Gimme Some Love Gimme Some Love

Eh, whatever. At this point, after some middling reviews from both you and mesh, I'll probably wind up seeing this shitefest. But I think we aren't any more "divided" than we were, not really. See, I'm not convinced that true political dialog is possible in a democracy. 99% of the people don't know what the hell is going on, much less what to do about it, and the 1% that do know aren't talking, they're doing. The rest of us kind of watch, and gesture wildly. Not only that, but we don't seem to have a commonly recognized enemy anymore. The "Right" seems to think that the enemy is Islamist fundamentalists - a pretty accurate assumption - while the "Left" seems to think that America's biggest enemy is the "Right". Yay.

I haven't seen the film yet, but I don't have a problem with the content. If people are in opposition -- especially filmmakers -- then, MAKE A MOVIE. Free speech, freedom of choice, and free markets move in both directions.

Feature films are now being used as a powerful alternative to campaign finance reform laws. With Americans' inherently lackadaisacal attitudes about educating themsleves -- and with the retarded emphasis we place on the opinions of those in Hollywood -- perhaps the cinema is one of the last places where the populus can truly (or is willing to) be "reached." In this case, praise be to Mr. Moore for exploiting it.

It doesn't mean he isn't full of crap, though.

Ok, at least Rush doesn't spout lies and make money off a national tragedy. Why does he get on the defensive and try to sue anyone who trys to catch him on a lie and call it "slandering him"? He's already slandered Bush, Charlton Heaston, and others....

Nathan, I wish you were right about Rush not making money off of national tragedy, but the unfortunate and nauseating reality is that both sides are pimping the tragedy for their political and financial gain.

But what about his actual arguments and the evidence he mounts against Bush? Does it stick?

Big businesses (with many tied to Bush, his family, and his administration) are making huge amounts of money off the same tragedy. The distribution company is giving all profits to charity. You don't see companies such as Halliburton donating all of its profits to charity.

Call the movie spin or propaganda or whatever you wish, but there are facts in this movie. Dismissing it is not patriotic.

Why should companies donate profits to charity?

couple things:

1. it doesn't bother me that bush works with and helps his friends, just because a president does that DOESN'T mean its an abuse of power, necessarily. If I'm in a position of power, I hire people I know and trust and are competent. If say, halliburton was a crap company providing crap services and overcharging, that'd be one thing. If its kicking butt, that's another.

2. my question is, why should a company give ALL profits to charity, if it did that, it wouldn't grow. If all companies did that, the economy would grind to a halt which wouldn't be good for anybody.

1. Halliburton has overcharged the government millions and charged for meals for the troops which were never delivered. Who knows what else is going on that we don't know about? Taxpayers are paying for things like this.

2. I wasn't intending to sound like all companies should give their profits away. Someone made a comment that Fahrenheit 9/11 is making money from a tragedy when in fact much of the profit is going to charity.

It appears as though some people have fallen prey to Moores simple manipulation tactics. If someone were to barge into my home w/ a camera and demand that I crawl out of bed for them to harass me, would I...hell no. Am I a bad person for not, hell no. why should ceo's drop everything they are doing just to be harassed by someone who thinks he's too important to make an appointment and to converse in a civilized fashion? Is a company who is unwilling to bow to those like Moore a bad, evil company? NO! But he sure makes them look that way doesn't he. And the whole Bush stole the election thing shows his ignorance of the American election process, perhaps he should return to high school government class to find out that we don't have a popular vote for a reason...b/c it gives more populous states more representation and they in turn stomp on all the less pupulous states.

In a somewhat connected thought. I'm sort of scared that those who praise Moore's film as a wonderful, fact filled documentary and are too blind to see that his arguments/points are inconsistent and contradictory, also have the right to vote. Don't get me wrong, I love my right to vote and I wouldn't have it any other way, but this evolution stuff I was taught in high school isn't working very well, there's a lot of people still crawling around and i'm not sure how they've survived.

An omnibus reply:

Bill, you seem to have made the frustratingly common mistake of believing that the sanctity of a constitutional right invests any exercise of it. To assert that simply using his right to free speech somehow merits Moore a measure of respect is ridiculous. Justin Timberlake has a right to express himself too, but that's no reason for us to be grateful when he does.

Kathryn, your remark suggests the tiresome moral equivalency which frequently masquerades as political sophistication. I'm not precisely sure what "tragedy" is being referenced here, but surely there is some difference between Bush using images of the Twin Towers in a campaign ad touting his defence record, and Ted Kennedy, in a bid to score domestic political points against Bush's record, tarnishing America's national reputation by stating that the Abu Gharaib humiliations constitute a full-scale reopening of Saddam's torture chambers. These are only two examples, but they seem to me representative. Republicans at least sincerely believe that they are defending against America's enemies. Most leftist criticisms of the war - especially in the absence of meaningful suggestions as to how it might have been better executed - seem to have no explanation beyond pure partisanship.

Rex, I have little doubt that Mein Kampf contained facts too. That hardly merits it a respectful consideration. The most damning aspect of Moore's "documentary" isn't that it's wholly untrue - it's that Moore's highly selective set of facts is manipulated to create a set of associations in the viewer's mind which are highly questionable when not entirely false.

