, I recommend "Spider-Man 2."

hammer4all

Have you seen the movie yet Wonderwench?

cthulu23

Here you go!

http://www.fair.org/media-outlets/limbaugh.html
http://slannder.homestead.com/files/slanndermain.html
http://www.whoslying.org
http://mediamatters.org/items/200406300010

There are plenty more sources if you want them....these are just what I could find in two minutes. Like I said before, I fail to see what is so shocking or unusual about Moore's propaganda.

wonderwench

Response to hammer: Absolutely not. I refuse to waste my hard earned cash and time on Moore's Mockumentary.

cthulhu: I am lazy. Would you mind posting the germaine bits?

filtherton

We can all sit and speculate about the agenda of moore, but really, none of us knows. We can pretend we know based on hearsay but it doesn't really amount to anything. We have one camp whose perspective on moore is derived solely from people who don't agree with him because anyone who sympathises with him is obviously in some sort of ignorant haze. If you can't even begin to grasp anything valid about moore's filmography and motivations, other than a pithy remark here and there than you're not really trying.

I think a more relevant question here is what is wonderwench's agenda? If it is to bash moore based only on what you've heard about him from anywhere except the horse's mouth then i think the mission is accomplished.

It seems to me that a few people like to paint the picture of liberals/moore supporters as being naive, soft and unable to do what it takes to get the job done. I hope the folly of such generalizations is understood, especially when dealing with real people on an interpersonal level.

I think moore is a tool, but i also think that he raises many relevant and pertinent facts about the bush administration. Hear the facts as he presents them, then decide what you believe and what you don't. Then decide what you agree with and what you don't.

Moore is rich? So? Frankly, i don't see what the problem is. He's rich, so what? Tangentially, mel gibson is rich, and he exploited a story about one of the impoverished's most prominent supporters, namely jesus, to get even richer. I heard little about his greedy agenda during the onslaught of the christ.

brianna

ok, then we can assume that everything you post is just a reiterations of opinions already posted in the press. You are not capable of making your own judgements since you haven't seen the film. i completely support your decisions not to see it but making that decision removes you from being able to make an objective assessment of the material in question.

hammer4all

You sure do spend an awful lot of time discussing Moore's "Mockumentary" for someone who refuses to waste his time on it.

wonderwench

I have seen enough clips and interviews with Moore himself to have a fairly well-informed opinion about the film. As to my interest, the film is part of the DNC propaganda portfolio leading up to the election. If it were merely entertainment, I couldn't care less about it. Moore being embraced by the "bright lights" of the DNC give the film importance it shouldn't have.

roachboy

this is an interesting development---i copied it from an e-list i am on......so download the film and watch it, folks. any argument against seeing it would seem to me shot to hell. conservatives might even be able to talk themselves into doing it as an act of protest.

ho ho ho.
===========
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5342052/

NEW YORK - The war between Michael Moore and his critics has escalated
as a Web site targeting the ?Fahrenheit 9/11? director posted a link to
an illegal Fahrenheit file download. In the process, it also attacked
the filmmaker"s stance on copyright law.

A June 27 posting on the site MooreWatch.com invites visitors to
download the film. It quotes Moore, though it doesn't cite a source, as
encouraging such downloading by saying: ?I don't agree with the
copyright laws, and I don't have a problem with people downloading the
movie and sharing it with people. As long as they're not doing it to
make a profit, you know, as long as they?re not trying to make a profit
off my labor. I would oppose that."

Tom Ortenberg, president of Lions Gate Films Releasing, which is
distributing the film with IFC Films and Harvey and Bob Weinstein's
Fellowship Adventure Group, said Wednesday that his company is
exploring legal action.

"I think it?s deplorable what enemies of ?Fahrenheit 9/11? are doing,"
he said. "We are currently looking into our legal options. We are not
going to tolerate anybody trying to infringe on (this film's release."

Since May, there have been reports of downloadable versions of Moore's
movie on such file-sharing networks as Limewire and eDonkey, concurrent
with ?Fahrenheit?s? premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. But according
to BigChampagne, an online media measurement firm, ?Fahrenheit? took
the file-sharing networks by storm Sunday evening.

"The first copies of ?Fahrenheit?, quite good-quality in the
estimation of people who track these things began to leak on Sunday
night," BigChampagne founder and CEO Eric Garland said. "It's
noteworthy that it took so long to show up in a big way in the
file-sharing network, which is probably attributable to the fact that
the film was on relatively few screens. The copy in circulation is a
CAM version (a camcorder copy captured from an actual theater
projection of the film)."

Not easy to access copy
The file posted at MooreWatch.com is in BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer
file-sharing client. For anyone to watch the movie, a series of complex
steps is required to access it.

One person who posted on the site complained about the amount of time
spent trying to download the file. "After downloading all night, I am
at 11%," the Web poster said. "Should it take over a week to download;
or is this part of the DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack"

....

__________________
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spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

smooth

-- http://moorewatch.com/index.php/webl...nts/764/#29621

__________________
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"You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

matteo101

Wonderwrench, will you vote Bush in the upcoming election? Do you support what Bush has done in his 4 years of presidency? Do you think that America has become a better country in the last 4 years of Bush's presidency? Do you think that the worlds outlook on America has improved over the past 4 years of Bush's presidency? Do you agree with going to war with a country with no threat to your own? Do you agree with US Kids going to war with a country that has no threat to the United States? I could ask hundreds and hundreds of questions; Please answer these.
I know this is off topic, but it is just out of curiosity...

kutulu

Yeah, that sounds like a guy that is all about the money.

wonderwench

- Most likely yes.

Not everything by a long shot. I am quite distressed over the growth in federal spending.

Yes. I am relieved that the era of the Big Liar is behind us. Bush has had to maneuvre through a recession brought about by the bursting of the phony bubble economy (it is quite fitting that the excessive growth was fraudulent), the aftermath of corporate scandals and 9/11. Given the risk to the nation, we are better off now than if Gore had been the one to handle these problems.

I personally do not give a shit (pardon my vulgarity - I rarely use such language; this is a case in which it is appropriate to make my point) what the vast majority of the world thinks of us. The decandent elites of Europe and despotic authoritarian regimes are not people whose favor I wish to curry. Doing what is right often makes one unpopular. So be it.

This is a "Do you still beat your wife" type of question. Of course I don't. I dispute your implication that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S. It did. And now it doesn't. Good.

See the response to the other "Do you still beat your wife question". The same answer applies here.

matteo101

You have opinions, I have opinions, Michael Moore has opinions. I will respect yours, now you respect mine, and maybe even try respecting his. It is an easy concept to grasp.

ToiletDuck

Is there a link for the movie d/l? or has it been taken down?

wonderwench

Respect is something that is earned, not owed.

Michael Moore has not earned my respect. The fact that he publicizes his movie as a Documentary and not a Political Commentary renders his opinions suspect.

As for you and I respecting each other's opinions; as members in good standing, we have each earned a bit. Let us not, however, confuse respect with agreement. Nor should we mistakenly label disagreement as disrespect.

Jesus Pimp

Whether Moore is lying or not or in it just to make a quick buck. I think his message is clear. In the wise words of Maynard. "Think for yourself and question authority."

__________________
Never date anyone who doesn't make your dick hard.

Pacifier

I dont know if he is doing it just to earn as much money as possible.
If you dont want to pay for the movie, download it:

Moore: pirate my film, no problem

__________________
"It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death
— Albert Einstein