Gary Farber's home blog is Amygdala.
Most everyone has an opinion about Michael Moore's latest. I don't, because I've not yet seen it (don't know when I will, since movies don't easily fit into my budget at present), although I feel like I have, and can, from osmosis, describe scene after scene, and discuss how accurate or inaccurate various aspects are.I do, however, agree with Ellen Goodman in this:
The simple fact that George Bush the First called Moore a "slimeball" makes me itch to call him a "genius." But that's the problem. If the right is after him, does the choir have to sing the filmmaker's praises as our own cuddly and amusing pit bull? Michael Moore has been called the left-wing answer to Rush Limbaugh. Rush without the OxyContin. But is it heresy to ask whether the left actually wants its own Rush?
More than a decade ago, talk radio became talk right. Then Fox News took out a trademark on "fair and balanced." The right wing tried to take possession of "patriotism" the way they took over "family."I do think Al Franken is a heck of a lot more sane, and fair and balanced, than O'Reilly, but, then, I would, wouldn't I? Ogged had a post on his mixed feelings about Moore:After years as a punching bag, is it any wonder that the left wants its own punching machines? But the end result is that we've hardened further into "us and them."
Politics isn't polarized between ideas as much as it is divided between teams in an endless color war. The famous geopolitical map of 2000 painted the states red and blue. Now we have added red and blue talkmeisters, red and blue books, red and blue movies.
If the reds have Bill O'Reilly, the blues now have Al Franken. If red people read "Treason," blue people read "Thieves in High Places." Log onto Amazon.com, and one click takes you to the literary red team, another to the blue team.There was even an unseemly competition when political sportscasters pitted the TV ratings for the funeral of Ronald (the Red) Reagan versus the literary resurrection of Bill (the Blue) Clinton.
Now we are getting our own space in the cineplex. When "Fahrenheit 9/11" hit $23.9 million the first weekend, box office receipts were read like political tea leaves. Moore was also cast as the left's Mel Gibson. Whose "passion" was more powerful?
One letter writer in The New York Times described the "fun" of watching "conservatives throw up their hands in horror and dismay as the one-man liberal attack machine scores points against them." He called it a "taste of their own medicine."
Well, I am happy to write prescriptions for this medicine. After all, those who attack Moore's ad hominem attacks on the president do so with ad hominem attacks on Michael Moore. But it's getting awfully rare to see anyone trying to write or speak across the political color line.
Moore described his movie as an "op-ed piece," not a documentary. Well, I know something about op-ed pieces. Over the long run, you don't get anywhere just whacking your audience upside the head; you try to change the mind within it. You don't just go for the gut. You try, gulp, reason.
I actually agree with P.J. O'Rourke, a conservative who writes in The Atlantic that he tunes out Rush because there's no room for measured debate: "Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives." But now liberals are trudging purposefully down the same low road.
In the election between Bush and Anybody But Bush, reason and civility are now designated for wimps. But what happens to the country when the left only meets the right at the American jugular?
The name of Moore's production company, you may recall, is Dog Eat Dog.
I just have to admit that I'm irreconcilably ambivalent and can't resolve the issue it presents. Moore is dishonest and grossly manipulative, but I applauded anyway, because, simply, he hates Bush and so do I.I shall lazily quote my unpolished off-the-cuff comment:
"In principle, I don't see a good objection to this: surely some governments are so bad that rousing the rabble with propaganda is a small price to pay for combating them."Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 for each.I don't think I'd go so far as to say it could never be justified. But I think in any case where there is something resembling a genuine democracy, the price is never small, but always high.
"But I'm profoundly uncomfortable surrendering the insistence on an honest discourse."
Don't surrender. The damage done by surrendering is profound. Remember Sir Thomas More's famous line? (As channeled by Robert Bolt, anyway.)
"This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast. Man's laws, not God's. And if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?"
If we aid and abet in further lowering the citizenry's rejection of lying, demagoguery, and distortion, what are we left with, eventually? What will prevent these tools from ultimately overwhelming us, as well, at a later time? And why, then, would we still be the good guys?
Obligatory staring into the abyss reference here. Yes, maybe we've not many trees left, maybe only, har har, shrubs, but I don't think we're actually all that badly destroyed quite yet, in the long light of history. I think we still have a lot to lose, in more ways than one, by condoning dishonest argument.
If nothing else, what of those who discern the falsity? Does that really win votes, in the long run?
Was, say, Joe McCarthy justified because, in fact, there was a real Communist menace?
Who wants to have to answer, ultimately, the question "have you no shame? At long last, have you no shame?"
Will the response "the other guy did it first" be sufficient answer?
Don't tread down the path of cheapening discourse for the sake of "Revolution."
Without debate the chance of either side coming up with a workable plan is low. Both sides will entrench and reject any critisim, no matter how valid it is. We can see this currently, with the left shrilly crying Bush = Hitler, the right no longer takes the critisism seriously. There is no "Loyal oppostion" whos job is to point out the flaws in the other parties plans, because the parties are so busy making cheap shots and propagandizing.
The more you have to resort to out and out false hoods to advance your "Truth", the less true it becomes.
I've not yet seen it (don't know when I will, since movies don't easily fit into my budget at present)
I also have not seen this movie, nor do I intend too. I don't think that this movie will have much of an impact since Moore is preaching to his choir. If anything, it is just going to cause more arguments with friends that will argue with you until your friendship is on the line. Maybe some people here have had a different experience, but what I have realized is that my liberal friends will continue to argue a point even if you ask them politely to just drop it.