Josiah, Rush's sins don't somehow excuse Moore's. Although I can understand the left's delight at finding in Moore someone who can be entertaining without disturbing liberal pieties - a notoriously rare achievement in the political world - this willingness among leftist commentators to allow Rush into polite consideration in order that Moore can be seen as a balance is suspiciously convenient. Funny thing, though, I don't remember right-wing news organs - The National Review, andrewsullivan.com, The Weekly Standard, etc. - reviewing Rush and equably dismissing patent falsehoods and grossly manipulative misrepresentations with the statement that he's damn funny and has a point. There does seem to be some kind of moral about the moral dynamics of the American political landscape in the fact that right-wing intellectuals tend to treat Rush with embarrassment, while left-wing intellectuals make only grudging qualifications to their enthusiastic and largely unabashed embrace of Moore.

Well Julian, it's nice to see a Canadian who isn't trash talking America for once. I'm not talking about Bush putting images of 9/11 in his campaign ads. It's just that lately, I've been sitting there watching certain talking heads on Fox News and getting the feeling that all they care about with the war is how it's going to impact the Republicans politically. Sometimes it just seems like the spin doctors on both sides are using the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan as pawns to get their party in power.

Let me get this clear. I'm a Republican. I'm planning on voting for Bush in November and I voted for him 4 years ago. To top it off, I voted for his brother for Governor of Florida, twice. I think that Michael Moore, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, etc. are a bunch of morons who are endangering our troops and our national security. That doesn't change the fact that I wish that certain talking heads on the right would just shut up.

BTW, Josiah, I don't think Michael Moore is the left's Rush Limbaugh, I think he's the left's Bill O'Reilly.

Julian:

I'm not praising Moore for exercising his rights, just saying that he should be harangued due to the faults of his work, more than the mere existence of it. I don't "respect" him for using his right; he just used it, that's all. It's out there, and he took advantage of it to throw his hat into the ring of political discourse. We all have the same right, if not the immediate ability, to do the same thing for the cause of what we stand for.

Again, for those in opposition (myself chief amongst this group) to much of Moore's work/opinions: make your own movie.

Juliano,

dang, I be digging your thoughts, I'd like to think I'd have something thoughtful in which to engage you, but I don't have the time, and well, I kinda agree with everything you said...

except that I wasn't justifying Moore via Limbaugh, in my mind there's something morally distasteful about both, something cheap and wrong and flippant. But in my mind, engagaged in discourse with the occasionally liberal, the first step in disarming the Moore rhetoric might be to get Leftist fanatics to see that Moore is really the lefts Limbaugh and then to start a thoughtful critique of his work. So I guess I was thinking about it all in terms of long-ball manipulation or something...

Rex, did you see this piece? It sounds like the Weinsteins are making a ton from purchasing the distribution rights from Disney. If this movie has legs, which it appears is the case, then the Weinstein's stand to make a serious windfall on this movie. I don't see anything in here about donations to charity, though. The article also notes:

"The Weinsteins aren't the only ones set to bag big bucks. Moore, who is said to have put up zero of his own money, owns an undisclosed stake in the flick, meaning he'll clean up if the box office balloons."

Why hasn't Cheney been indicted, Rex? It sounds like you're saying the evidence is pretty damning. And it's not like Moore's the first person to suggest a conflict of interest.

It strikes me as utterly bizarre that a sitting vice president would bring in his own former company if he was planning on doing something illegal. Look at Enron - they weren't even in the public eye, yet the CFO went to great pains to cover up the trail leading his indiscretions back to him. But, Haliburton comes in under Cheney's watch.

I have a higher view of people's rationality - if I was going to do something utterly illegal, which I assume you're accusing Cheney of doing (what exactly are you accusing him of doing?), then it doesn't make a lot of sense to me that you'd be so transparent. He's been vilified by the press and by Democrats for four years now because of his former ties to Haliburton, but to my knowledge, nothing has stuck. The fact that there's been no indictment, no Woodward and Bernstein editorials, or anything like that, yet unrelenting public vilification, suggests (to me) that nothing's there.

(Of course, I also think Michael Jackson isn't a child molester for those same reasons - it seems like a child molester wouldn't continually tell people on television that he is sleeping in the bed with his prey. I mean, it's not even a function of intelligence to avoid doing that - it's just a matter of wanting to survive. Usually, people who do things that are wrong tend to cover it up - and that tendency increases the more people are watching them. The very fact that the world has been watching Haliburton and Cheney since Haliburton came in has probably been enough deterrent to keep anyone from doing anything illegal. And probably why nothing beyond rumor and accusation has been brought forward.)

Dango, Juliano.

At least Oxford doesn't seem to have completely erased your heritage--what with still bringing Justin Timberlake into the fray and all.

And now, an omnibus recommendation:

Attend thyself to the words of Moore himself as guided by the resonant voice of New York Times columnist David Brooks.

COPY : PASTE : CLICK : GO !
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/26/opinion/26BROO.html

It's a short read.