Another M.Moore Spanking, this time from Spinsanity - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 02:59 PM

I've mostly retired from the Michael Moore threads, as I find they usually don't change anyone's mind, but I'll throw this article out.

As another thread asks us to attack the facts and not Moore and another poster is convinced Mike is telling the truth (mostly because he "refutes" his critics on his website), I find this article appropo.

Especially good about it is that every fact is backed up with sources, unlike Mike.

So much for Mike's "fact checking".

http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20040702.html

(click on the link for the original article and all the html links included as sources)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fahrenheit 9/11:
The temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn
By Brendan Nyhan
July 2, 2004

Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions.

With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year.

However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think.

The 2000 Florida recount

Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --
Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.
Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.
But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore draws the clip, reporter Candy Crowley explained that Toobin's analysis assumed the statewide consideration of "overvotes," which was not a sure thing, though there are indications that Leon County Circuit Court judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount, might have directed counties to consider them.

The Saudi flights

In another scene, Moore suggests that members of Osama Bin Laden's family and other Saudis were able to fly out of the country while air traffic was grounded after September 11. After an initial report in Newsweek inaccurately characterized the scene, saying it had made a direct claim to that effect, Moore's staff replied with a legalistic parsing. The film does accurately date the Saudi flights out of the country to "after September 13" as they claim (flights leaving the country resumed on the 14th), but Moore does not take the important step of explaining the meaning of this date in the film:

Moore: In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded... [video clips] Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one, except the Bin Ladens.
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND): We had some airplanes authorized at the highest levels of our government to fly to pick up Osama Bin Laden's family members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of this country.
Moore: It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the Bin Ladens out of the US after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.
Given that Moore states that "In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded," how are viewers to know that this description did not include the Saudi flights out of the country? The "after September 13th" clause may show that Moore's claim was technically accurate, but it leaves viewers with the distinct impression that the Bin Ladens left the country before others were allowed to.

Saudi investments and business relationships

Moore also uses the power of insinuation to play on the relationship between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The facts are thin, but that doesn't stop him from making ominous suggestions about the connections between the two.

After discussing the September 11 attacks, Moore presents clips from an interview between Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar and CNN's Larry King in which Bandar describes Osama Bin Laden as a "simple and very quiet guy." Moore then intones the following over video of Bush in a Florida classroom after being told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center:

Hmm. A simple and quiet guy whose family who just happened to have a business relationship with the family of George W. Bush. Is that what he was thinking about? Because if the public knew this, it wouldn't look very good.
"Just happened" to have a business relationship? What does Moore mean? He doesn't say precisely, of course, but he draws a series of tenuous and often circumstantial links between Bin Laden family investments and Bush's actions as President.

For instance, Moore shows that the White House blacked out the name of another Texas Air National Guard pilot who was suspended along with Bush - James R. Bath - in service records released earlier this year. He suggests that the White House was not concerned about privacy and instead wanted to hide Bath's links to Bush:

Why didn't Bush want the press and the public to see Bath's name on his military records? Perhaps he was worried that the American people would find out that at one time James R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens.
Moore notes that Bath was retained by Salem Bin Laden, and describes Bush's founding of the Arbusto oil company. James Moore, an author, appears next, saying in an interview that "there's no indication" Bush Sr. funded Arbusto and that the source of the firm's investments is unknown. Michael Moore then piles on the innuendo in his narration:

So where did George W. Bush get his money?... [archival clip of Bush saying "I'm George Bush"] One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath. Bush's good friend James Bath was hired by the Bin Laden family to manage its money in Texas and invest in businesses. And James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush.
This phrasing suggests that Bath invested Bin Laden family money in Arbusto. But as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball note in an online Newsweek column and Matt Labash points out in a Weekly Standard article on the film, Bath has stated this investment was his money, not the Bin Ladens'. Moore presents no evidence to the contrary.

The film also notes investments in United Defense, a military contractor, by the Carlyle Group, a firm that Bush and his father have been involved with which counts members of the Bin Laden family among its investors. He states:

September 11 guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year. Just six weeks after 9/11, Carlyle filed to take United Defense public and in December, made a one-day profit of $237 million. But sadly, with so much attention focused on the Bin Laden family being important Carlyle investors, the Bin Ladens eventually had to withdraw.
Moore's phrasing suggests that the Bin Ladens profited from the post-Sept. 11 buildup with the United Defense IPO but were forced to withdraw after the stock sale. However, Labash notes that the Bin Ladens withdrew before the initial filing, not afterward, missing the big payday Moore insinuates that they received.

Finally, Moore drops a big number - $1.4 billion - claiming "That's how much the Saudi royals and their associates have given the Bush family, their friends and their related businesses in the past three decades," adding that "$1.4 billion doesn't just buy a lot of flights out of the country. It buys a lot of love." But Isikoff and Hosenball show that nearly 90% of that total comes from contracts awarded by the Saudi government to BDM, a defense contractor owned by Carlyle. But when the contracts were awarded and BDM received the Saudi funds, Bush Sr. had no official involvement with the firm, though he made one paid speech and took an overseas trip on its behalf. He didn't actually join Carlyle's Asian advisory board until after the firm had sold BDM. And though George W. Bush had previously served on the board of another Carlyle company, he left it before BDM received the first Saudi contract. As usual, the connections are loose and circumstantial at best.

Afghanistan/Iraq/homeland security motives

Moore also offers a number of suggestions that the Bush administration's military actions abroad and efforts to increase homeland security were motivated by nefarious hidden agendas.

For instance, here is his description of the US campaign against the Taliban government of Afghanistan:

The United States began bombing Afghanistan just four weeks after 9/11. Mr. Bush said he was doing so because the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been harboring Bin Laden... [montage of clips of Bush saying the US would "smoke out" Bin Laden] For all his tough talk, Bush really didn't do much.
Moore then shows former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke criticizing the war, saying it took two months for US special forces to be deployed in the area of Afghanistan where Bin Laden was hiding. This fact is portrayed as an indication of a hidden motive:

Two months? A mass murderer who attacked the United States was given a two-month head start? Who in their right mind would do that?... [clip of Bush] Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.
Moore proceeds with the heavy-handed narrative, suggesting he is unraveling the alleged hidden story of the US war in Afghanistan through a series of loose juxtapositions:

In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton.
[clips of Bush and Cheney talking about Halliburton from 2000]
And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush's #1 campaign contributor: Kenneth Lay and the good people of Enron. Only the British press covered this trip.
Contrary's to Moore's implication, the fact that Bush was governor of Texas at the time of the Taliban/Unocal meeting does nothing to prove that he was somehow involved in the meeting. Governors are obviously not responsible for every business dealing that takes place in their state. Nonetheless, Moore slips his name in to link him to the deal.

