posted
I'm not saying he can't do it. It's just annoying when anyone does it, and that includes Franken and especially Rush.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote: It is different in one major respect, in that the events being documented are going on right now.
How does this make it different? fugu made a great comparison. Two movies can be done about the exact same situation (now or then) and both can be equally factual yet you can come away from the event with two different understandings of that event. Should all movies about the Civil War be "North Good/South Bad" because the North won? Or is it better to see all sides, even if I would completely disagree with opinions that pain the South in too good a light? How about WW2? Or Viet Nam? Or the Clinton Administration? Or the War in Iraq? Bush has had his chance to make his case for years now. Taking the same information, we see things in a new light. Doesn't change the facts of the situation.
I think the Republicans would have done better to make their OWN documentary (if you don't count the nearly silent major media outlets footage) that shows the Iraq War in the light that THEY want. Simply attacking the filmmaker to discount the movie vs. showing their side is having the counter effect. Look at Gibson and "The Passion of the Christ." The more people attacked Gibson as being anti-semitic and "picking and choosing" his point of view for the story, the more people who wanted to go see it. Moore loves the attention and I have seen him publicly ask for more outrage from the Right! He said the more the Right tries to block the film, the better sales have been.
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Rakeesh -- *shrug* why temporality should have meaning here escapes me. Either all three examples (Moore and the two civil war documentaries) are biased in essentially the same sort of way, or they aren't. If we still consider the civil war documentaries documentaries despite the biases, then we should consider Moore's work a documentary despite the same types of bias.
A similar situation could also arise contemporaneously wrt globalization. Lots of news shows spin globalization as either the solution to man's ills, emphasizing all the good things it does, while others highlight the bad side. True, each often glosses the other side, but its typically pretty clear which side is favored -- just count the minutes spent on it, if nothing else. Yet all of these shows are, essentially, fact based reporting, and are classified and represented as such.
And I fail to see a problem with us saying 1) we don't like him, 2) he's unfair and manipulative, 3) he has a proven history of lying and near-lying through creative editing, 4) his conclusions are ludicrous, and 5) we hate him.
posted
Kayla, thanks for the link (didn't need to register, either...it went right there). That actually was a neat article and one that takes a broader look at the movie and what it shows about us as a nation. Neat.
quote:When Michael Moore in his recent propaganda film ridicules President Bush for continuing his session with schoolchildren for five whole minutes after hearing about a plane crashing into the World Trade Center, let's ask ourselves: What else should the President have done? Rushed from the room and frightened the children? Was he supposed to leap into an airplane and patrol the skies himself?
Besides, it was not clear until fifteen minutes after the first crash that there was more than just one plane involved, and therefore that it was a terrorist attack.
But what do we expect from Moore? He's a hero of the Left because he tells lies about the Right.
If President Bush weren't such a good president, his enemies wouldn't have to lie about him outrageously in order to defeat him.
And what does it say about America's intelligentsia that they would rather believe lies than admit that George W. Bush has been smarter, on the issues that matter, than they are?
Don't know if OSC saw the film or not, but he didn't get the part about the planes right -- when Bush was in the school, he was told about the SECOND plane hitting the Twin Towers, and the clip from the movie was of Bush sitting there in the classroom after hearing about the second plane...
Posts: 2911 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Forgive me if this has already been posted: Michael Moore
'Nuff said.
So because he is very overweight, that is how we should judge his works? Rush Limbaugh...the Right's Michael Moore...is also overweight (though looking better). 'Nuff said?
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OSC, in addition to getting the story wrong from the movie (methinks he didn't see it and is relying on reviews to make his point) also is wrong about the reaction. Obviously Bush shouldn't have "rushed out of the room" and "frightened the children." But he knows that. Bush, when hearing the news, could have quietly stood up, excused himself and left. It wasn't like he was actively reading to the children. He was flipping through the book while the teacher did the reading. It wasn't hard to get out of.
I think the opposite statement from what OSC said is true: If Bush were such a good president, he wouldn't need his allies making excuses for him all the time.
Whether I like Moore or not is immaterial there. That's just funny. I'm sure you laughed when you first opened it, before the little monkey in your brain told you to get pissed.
Posts: 515 | Registered: Mar 2004
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No, the monkey didn't make me stop laughing. Fat jokes and Moore are about as funny as...er...fat jokes and Rush Limbaugh. The monkey just rolled it's eyes. Plenty calm here. Just rather sad. There has been some great discussion about Moore's film and its ideas but it has been typical here and in the press and elsewhere on the internet that half the time people just comment on how fat he is.
Now funny Moore stuff was on www.fark.com a while back where people photoshopped Moore doing some odd interviews (iirc). THAT was funny. Or some were, anyway.
Speaking of making fun of Moore, I heard on the Daily Show tonight they were interviewing the guy who is doing the documentary about trying (unsuccessfully) to interview Michael Moore. Someone posted a link about it a while back. Can't wait to see how he handles the Daily Show interview style!
quote:WASHINGTON, DC—According to a study released Monday by the Hammond Political Research Group, many of the nation's liberals are suffering from a vastly diminished sense of outrage.
"With so many right-wing shams to choose from, it's simply too daunting for the average, left-leaning citizen to maintain a sense of anger," said Rachel Neas, the study's director. "By our estimation, roughly 70 percent of liberals are experiencing some degree of lethargy resulting from a glut of civil-liberties abuses, education funding cuts, and exorbitant military expenditures."
San Francisco's Arthur Flauman is one liberal who has chosen to take a hiatus from his seething rage over Bush Administration policies.
"Every day, my friends send me e-mails exposing Bush's corrupt environmental policies," said Flauman, a member of both the Green Party and the Sierra Club. "I used to spend close to an hour following all the links, and I'd be shocked and outraged by the irreversible damage being done to our land. At some point, though, I got annoyed with the demanding tone of the e-mails. The Clear Skies Initiative is bogus, but I'm not going to forward a six-page e-mail to all my friends—especially one written by a man who signs his name 'Leaf.' Now, if a message's subject line contains the word 'Bush,' it goes straight into the trash."
This, btw, is a familiar phenomenon. It was a real problem during the Nixon years. Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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