I think this is why I enjoy reading and occasionally writing here at the Winds of Change. It's like a breath of fresh air to be able to read and write your thoughts and opinions without it turning into a fist fight or name calling (most of the time anyway).
My father once told me "You become who you hang around" and is right.
SBD
"We can see this currently, with the left shrilly crying Bush = Hitler, the right no longer takes the critisism seriously."
For every extremist leftist who would say "Bush = Hitler," there is an extreme rightist who says "Kerry is a traitor!"
Neither should be taken seriously.
In neither case are such people more than a small percentage of either party, nor representative. But neither "side" has a higher percentage of purity, virtue, or civility. (And for each person from whichever side disagrees, one from the other side can be produced to testify the other way; it's a ridiculous and pointless exercise.)
"But neither "side" has a higher percentage of purity, virtue, or civility"
I don't agree. There are many pundits and people who do act with integrity, and lately the ones on the left have been marginalized by their own party in favor of the Moores and Gores. While you may equate the Kerry = Traitor and Bush = Hitler mems; it is not the same.
Kerry did support the anti-war groups, and is acclaimed by the Communist Vietnamiese as a great help in their struggle against the US. Calling him a traitor is still discussing his actions. The left needs to explain why they support a man who for many years did not support the US.
In contrast, the Bush = Hitler thing has no traction. Bush didn't support Hitler, does not espouse Facist doctrines, has not imposed martial law for the sake of his own power, etc etc. If Bush really was Hitler the left wouldn't be able to make such wild accusations.
This just underscores the point, because the left has cheapened the debate, people can't see the difference. Bush = Hitler, Abu Garib = Death Camp, drown out the salient points in the debate.
"Kerry did support the anti-war groups,"
Yes, he did; and if you look at the polls in the early Seventies, you'll see that so did the majority of Americans.
So did the majority of Congress.
It turns out that it is not actually traitorous to decide you don't support a specific war. You might arguably be making a bad decision, of course, but it is entirely possible to do so as a patriotic citizen, and unless you actually give literal aid and comfort to an enemy in wartime -- and that doesn't mean rhetorically -- and then are charged with treason, and found guilty in a court of law, research indicates that you are not actually guilty of treason. Not even a wee bit.
"...and is acclaimed by the Communist Vietnamiese as a great help in their struggle against the US."
I'm sure he is. I don't see why we should care what Communist Vietnamese think; the Americans who came to believe, however rightly or wrongly, that the Vietnam war was an error, did not do so to please the Communists (well, all but a tiny few, that is).
"Calling him a traitor is still discussing his actions."
True, but it's also still ridiculous to call a man who, most assuredly if the Nixon Administration had the faintest belief he was, in fact, a traitor, they would have hauled him into court and charged him -- they weren't shy about that sort of thing, you may recall, nor about, say, breaking into institutes and psychiatric offices, and planning to bomb them -- and a man who has gone one to be a United States Senator for decades a "traitor" because one doesn't agree with his views. I don't care for Congressman Tom DeLay, but that does not make him a "traitor." If Kerry was a "traitor" than so were millions of Americans. It's that simple.
But dissent is not traitorous.
"The left needs to explain why they support a man who for many years did not support the US."
It turns out that the President is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, not of the United States, in the words of, I think, Justice Robert Jackson. Agreeing with contemporary (or past) Executive Branch decisions, or even with decisions of all three Branches, is not, in fact, mandatory. They are not, it turns out, "the U.S."
If this were not true, than all those who supported the impeachment of President Clinton were "traitors" and "did not support the US." And woe to Tom DeLay and all the Republicans who "did not support the US" in Kosovo, those damn traitors!
And lock up everyone who didn't support our sending troops to Haiti!
We don't, however, live in a land where it is in the faintest bit "traitorous" to disagree with our President.
I'm rather pleased about that, and I suspect that next time there is, sooner or later, a Democratic President, you might be, as well.
And, incidentally, the koo-koo lefties who think "Bush=Hitler" is sane, they think they're discussing Bush's "actions," as well.
(The official version:)
Hi
I downloaded it from the internet. I have no interest in building into his wealth. If I was going to comment on it, I would have to at least see it. It is far more interesting having your own copy and be able to pause, rewind and fast forward and actually track the distrotions.
He has actually improved his technique. While he tells fewer outright lines (see BFC for at least 19 major falsehoods), he uses a lot of selective editting. Using that technique, I could easily prove anyone was the antichrist. And I missed where he credited other 911 filmmakers for obvious thefts of their work.
All in all, I think that Nicholas Kristof has it right when he suggests that this film may actually help bush with the undecided
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/30/opinion/30KRIS.html
Gary, Was Gore's "digital brownshirts" remark the comments of an extremist?
Gary,
If you want to see F911, I can post a link where it is.
What about Begala and the nation, are they extremists re: http://junkyardblog.transfinitum.net/archives/week_2004_06_27.html#003247
I heard this whole thing described as hatriotism. Unfortunate. I can see that no matter who wins, things will only crank up from there. Imagine 2 years from now, will we be trading blogs for bombs. Well, they (any they) did it first will be the excuse. Alas....