The filmmaker continues his narration by directly linking the 1997 deal with a 2001 visit to the US by a Taliban envoy:

Then, in 2001, just five and a half months before 9/11, the Bush administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States and help improve the image of the Taliban government.
[clip of envoy press conference]
Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department to meet with US officials. Why on earth would the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader to visit the United States knowing that the Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies? Well, I guess 9/11 put a stop to that.
This rhetorical question is entirely disingenuous. Moore suggests that the US was indifferent to the Taliban's harboring of Bin Laden, but Isikoff and Hosenball point out that the administration met with the envoy in part to discuss the fate of Bin Laden, who they were pressing the Taliban to turn over.

Moore then implies that the war was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline:

When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete, we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former advisor to Unocal. Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal advisor. I guess you can probably see where this is leading. Faster than you can say black gold Texas tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea.
But as Ken Silverstein wrote in The American Prospect back in 2002 and Isikoff and Hosenball show in their article about "Fahrenheit," Unocal dropped support for the pipeline in 1998 (the company has issued a press release making this point). In 2002, Afghanistan did sign the agreement Moore described, but Unocal is not involved in the project, which is still in its planning stages and may never come to fruition.

Later, Moore presents a series of anecdotal examples of what he sees as misguided efforts to improve homeland security: FBI questioning of a man who made derogatory statements about President Bush at a gym, infiltration of a peace group in Fresno by a sheriff's detective on an anti-terrorism task force, a mother who was forced to drink her breast milk during an airport security screening to prove that it was not a toxic substance, and the decision to allow airline passengers to carry lighters and matches onto planes while banning other items. Again, based on this flimsy collection of evidence, Moore suggests a hidden motive:

Ok, let me see if I got this straight. Old guys in the gym - bad. Peace groups in Fresno - bad. Breast milk - really bad. But matches and lighters on a plane - hey, no problem. Was this really about our safety? Or was something else going on?
He then shows a series of clips arguing that Oregon state troopers are underfunded and have little manpower. Without making any argument about how this relates to the rest of the country or the federal government's actions, Moore jumps right into more implications of conspiracy and nefarious motives, keying off a trooper's wish for a manual on how to catch terrorists:

Of course, the Bush administration didn't hand out a manual on how to deal with the terrorist threat because the terrorist threat wasn't what this was all about. They just wanted us to be fearful enough so that we'd get behind what their real plan was.
Again, Moore's meaning when he says "what this was all about" is unclear, but it appears to be a reference to the emphasis on homeland security after September 11. "Their real plan" is, as the movie later makes clear, a reference to the war in Iraq. But regardless of any previous plans to invade Iraq, the argument makes no sense. The breast milk example, for instance, indicates an overzealous devotion to homeland security, not indifference to it. And Oregon's state budgetary woes are hardly proof that the federal government's homeland security effort was insincere.

Ashcroft and the FBI

In his discussion of homeland security, Moore takes a cheap shot at John Ashcroft, stating, "In 2000, he was running for re-election as Senator from Missouri against a man who died the month before the election. The voters preferred the dead guy." Of course, the governor of Missouri who succeeded Mel Carnahan, the so-called "dead guy," had promised to appoint Jean Carnahan, the governor's widow, to the Senate if her late husband won the election, a fact voters clearly understood.

On a more serious note, after suggesting that Ashcroft was unconcerned about terrorism before September 11, Moore uses phrasing that exaggerates how widespread knowledge of the Al Qaeda plot was before the attacks inside the FBI and Justice Department:

[Ashcroft's] own FBI knew that summer that there were Al Qaeda members in the US and that Bin Laden was sending his agents to flight schools around the country. But Ashcroft's Justice Department turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.
This implies far more prior knowledge about flight school activity than actually existed. As the 9/11 Commission found in a staff statement (72K Adobe PDF), the so-called "Phoenix memo" from an FBI agent in Arizona suggesting a possible effort by Bin Laden to send agents to flight schools was not widely circulated within the FBI and did not reach Ashcroft's desk:

His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the Osama Bin Laden unit and the Radical Fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees, but did not even see the memo until after September 11. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11. The New York field office took no action. It was not shared outside the FBI.
Before Sept. 11, the Minneapolis FBI also investigated Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was enrolled in a flight school there, but no Al Qaeda connections were discovered until after the attacks. Again, saying the FBI "knew" of a plot to send agents to flight schools is overstated.

"You can't refute what's said in the film"

During a recent interview on "Late Show with David Letterman," the host identified the problems with the circumstantial argument of the film in a series of probing questions to Moore:

When you look at the film in total, are there things there - if I were smarter, could I refute some of these points? Shall I believe you that everything means exactly what it looks like? I mean, the presentation is overwhelming, but could a smarter man than me come in and say, "Yes, this happened, but it means nothing," "Yes, that happened but it means nothing"? But put together in a puzzle it creates one inarguable, compelling circumstance.
Moore's response to Letterman (after a joking aside) sums up the problem with his work. Despite proclamations that the film is satirical and represents his opinion, Moore still makes strong claims about its veracity:

You can't refute what's said in the film. It's all there, the facts are all there, the footage is all there.
Sadly, as with most of Moore's work, this is simply not true.

hammer4all · 07-02-2004, 03:49 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
The 2000 Florida recount

Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --
Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.
Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.
But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore draws the clip, reporter Candy Crowley explained that Toobin's analysis assumed the statewide consideration of "overvotes," which was not a sure thing, though there are indications that Leon County Circuit Court judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount, might have directed counties to consider them.

Well what do ya know--right away he misrepresents the movie's claim in order to try refute it.

Once again, here is the quote from the movie:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --
Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

And as we can see here, the claim is 100% factually accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._pr...oject_recounts

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/florida.html

http://www.failureisimpossible.com/n...idaballots.htm

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 04:10 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by hammer4all
Well what do ya know--right away he misrepresents the movie's claim in order to try refute it.

Once again, here is the quote from the movie:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --
Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

And as we can see here, the claim is 100% factually accurate:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._pr...oject_recounts

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1115-02.htm

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/florida.html

http://www.failureisimpossible.com/n...idaballots.htm

Rolleyes all day long, your "facts" don't wash either.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...news-headlines

Quote:

Film offers limited view

BY THOMAS FRANK;WASHINGTON BUREAU

June 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - At the start of "Fahrenheit 9/11," filmmaker Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, "under every scenario Gore won the election."

