Fahrenheit 9/11 is unfair and outrageous. You got a problem with that? Andreas passes on several comments ... > - It's powerful, yes, but you feel that you're being manipulated. > ... Why does Moore hate Bush? For > the same reason Limbaugh attacks Clinton: it draws a paying audience. Both > are entertainers. > - The movie is not a documentary. It is a mishmash of facts, innuendos, > personal attacks, > jokes, and everything else, but it's not a documentary. > ... Moore will be rather > wealthy, very powerful, and utterly intolerable. > - The Right's complaints about Moore are amusing: they have Ann Coulter, Rush > Limbaugh, Pat > Robertson, and the editorial staff of the Wall Street Journal... David Edelstein, Slate's film critic, gets it right, I think -- and speaks to the comments of A's dinner companions. First of all, he (and AO Scott in the NYTimes) suggest that *documentary* is not the right comparison. "Fahrenheit 911" is an EDITORIAL CARTOON: "a blend of insight, outrage, and sniggering innuendo, the whole package threaded (and tied in a bow) with cheap shots, some of them voiced by Moore, some created in the editing room by intercutting stilted images from old movies. Moore is largely off-screen (no pun intended), but as narrator he's always there, sneering and tsk-tsking." The last two paragraphs of Edelstein's review hit the right notes for me. Moore is great IF ONLY because he gives the right-wing demagogues some of their own. But it is not just that ... "... Fahrenheit 9/11 must be viewed in the context of the Iraq occupation and the torrent of misleading claims that got us there. It must be viewed in the context of Rush Limbaugh repeating the charge that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster murdered in Fort Marcy Park, or laughing off the exposure of Valerie Plame when, had this been a Democratic administration, he'd be calling every day for the traitor's head. It must be viewed in the context of Ann Coulter calling for the execution of people who disagree with her. It must be viewed in the context of another new documentary, the superb "The Hunting of the President", that documents - irrefutably - the lengths to which the right went to destroy Bill Clinton. Moore might be a demagogue, but never - not even during Watergate - has a U.S. administration left itself so open to this kind of savaging. "Along with many other polite liberals, I cringed last year when Moore launched into his charmless, pugilistic acceptance speech at the Academy Awards. Oh, how vulgar, I thought - couldn't he at least have been funny? A year later, I think I might have been too hard on the fat prick. Six months before her death in 1965, the great novelist Dawn Powell wrestled in her diary with the unseemliness of political speech during an "artistic" event: "Lewis Mumford gave jolt to the occasion and I realized I had gotten as chicken as the rest of America because what he said - we had no more right in Vietnam than Russia had in Cuba - was true but I did not think he should use his position to declaim this. Later I saw the only way to accomplish anything is by 'abusing' your power." Exactly. Fahrenheit 9/11 is not a documentary for the ages, it is an act of counterpropaganda that has a boorish, bullying force. It is, all in all, a legitimate abuse of power." from: "Proper Propaganda," Slate (24 June 2004) by David Edelstein http://slate.msn.com/id/2102859/ Here is NYTimes's Scott's take on the comments of A's dinner friends: "... while Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be properly debated on the basis of its factual claims and cinematic techniques, it should first of all be appreciated as a high-spirited and unruly exercise in democratic self-expression. Mixing sober outrage with mischievous humor and blithely trampling the boundary between documentary and demagoguery, Mr. Moore takes wholesale aim at the Bush administration, whose tenure has been distinguished, in his view, by unparalleled and unmitigated arrogance, mendacity and incompetence. "... "Fahrenheit 9/11" ... is many things: a partisan rallying cry, an angry polemic, a muckraking inquisition into the use and abuse of power. But one thing it is not is a fair and nuanced picture of the president and his policies. What did you expect? Mr. Moore is often impolite, rarely subtle and occasionally unwise. He can be obnoxious, tendentious and maddeningly self-contradictory. He can drive even his most ardent admirers crazy. He is a credit to the republic. "... While [the film] ... has been likened to an op-ed column, it might more accurately be said to resemble an editorial cartoon. Mr. Moore uses archival video images, rapid-fire editing and playful musical cues to create an exaggerated, satirical likeness of his targets. The president and his team have obliged him by looking sinister and ridiculous on camera. "Paul D. Wolfowitz shares his icky hair-care secrets (a black plastic comb and a great deal of saliva); John Ashcroft raptly croons a patriotic ballad of his own composition; Mr. Bush, when he is not blundering through the thickets of his native tongue, projects an air of shallow self-confidence. "... "Fahrenheit 9/11" [is] ... an authentic and indispensable document of its time. The film can be seen as an effort to wrest clarity from shock, anger and dismay, and if parts of it seem rash, overstated or muddled, well, so has the national mood. [To those, like Hitchens, who think Moore is cravenly *exploiting* Lila Lipscomb's grief, Scott's comment is apt:] "The most moving sections of "Fahrenheit 9/11" concern Lila Lipscomb, a cheerful state employee and former welfare recipient who wears a crucifix pendant and an American flag lapel pin. When we first meet her, she is proud of her family's military service - a daughter served in the Persian Gulf war and a son, Michael Pedersen, was a marine in Iraq - and grateful for the opportunities it has offered. Then Michael is killed in Karbala, and in sharing her grief with Mr. Moore, she also gives his film an eloquence that its most determined critics will find hard to dismiss. Mr. Bush is under no obligation to answer Mr. Moore's charges, but he will have to answer to Mrs. Lipscomb." "'Fahrenheit 9/11': Unruly Scorn Leaves Room for Restraint, but Not a Lot," The New York Times (23 June 2004) by A.O. Scott http://movies2.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/movies/23FAHR.html I have read this post and agree with the views expressed innit. Stephen Straker <straker@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Vancouver, B.C. ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html