What Moore doesn't show is that a six-month study in 2001 by news organizations including The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN found just the opposite. Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place, Bush still would have won Florida and the election.

The inclusion of Toobin's minority view and exclusion of mainstream documentation typifies the shaky case Moore builds against President George W. Bush in his two-hour film.

http://dir.salon.com/politics/wire/2...unt/index.html

Quote:

Florida recount tallies released

Associated Press
- - - - - - - - - -

November 12, 2001 | A vote-by-vote review of untallied ballots in the 2000 Florida presidential election indicates George W. Bush would have narrowly prevailed in the partial recounts sought by Al Gore, but Gore might have reversed the outcome -- by the barest of margins -- had he pursued and gained a complete statewide recount.

Bush eventually won Florida, and thus the White House, by 537 votes out of more than 6 million cast. But questions about the uncounted votes lingered.

Almost a year after that cliffhanger conclusion, a media-sponsored review of the more than 175,000 disputed ballots underscored that the prize of the U.S. presidency came down to an almost unimaginably small number of votes.

The new data, compiled by The Associated Press and seven other news organizations, also suggested that Gore followed a legal strategy after Election Day that would have led to defeat even if it had not been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court. Gore sought a recount of a relatively small portion of the state's disputed ballots while the review indicates his only chance lay in a course he advocated publicly but did not pursue in court -- a full statewide recount of all Florida's untallied votes....

http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberal...20011113.asp#2

Quote:

The Florida re-count released late Sunday night by the consortium of CNN and several newspapers determined that George W. Bush still would have won under either legally possible re-count scenario which could have occurred: The Florida Supreme Court ordered re-count of undervotes statewide or Gore’s request for a re-count in certain counties.
...

The Slate article (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058793) argues that if the overvotes were counted and went to Gore, he probably won, with a margin of 42 to 171 votes, but this wouldn't have been legal as has been already pointed out.

So the charge against MM stands, he is great at spinning and not presenting ALL the evidence.

As he did in "Bowling", he is laying a path to an erroneous conclusion, in this case, that Gore would have won the election in any recount, while ignoring the truth.

wonderwench · 07-02-2004, 04:23 PM

Excellent deconstruction. Thanks for posting it.

I am going to start saving all the leads from wine bottles and send them to Michael Moore so he can add a lining to his tinfoil beanie.

hammer4all · 07-02-2004, 04:46 PM

The original statement in the movie (emphasis added):

Quote:

Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.

LOL, notice how this story blatantly truncates the statement from the movie in order to make it false.

Quote:

Film offers limited view

BY THOMAS FRANK;WASHINGTON BUREAU

June 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - At the start of "Fahrenheit 9/11," filmmaker Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, "under every scenario Gore won the election."

Nothing in the AP story contradicts the Movie. I don't know why you quoted it.

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
The Slate article (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058793) argues that if the overvotes were counted and went to Gore, he probably won, with a margin of 42 to 171 votes, but this wouldn't have been legal as has been already pointed out.

So the charge against MM stands, he is great at spinning and not presenting ALL the evidence.

As he did in "Bowling", he is laying a path to an erroneous conclusion, in this case, that Gore would have won the election in any recount, while ignoring the truth.

The charge against MM DOES NOT stand. MM is 100% factually accurate, there is no spin, and there is no erroneous conclusion. If you and others can not comprehend straight English that is not his problem.

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by hammer4all
The charge against MM DOES NOT stand. MM is 100% factually accurate, there is no spin, and there is no erroneous conclusion. If you and others can not comprehend straight English that is not his problem.

100%???

Quote:

Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes --
Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election.
Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.

Quote:

If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well.

You know, I can't lay it out more plainly.

If that is 100% accurate to you, then black is white and white is black and I'm done with the conversation.

cthulu23 · 07-02-2004, 05:03 PM

Newsflash! Partisan pundit spins the truth to suit own party! Some statements by blatant propagandist may not be full truth! He is actually using the media to get his message across! Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter all expressed dismay.

Shocking.

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cthulu23
Newsflash! Partisan pundit spins the truth to suit own party! Some statements by blatant propagandist may not be full truth! He is actually using the media to get his message across! Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter all expressed dismay.

Shocking.

Quote:

doc·u·men·ta·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dky-mnt-r)
adj.
1)Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents.
2)Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.

oktjabr · 07-02-2004, 05:12 PM

A question from Europe - is this Moore thing really that big there in US, or is this board just inflating it out of proportion?

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by oktjabr
A question from Europe - is this Moore thing really that big there in US, or is this board just inflating it out of proportion?

My personal opinion is that like all things, it depends on who you talk to.

A vast majority of Americans won't see the movie and won't care about MM.

Those in politics will care to a greater or lesser degree, both for and against.

Those that support Bush will tend to dislike Moore, those that hate Bush will tend to like Moore.

I personally hate Moore because he is a hypocrite and he blatantly lies and he does it in such a way that the people who hate Bush buy his lies, even when they are highlighted in red.

cthulu23 · 07-02-2004, 05:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
doc·u·men·ta·ry ( P ) Pronunciation Key (dky-mnt-r)
adj.
1)Consisting of, concerning, or based on documents.
2)Presenting facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter, as in a book or film.

Well, he can probably meet the first standard, but that's only one definition. Here's another:

Quote:

n. pl. doc·u·men·ta·ries

A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.

I think that the movie meets that standard, too. BTW, this argument was already stated by another member (kutulu, strangely enough) in one of the 3 threads about this movie. Maybe we're retreading old ground here?

Lebell · 07-02-2004, 05:20 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by cthulu23
Maybe we're retreading old ground here?

Don't we usually?

My problem is highlighted in red:

Quote:

n. pl. doc·u·men·ta·ries

A work, such as a film or television program, presenting political, social, or historical subject matter in a factual and informative manner and often consisting of actual news films or interviews accompanied by narration.

cthulu23 · 07-02-2004, 05:43 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
Don't we usually?

My problem is highlighted in red:

Ahh, but like all words, there are multiple acceptable meanings to "documentary" and F911 fits under some of those.

A casual browse through a list of documentaries will reveal that they are frequently politically charged and designed to influence the opinions of others.

smooth · 07-02-2004, 06:13 PM

The humerous aspect to this thread, in my opinion, is that no one has even moved past the first point!

Needless to say, Moore didn't say anything factually incorrect (even if you have a problem with what was stated).

Toobin made the comment--Moore just documented it.

hammer4all · 07-02-2004, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
100%???

You know, I can't lay it out more plainly.

If that is 100% accurate to you, then black is white and white is black and I'm done with the conversation.

Ok, so maybe he should have said "every legal scenario," though it could be argued that that is implied. Counting only undervotes would most likely be considered illegal under Florida election law because "the intent of the voter" matters. For instance, if a voter punches the hole next to a candidate's name, and then writes in that same candidate's name, I think it's pretty obvious what the voter's "intent" was.

Quote:

In the review of all the state's disputed ballots, Gore edged ahead under all six scenarios for counting all undervotes and overvotes statewide

http://dir.salon.com/politics/wire/2...unt/index.html

cthulu23 · 07-02-2004, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by oktjabr
A question from Europe - is this Moore thing really that big there in US, or is this board just inflating it out of proportion?

This board is most definitely not representative of average American political thought. People who post here (myself included) are more of a splitting-hair type than your standard American is(if there is such a thing).

seretogis · 07-02-2004, 09:37 PM

It really depends on what the definition of "is" is.

cthulu23 · 07-02-2004, 11:56 PM

It helps if you explain what you are talking about.

Edit: oh, I get it. You're trying to draw a parallel between my statements and Clinton's testimony. How clever. Moore's film still easily falls under the aegis of documentary, though.

I'm not even a M Moore fan, as I've called him the left's equivalent of Limbaugh. Can't we get a little perspective here?

analog · 07-03-2004, 09:25 AM

Wow, this thread is almost dead. Please save it before I have to put it out to pasture and shoot it in the head out of mercy.

wonderwench · 07-03-2004, 09:27 AM

cthulhu,

Moore's piece is actually political commentary; it is most certainly not a documentary.

cthulu23 · 07-03-2004, 03:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by wonderwench
cthulhu,

Moore's piece is actually political commentary; it is most certainly not a documentary.

This may be true according to SOME dictionary definitions or to your personal definition of the word "documentary," but it doesn't jibe with the common usage. Just take a glance through the "documentary" section of Amazon or search through IMDB for any number of examples of politically motivated movies.

Xell101 · 07-03-2004, 05:11 PM

Cthulu23, both of the definitions you posted mean the same thing, and his movies could only be called documentaries if you slapped quasi- in front of it, they (deliberately as well) lack factual accuracy.

cthulu23 · 07-03-2004, 05:33 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Xell101
Cthulu23, both of the definitions you posted mean the same thing, and his movies could only be called documentaries if you slapped quasi- in front of it, they (deliberately as well) lack factual accuracy.

You could easily argue that the movie is based off of documents (books, papers, etc), which is one of the definitions of documentary. The more important point that I'm trying to make, though, is that in common usage, the term "documentary" is applied to almost any non-fiction movie, including politically motivated cinema.

wonderwench · 07-03-2004, 05:35 PM

Documentaries are generally thought of as being objective pieces. I do not think Moore's editorializing qualifies as such.

cthulu23 · 07-03-2004, 05:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by wonderwench
Documentaries are generally thought of as being objective pieces. I do not think Moore's editorializing qualifies as such.

So what of the hundreds of documentaries out there that frequently editorialize and push a viewpoint? would you say that Erol Morris's "Thin Blue Line" is not a documentary? I'm sure that those who didn't agree with it felt it wasn't "objective" enough, but it IS a documentary still.

wonderwench · 07-03-2004, 05:42 PM

We are discussing Moore's film, which is so far to one end of the agenda spectrum as to be an opinion piece. Even newspapers try to make a distinction between news reporting and editorials.

The fact that Moore claims to have based the film on a few true bits of footage doesn't eliminate the the "voice" he has applied.

cthulu23 · 07-03-2004, 05:51 PM

All filmmakers have a voice and many documentaries are meant to persuade. Here is an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on documentary film:

Quote:

The propagandist tradition consisted of films made with the explicit purpose of persuading an audience of a point. One of the most notorious propaganda films is Leni Riefenstahl's film Triumph of the Will. Why We Fight was explicitly contracted as a propaganda newsreel series in response to this, covering different aspects of World War II, and had the daunting task of persuading the United States public to go to war. The series has been selected for preservation in the United States' National Film Registry.

hammer4all · 07-03-2004, 06:40 PM

Moore says that he will soon be posting all of the backup evidence for his movie in the form of a full FAQ.

Quote:

In the next week or so, I will recount my adventures through the media this past month (I will also be posting a full FAQ on my website soon so that you can have all the necessary backup and evidence from the film when you find yourself in heated debate with your conservative brother-in-law!). For now, please know the following: Every single fact I state in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the absolute and irrefutable truth. This movie is perhaps the most thoroughly researched and vetted documentary of our time. No fewer than a dozen people, including three teams of lawyers and the venerable one-time fact-checkers from The New Yorker went through this movie with a fine-tooth comb so that we can make this guarantee to you. Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying. Let them know that the OPINIONS in the film are mine, and anyone certainly has a right to disagree with them. And the questions I pose in the movie, based on these irrefutable facts, are also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will continue to ask them until they are answered.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/me...ate=2004-07-04

matteo101 · 07-03-2004, 06:49 PM

Soooo many people on this forum have said that Michael Moore is trying to make up our minds for us, or that he tells us what are opinions should be. He has said time and again that his opinions are HIS. He gives us the facts, and lets us make up our own minds. He even tells us that we can choose to disagree with them.

Please someone step up and prove him wrong...then you can shut me up...please someone compile some questions and send them to him.

filtherton · 07-03-2004, 08:21 PM

Why are we arguing about the definition of a documentary? That is such a nonissue. All acts undertaken by human beings have an agenda and if we were to apply the strict definition of documentary that f911 is being measured against to all documentaries than nothing would be a documentary. I guess "Spellbound" wouldn't count as a documentary either, since it is completely pro-spelling bee and provides no space for any anti-spelling bee messages.

Answer me this: How is moore any more deceptive than the big G.W. himself? Moore doesn't have a monopoly on using one-sided interpretations of factual information to bolster his position. That's called politics, ladies and gentlemen. The real entertainment is seeing people attempt to hold entertainers to a higher standard than politicians.

matteo101 · 07-03-2004, 08:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by filtherton
Why are we arguing about the definition of a documentary? That is such a nonissue. All acts undertaken by human beings have an agenda and if we were to apply the strict definition of documentary that f911 is being measured against to all documentaries than nothing would be a documentary. I guess "Spellbound" wouldn't count as a documentary either, since it is completely pro-spelling bee and provides no space for any anti-spelling bee messages.

Answer me this: How is moore any more deceptive than the big G.W. himself? Moore doesn't have a monopoly on using one-sided interpretations of factual information to bolster his position. That's called politics, ladies and gentlemen. The real entertainment is seeing people attempt to hold entertainers to a higher standard than politicians.

*Round of applause*

Lebell · 07-03-2004, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by filtherton
Answer me this: How is moore any more deceptive than the big G.W. himself? Moore doesn't have a monopoly on using one-sided interpretations of factual information to bolster his position. That's called politics, ladies and gentlemen. The real entertainment is seeing people attempt to hold entertainers to a higher standard than politicians.

Soooooo,

Since you obviously don't have a problem with MM doing it, it's ok for Bush to do it?

matteo101 · 07-03-2004, 09:14 PM

Since you obviously have a problem with MM doing it, you have a problem with Bush doing it too?

Lebell · 07-03-2004, 09:31 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by matteo101
Since you obviously have a problem with MM doing it, you have a problem with Bush doing it too?

I see you are dodging the question that wasn't even posed to you, but yes.

I have a problem with ANYONE doing it.

So what is your answer?

matteo101 · 07-03-2004, 09:56 PM

When it boils down to it, I disagree more with Bush, than I agree with Moore. I support Fehrenheit 911 and believe everybit of it is factual. I know that everything that went into it was torn apart by researchers. I can only asume that they would not let him lie in a movie with this much press. If they did, don't you think that the Bush Administration just might be telling us that he is lieing? He presented me with facts, and though they may have been one sided, and though he may not have given me the other side of the story, he did let me make up my mind on my own. He never once told me what my opinions should be.

hammer4all · 07-03-2004, 10:00 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
Soooooo,

Since you obviously don't have a problem with MM doing it, it's ok for Bush to do it?

It's not a matter of anyone "having a problem" with it. Everyone has a point of view. It is to be expected. PBS runs very good documentaries every week on a program called P.O.V. I hope I don't have to tell you what that stands for.

analog · 07-03-2004, 10:10 PM

The next flame or allusion thereof shuts this thread down.

cthulu23 · 07-04-2004, 01:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Lebell
Soooooo,

Since you obviously don't have a problem with MM doing it, it's ok for Bush to do it?

The ethical guidelines that apply to filmmakers are far less stringent than those that are imposed on politicians or even journalists. Our leaders serve the public trust, so any dishonesty is considered a serious matter. Moviemakers, on the other hand, are under no obligation to serve the public good (see the career of Jean Claude Van Damme for an example). Outside of threats, inciting a riot or slander (public figures don't count), they can say whatever the hell they want to say.

Lebell · 07-04-2004, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by cthulu23
The ethical guidelines that apply to filmmakers are far less stringent than those that are imposed on politicians or even journalists. Our leaders serve the public trust, so any dishonesty is considered a serious matter. Moviemakers, on the other hand, are under no obligation to serve the public good (see the career of Jean Claude Van Damme for an example). Outside of threats, inciting a riot or slander (public figures don't count), they can say whatever the hell they want to say.

An interesting response.

Thanks.

james t kirk · 07-04-2004, 07:49 AM

I saw F911 last monday. Nice movie, not as good as Roger and Me, or BFK.

Re Al Gore:

He lost. Rightly or wrongly he lost and it's over and done with, so get over it. I did not understand why Moore put this in the movie. Who cares. If W out manouvred Gore, than it's Gore's fault and it's too fucking late anyway. If Gore had just won his OWN state of Tennessee, he would have won, but he didn't even do that. W is the president, get over it, you will sleep better at night. Besides, even if Gore was president, 911 would have still happened. Even if Kerry is elected in November, the terrorists are still going to be plotting their next hit. The terrorists don't distinguish between democrats and republicans. They are all infidels.

As far as the rest of the movie goes......

Re: the Saudis flying away.

Moore has a very very good point there. (Sorry lebell.)

That should not have been allowed to happen under any circumstances and it's pretty fishy to me how it did. They knew the same day that 911 happened who the hijackers were, and their country of origin. Mixed in with all those "good Saudis" I AM SURE that there were some "bad Saudis". Maybe Saudis who worked with the hijakers and knew first hand how this was all set up. I can not FOR THE LIFE OF ME understand how they gave them all get out of jail free passes. A huge policing opportunity was lost.

There is something very very very wrong with that move.

Saudi Arabia is THE craddle of al qaeda, always was, and still is. I realize that the last thing the world's economy needs is the Saudi (and I use this term loosely) "government" to be destabilized, but something needs to be done. The natives in Saudi are restless.

RE: Bush on 911

Moore had some incredible footage of Bush in that school reading Mr. Goat to those kids and you could see the fear in his eyes when he was told of the second tower being attacked. (In Bush's defence, he probably thought the first tower attack was an accident.) But the second one?????? That doesn't just happen. And he sat there for 7 minutes or 9 minutes like a deer in the headlights. I actually felt sorry for him. Somehow you don't picture a guy like say Eisenhower sitting reading Mr. Goat for 7 minutes after something like 911 happened.

07-02-2004, 02:59 PM	#1 (permalink)
Lebell Cracking the Whip Location: Sexymama's arms...	Another M.Moore Spanking, this time from Spinsanity I've mostly retired from the Michael Moore threads, as I find they usually don't change anyone's mind, but I'll throw this article out. As another thread asks us to attack the facts and not Moore and another poster is convinced Mike is telling the truth (mostly because he "refutes" his critics on his website), I find this article appropo. Especially good about it is that every fact is backed up with sources, unlike Mike. So much for Mike's "fact checking". http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20040702.html (click on the link for the original article and all the html links included as sources) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fahrenheit 9/11: The temperature at which Michael Moore's pants burn By Brendan Nyhan July 2, 2004 Michael Moore's career as a rabble-rousing populist has been marked by a frequent pattern of dissembling and factual inaccuracy. He distorted the chronology of his first movie, "Roger & Me"; repeatedly peddled the myth that the Bush administration gave $43 million to the Taliban; published two books, Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country?, that were riddled with factual errors and distortions; and won an Academy Award for "Bowling for Columbine," a documentary based on a confused and often contradictory argument that features altered footage of a Bush-Quayle campaign ad, a misleading presentation of a speech by National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston, and other factual distortions. With his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the prestigious Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and was #1 at the US box office last week, Moore has surged to new prominence -- and come under increasing scrutiny. His staff has made much of elaborate fact-checking that was reportedly conducted on the film. And fortunately, it appears to be free of the silly and obvious errors that have plagued Moore's past work, such as the claim in Stupid White Men that the Pentagon planned to spend $250 billion on the Joint Strike Fighter in 2001, a sum that represented over 80 percent of the total defense budget request for the year. However, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is filled with a series of deceptive half-truths and carefully phrased insinuations that Moore does not adequately back up. As Washington Monthly blogger Kevin Drum and others have noted, the irony is that these are the same tactics frequently used by the target of the film, George W. Bush. Moore and his chief antagonist have more in common than viewers might think. The 2000 Florida recount Reviewing the 2000 election during the opening of the film, Moore uses a quote from CNN legal commentator Jeffrey Toobin to make a deeply misleading suggestion about the results of the media recounts conducted in Florida: Moore: And even if numerous independent investigations prove that Gore got the most votes -- Toobin: If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election. Moore: -- it won't matter just as long as all your daddy's friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way. But the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found something quite different, as Newsday recently pointed out. If the statewide recount ordered by the Florida Supreme Court had gone ahead, the consortium found that Bush would have won the election under two different scenarios: counting only "undervotes," or taking into account the reported intentions of some county electoral officials to include "overvotes" as well. During the CNN appearance from which Moore draws the clip, reporter Candy Crowley explained that Toobin's analysis assumed the statewide consideration of "overvotes," which was not a sure thing, though there are indications that Leon County Circuit Court judge Terry Lewis, who was supervising the recount, might have directed counties to consider them. The Saudi flights In another scene, Moore suggests that members of Osama Bin Laden's family and other Saudis were able to fly out of the country while air traffic was grounded after September 11. After an initial report in Newsweek inaccurately characterized the scene, saying it had made a direct claim to that effect, Moore's staff replied with a legalistic parsing. The film does accurately date the Saudi flights out of the country to "after September 13" as they claim (flights leaving the country resumed on the 14th), but Moore does not take the important step of explaining the meaning of this date in the film: Moore: In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded... [video clips] Not even Ricky Martin could fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one, except the Bin Ladens. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND): We had some airplanes authorized at the highest levels of our government to fly to pick up Osama Bin Laden's family members and others from Saudi Arabia and transport them out of this country. Moore: It turns out that the White House approved planes to pick up the Bin Ladens and numerous other Saudis. At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the Bin Ladens out of the US after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country. Given that Moore states that "In the days following September 11, all commercial and private airline traffic was grounded," how are viewers to know that this description did not include the Saudi flights out of the country? The "after September 13th" clause may show that Moore's claim was technically accurate, but it leaves viewers with the distinct impression that the Bin Ladens left the country before others were allowed to. Saudi investments and business relationships Moore also uses the power of insinuation to play on the relationship between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The facts are thin, but that doesn't stop him from making ominous suggestions about the connections between the two. After discussing the September 11 attacks, Moore presents clips from an interview between Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar and CNN's Larry King in which Bandar describes Osama Bin Laden as a "simple and very quiet guy." Moore then intones the following over video of Bush in a Florida classroom after being told of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center: Hmm. A simple and quiet guy whose family who just happened to have a business relationship with the family of George W. Bush. Is that what he was thinking about? Because if the public knew this, it wouldn't look very good. "Just happened" to have a business relationship? What does Moore mean? He doesn't say precisely, of course, but he draws a series of tenuous and often circumstantial links between Bin Laden family investments and Bush's actions as President. For instance, Moore shows that the White House blacked out the name of another Texas Air National Guard pilot who was suspended along with Bush - James R. Bath - in service records released earlier this year. He suggests that the White House was not concerned about privacy and instead wanted to hide Bath's links to Bush: Why didn't Bush want the press and the public to see Bath's name on his military records? Perhaps he was worried that the American people would find out that at one time James R. Bath was the Texas money manager for the Bin Ladens. Moore notes that Bath was retained by Salem Bin Laden, and describes Bush's founding of the Arbusto oil company. James Moore, an author, appears next, saying in an interview that "there's no indication" Bush Sr. funded Arbusto and that the source of the firm's investments is unknown. Michael Moore then piles on the innuendo in his narration: So where did George W. Bush get his money?... [archival clip of Bush saying "I'm George Bush"] One person who did invest in him was James R. Bath. Bush's good friend James Bath was hired by the Bin Laden family to manage its money in Texas and invest in businesses. And James Bath himself in turn invested in George W. Bush. This phrasing suggests that Bath invested Bin Laden family money in Arbusto. But as Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball note in an online Newsweek column and Matt Labash points out in a Weekly Standard article on the film, Bath has stated this investment was his money, not the Bin Ladens'. Moore presents no evidence to the contrary. The film also notes investments in United Defense, a military contractor, by the Carlyle Group, a firm that Bush and his father have been involved with which counts members of the Bin Laden family among its investors. He states: September 11 guaranteed that United Defense was going to have a very good year. Just six weeks after 9/11, Carlyle filed to take United Defense public and in December, made a one-day profit of $237 million. But sadly, with so much attention focused on the Bin Laden family being important Carlyle investors, the Bin Ladens eventually had to withdraw. Moore's phrasing suggests that the Bin Ladens profited from the post-Sept. 11 buildup with the United Defense IPO but were forced to withdraw after the stock sale. However, Labash notes that the Bin Ladens withdrew before the initial filing, not afterward, missing the big payday Moore insinuates that they received. Finally, Moore drops a big number - $1.4 billion - claiming "That's how much the Saudi royals and their associates have given the Bush family, their friends and their related businesses in the past three decades," adding that "$1.4 billion doesn't just buy a lot of flights out of the country. It buys a lot of love." But Isikoff and Hosenball show that nearly 90% of that total comes from contracts awarded by the Saudi government to BDM, a defense contractor owned by Carlyle. But when the contracts were awarded and BDM received the Saudi funds, Bush Sr. had no official involvement with the firm, though he made one paid speech and took an overseas trip on its behalf. He didn't actually join Carlyle's Asian advisory board until after the firm had sold BDM. And though George W. Bush had previously served on the board of another Carlyle company, he left it before BDM received the first Saudi contract. As usual, the connections are loose and circumstantial at best. Afghanistan/Iraq/homeland security motives Moore also offers a number of suggestions that the Bush administration's military actions abroad and efforts to increase homeland security were motivated by nefarious hidden agendas. For instance, here is his description of the US campaign against the Taliban government of Afghanistan: The United States began bombing Afghanistan just four weeks after 9/11. Mr. Bush said he was doing so because the Taliban government of Afghanistan had been harboring Bin Laden... [montage of clips of Bush saying the US would "smoke out" Bin Laden] For all his tough talk, Bush really didn't do much. Moore then shows former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke criticizing the war, saying it took two months for US special forces to be deployed in the area of Afghanistan where Bin Laden was hiding. This fact is portrayed as an indication of a hidden motive: Two months? A mass murderer who attacked the United States was given a two-month head start? Who in their right mind would do that?... [clip of Bush] Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas. Moore proceeds with the heavy-handed narrative, suggesting he is unraveling the alleged hidden story of the US war in Afghanistan through a series of loose juxtapositions: In 1997, while George W. Bush was governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton. [clips of Bush and Cheney talking about Halliburton from 2000] And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush's #1 campaign contributor: Kenneth Lay and the good people of Enron. Only the British press covered this trip. Contrary's to Moore's implication, the fact that Bush was governor of Texas at the time of the Taliban/Unocal meeting does nothing to prove that he was somehow involved in the meeting. Governors are obviously not responsible for every business dealing that takes place in their state. Nonetheless, Moore slips his name in to link him to the deal. The filmmaker continues his narration by directly linking the 1997 deal with a 2001 visit to the US by a Taliban envoy: Then, in 2001, just five and a half months before 9/11, the Bush administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States and help improve the image of the Taliban government. [clip of envoy press conference] Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department to meet with US officials. Why on earth would the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader to visit the United States knowing that the Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies? Well, I guess 9/11 put a stop to that. This rhetorical question is entirely disingenuous. Moore suggests that the US was indifferent to the Taliban's harboring of Bin Laden, but Isikoff and Hosenball point out that the administration met with the envoy in part to discuss the fate of Bin Laden, who they were pressing the Taliban to turn over. Moore then implies that the war was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline: When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete, we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former advisor to Unocal. Bush also appointed as our envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who was also a former Unocal advisor. I guess you can probably see where this is leading. Faster than you can say black gold Texas tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea. But as Ken Silverstein wrote in The American Prospect back in 2002 and Isikoff and Hosenball show in their article about "Fahrenheit," Unocal dropped support for the pipeline in 1998 (the company has issued a press release making this point). In 2002, Afghanistan did sign the agreement Moore described, but Unocal is not involved in the project, which is still in its planning stages and may never come to fruition. Later, Moore presents a series of anecdotal examples of what he sees as misguided efforts to improve homeland security: FBI questioning of a man who made derogatory statements about President Bush at a gym, infiltration of a peace group in Fresno by a sheriff's detective on an anti-terrorism task force, a mother who was forced to drink her breast milk during an airport security screening to prove that it was not a toxic substance, and the decision to allow airline passengers to carry lighters and matches onto planes while banning other items. Again, based on this flimsy collection of evidence, Moore suggests a hidden motive: Ok, let me see if I got this straight. Old guys in the gym - bad. Peace groups in Fresno - bad. Breast milk - really bad. But matches and lighters on a plane - hey, no problem. Was this really about our safety? Or was something else going on? He then shows a series of clips arguing that Oregon state troopers are underfunded and have little manpower. Without making any argument about how this relates to the rest of the country or the federal government's actions, Moore jumps right into more implications of conspiracy and nefarious motives, keying off a trooper's wish for a manual on how to catch terrorists: Of course, the Bush administration didn't hand out a manual on how to deal with the terrorist threat because the terrorist threat wasn't what this was all about. They just wanted us to be fearful enough so that we'd get behind what their real plan was. Again, Moore's meaning when he says "what this was all about" is unclear, but it appears to be a reference to the emphasis on homeland security after September 11. "Their real plan" is, as the movie later makes clear, a reference to the war in Iraq. But regardless of any previous plans to invade Iraq, the argument makes no sense. The breast milk example, for instance, indicates an overzealous devotion to homeland security, not indifference to it. And Oregon's state budgetary woes are hardly proof that the federal government's homeland security effort was insincere. Ashcroft and the FBI In his discussion of homeland security, Moore takes a cheap shot at John Ashcroft, stating, "In 2000, he was running for re-election as Senator from Missouri against a man who died the month before the election. The voters preferred the dead guy." Of course, the governor of Missouri who succeeded Mel Carnahan, the so-called "dead guy," had promised to appoint Jean Carnahan, the governor's widow, to the Senate if her late husband won the election, a fact voters clearly understood. On a more serious note, after suggesting that Ashcroft was unconcerned about terrorism before September 11, Moore uses phrasing that exaggerates how widespread knowledge of the Al Qaeda plot was before the attacks inside the FBI and Justice Department: [Ashcroft's] own FBI knew that summer that there were Al Qaeda members in the US and that Bin Laden was sending his agents to flight schools around the country. But Ashcroft's Justice Department turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. This implies far more prior knowledge about flight school activity than actually existed. As the 9/11 Commission found in a staff statement (72K Adobe PDF), the so-called "Phoenix memo" from an FBI agent in Arizona suggesting a possible effort by Bin Laden to send agents to flight schools was not widely circulated within the FBI and did not reach Ashcroft's desk: His memo was forwarded to one field office. Managers of the Osama Bin Laden unit and the Radical Fundamentalist unit at FBI headquarters were addressees, but did not even see the memo until after September 11. No managers at headquarters saw the memo before September 11. The New York field office took no action. It was not shared outside the FBI. Before Sept. 11, the Minneapolis FBI also investigated Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, who was enrolled in a flight school there, but no Al Qaeda connections were discovered until after the attacks. Again, saying the FBI "knew" of a plot to send agents to flight schools is overstated. "You can't refute what's said in the film" During a recent interview on "Late Show with David Letterman," the host identified the problems with the circumstantial argument of the film in a series of probing questions to Moore: When you look at the film in total, are there things there - if I were smarter, could I refute some of these points? Shall I believe you that everything means exactly what it looks like? I mean, the presentation is overwhelming, but could a smarter man than me come in and say, "Yes, this happened, but it means nothing," "Yes, that happened but it means nothing"? But put together in a puzzle it creates one inarguable, compelling circumstance. Moore's response to Letterman (after a joking aside) sums up the problem with his work. Despite proclamations that the film is satirical and represents his opinion, Moore still makes strong claims about its veracity: You can't refute what's said in the film. It's all there, the facts are all there, the footage is all there. Sadly, as with most of Moore's work, this is simply not true. __________________ "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 The ONLY sponsors we have are YOU! Please Donate!

07-02-2004, 05:12 PM	#9 (permalink)
oktjabr Crazy Location: Fünland	A question from Europe - is this Moore thing really that big there in US, or is this board just inflating it out of proportion? __________________ "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stomping on a human face -- forever." -G.O.

07-02-2004, 06:13 PM	#14 (permalink)
smooth Junkie Location: Right here	The humerous aspect to this thread, in my opinion, is that no one has even moved past the first point! Needless to say, Moore didn't say anything factually incorrect (even if you have a problem with what was stated). Toobin made the comment--Moore just documented it. __________________ "The theory of a free press is that truth will emerge from free discussion, not that it will be presented perfectly and instantly in any one account." -- Walter Lippmann "You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists." -- Abbie Hoffman

07-02-2004, 09:37 PM	#17 (permalink)
seretogis Huggles, sir? Location: Seattle	It really depends on what the definition of "is" is. __________________ seretogis - sieg heil perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most, forgot how it feels well almost no one to blame always the same, open my eyes wake up in flames

07-02-2004, 11:56 PM	#18 (permalink)
cthulu23 Banned	It helps if you explain what you are talking about. Edit: oh, I get it. You're trying to draw a parallel between my statements and Clinton's testimony. How clever. Moore's film still easily falls under the aegis of documentary, though. I'm not even a M Moore fan, as I've called him the left's equivalent of Limbaugh. Can't we get a little perspective here? Last edited by cthulu23; 07-03-2004 at 12:03 AM..

07-02-2004, 04:23 PM	#4 (permalink)
wonderwench Banned	Excellent deconstruction. Thanks for posting it. I am going to start saving all the leads from wine bottles and send them to Michael Moore so he can add a lining to his tinfoil beanie.

07-02-2004, 05:03 PM	#7 (permalink)
cthulu23 Banned	Newsflash! Partisan pundit spins the truth to suit own party! Some statements by blatant propagandist may not be full truth! He is actually using the media to get his message across! Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter all expressed dismay. Shocking.

07-03-2004, 09:25 AM	#19 (permalink)
analog Banned	Wow, this thread is almost dead. Please save it before I have to put it out to pasture and shoot it in the head out of mercy.

07-03-2004, 09:27 AM	#20 (permalink)
wonderwench Banned	cthulhu, Moore's piece is actually political commentary; it is most certainly not a documentary.

07-03-2004, 05:11 PM	#22 (permalink)
Xell101 Junkie	Cthulu23, both of the definitions you posted mean the same thing, and his movies could only be called documentaries if you slapped quasi- in front of it, they (deliberately as well) lack factual accuracy.

07-03-2004, 05:35 PM	#24 (permalink)
wonderwench Banned	Documentaries are generally thought of as being objective pieces. I do not think Moore's editorializing qualifies as such.

07-03-2004, 05:42 PM	#26 (permalink)
wonderwench Banned	We are discussing Moore's film, which is so far to one end of the agenda spectrum as to be an opinion piece. Even newspapers try to make a distinction between news reporting and editorials. The fact that Moore claims to have based the film on a few true bits of footage doesn't eliminate the the "voice" he has applied.

07-03-2004, 06:49 PM	#29 (permalink)
matteo101 In transition Location: north, no south abit, over to the right, getting warmer...there!	Soooo many people on this forum have said that Michael Moore is trying to make up our minds for us, or that he tells us what are opinions should be. He has said time and again that his opinions are HIS. He gives us the facts, and lets us make up our own minds. He even tells us that we can choose to disagree with them. Please someone step up and prove him wrong...then you can shut me up...please someone compile some questions and send them to him.

07-03-2004, 08:21 PM	#30 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	Why are we arguing about the definition of a documentary? That is such a nonissue. All acts undertaken by human beings have an agenda and if we were to apply the strict definition of documentary that f911 is being measured against to all documentaries than nothing would be a documentary. I guess "Spellbound" wouldn't count as a documentary either, since it is completely pro-spelling bee and provides no space for any anti-spelling bee messages. Answer me this: How is moore any more deceptive than the big G.W. himself? Moore doesn't have a monopoly on using one-sided interpretations of factual information to bolster his position. That's called politics, ladies and gentlemen. The real entertainment is seeing people attempt to hold entertainers to a higher standard than politicians.

07-03-2004, 09:14 PM	#33 (permalink)
matteo101 In transition Location: north, no south abit, over to the right, getting warmer...there!	Since you obviously have a problem with MM doing it, you have a problem with Bush doing it too?

07-03-2004, 09:56 PM	#35 (permalink)
matteo101 In transition Location: north, no south abit, over to the right, getting warmer...there!	When it boils down to it, I disagree more with Bush, than I agree with Moore. I support Fehrenheit 911 and believe everybit of it is factual. I know that everything that went into it was torn apart by researchers. I can only asume that they would not let him lie in a movie with this much press. If they did, don't you think that the Bush Administration just might be telling us that he is lieing? He presented me with facts, and though they may have been one sided, and though he may not have given me the other side of the story, he did let me make up my mind on my own. He never once told me what my opinions should be.

07-03-2004, 10:10 PM	#37 (permalink)
analog Banned	The next flame or allusion thereof shuts this thread down.

07-04-2004, 07:49 AM	#40 (permalink)
james t kirk Junkie Location: Toronto	I saw F911 last monday. Nice movie, not as good as Roger and Me, or BFK. Re Al Gore: He lost. Rightly or wrongly he lost and it's over and done with, so get over it. I did not understand why Moore put this in the movie. Who cares. If W out manouvred Gore, than it's Gore's fault and it's too fucking late anyway. If Gore had just won his OWN state of Tennessee, he would have won, but he didn't even do that. W is the president, get over it, you will sleep better at night. Besides, even if Gore was president, 911 would have still happened. Even if Kerry is elected in November, the terrorists are still going to be plotting their next hit. The terrorists don't distinguish between democrats and republicans. They are all infidels. As far as the rest of the movie goes...... Re: the Saudis flying away. Moore has a very very good point there. (Sorry lebell.) That should not have been allowed to happen under any circumstances and it's pretty fishy to me how it did. They knew the same day that 911 happened who the hijackers were, and their country of origin. Mixed in with all those "good Saudis" I AM SURE that there were some "bad Saudis". Maybe Saudis who worked with the hijakers and knew first hand how this was all set up. I can not FOR THE LIFE OF ME understand how they gave them all get out of jail free passes. A huge policing opportunity was lost. There is something very very very wrong with that move. Saudi Arabia is THE craddle of al qaeda, always was, and still is. I realize that the last thing the world's economy needs is the Saudi (and I use this term loosely) "government" to be destabilized, but something needs to be done. The natives in Saudi are restless. RE: Bush on 911 Moore had some incredible footage of Bush in that school reading Mr. Goat to those kids and you could see the fear in his eyes when he was told of the second tower being attacked. (In Bush's defence, he probably thought the first tower attack was an accident.) But the second one?????? That doesn't just happen. And he sat there for 7 minutes or 9 minutes like a deer in the headlights. I actually felt sorry for him. Somehow you don't picture a guy like say Eisenhower sitting reading Mr. Goat for 7 minutes after something like 911 happened.