Okay all you Moore bashers, it’s time to get your hate on. Variety has just reported that Fahrenheit 9/11 has landed a joint distribution deal with Lions Gate (a fine Canadian company, by the way) and IFC Films and is coming to theaters throughout the US on June 25th. Though they don’t say so specifically it looks as though all involved were aiming to get this onto screens for Independence Day. I’m sure this will provoke a sudden outburst of hand-holding and togetherness in the vast land to the south. Either that or a lot of angry people spewing poorly phrased insults. I mean, seriously, is a bit of creativity too much to expect in your vitriol?
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Nice … Moore criticizes Bush for using Iraq to distract people from the fact that he’s been completely unable to catch Bin Laden and this somehow puts Moore in league with Bin Laden? Some quality thinking there … Got a good chuckle out of your article calling Moore a liar which criticizes him at length for having a staff of fact-checkers. If you’re lying you generally don’t bother to check your facts. The lack of fact checking is what makes it lying, actually.
If you’re gonna disagree with the man, that’s fine, but if you want to denigrate him in public you’d best find a better basis to do it on than you have so far. You’re making yourself look bad, not Moore.
http://moorestinks.blogspot.com
http://img39.imageshack.us/img39/5355/Moore_Fahrenheit911_2b.jpg
Control Room was magnificent indeed. nfortunately, I found out that since the movie was released, Lt. Rushing has been muzzled by the Pentagon.
Bubba and I have talked Moore or less many times and have agreed to not entirely disagree.
Moore is a manipulator but is it paranoia if everybody really is out to get you?
I just saw a magnificent documentary called Control Room on Al Jazeera that points out the monumental difficulty of fair and unbiased reporting during warfare.
The point is that we (Americans) have been paternalistically spoonfed whatever the President and the Military want us to hear about Iraq.
What’s missing is anything approaching a comprehensive view. The perceptions and opinions of the rest of the world are belittled constantly by the Bush administration. So it’s no surprise that Al Jazeera’s reporting of the facts of the Iraq conflict is usually dismised ad hoc.
Where is the fair and democratic discussion on this issue currently taking place? Meet the Press? Nightline? CNN?
Moore knows that there is no real platform for such discussion.
If he’s pretty over the top the bottom line is that the issues he (and others) are raising deserve balanced debate instead of all the spin and hyperbole.
Geez, no wonder people would rather watch the Simpsons than the news.
Trolling or poking a bit of fun at the right wing, whichever you prefer … honestly I’ve dug around a lot of right leaning sites and the anti-Moore stuff is brutal and pretty much never addresses any of the actual issues he raises. Yours is seriously the first thoughtful post I’ve seen from an anti-Moore position, which is too bad. Just check the other threads we’ve run on the film here. At this point I’ve resigned myself to the fact that any time anybody brings Moore up it will provoke little more than a bunch of ‘he’s a fat asshole’ comments so I’ve decided to have a little bit of fun with it …
As for your capital T truth I’d be quite interested to see which hard and cold facts he has cited inaccurately. I’ve never seen anyone produce any and given the potential for lawsuits with this next film I doubt I’ll see any with this one either. Does his interpretation of events match his political bias? Absolutely. But so does everyone’s. Fact of life. There’s no avoiding that. At least Moore’s open about his agenda.
I’ve not seen the film so I can’t comment on specifics but from an outside perspective the basic premise – Bush spinning 9/11 to suit his agenda – seems unassailable. How many times have they shifted the supposed ‘reason’ for being in Iraq? Why the insistence on WMD’s that never existed? Why the repeated insistance that there was a connection with Bin Laden which they knew full well never existed? There’s a very simple reason that the UN (and Canada, by the way) supported the actions in Afghanistan and not Iraq. One was justified by facts and the other very clearly was not. Bush spun his agenda to a populace that didn’t know any better and clouded their judgement by feeding them information he knew to be false.
I agree with you – post 9/11 Bush did an amazing job restoring order and normalcy to a jittery populace. The problem is that he seems to have realized somewhere along the way that keeping the population afraid of some nebulous, untouchable enemy gives him carte blanche to do whatever he wants as long as he name drops that fear as justification. I mean you want spin just look at Ashcroft releasing that hyped up terrorism warning – someone may want to attack us but we don’t know who when or how just that it could, but might not be, very bad – last week based on information they’ve had for months. Why do it then rather than when the information came in? You don’t think it has something to do with the prison scandal and the subsequent drop in the polls leading up to an election? Increased fear = increased support. Clinton did it with the missile strikes in Sudan, Bush Sr. did it in Somalia, Reagan did it through the entire Cold War and Bush Jr. is doing it here.
Anyway, like I said if you can point to a breakdown in the facts here I’d like to hear it because as far as I know all the major points Moore’s making here are common knowledge, easily accessible through the press. The Bush and Bin Laden families have old, old business ties. There were Bin Laden’s in the country when the attacks came who were given special clearance and rushed out immediately after 9/11. W has cooked up his rationale for being in Iraq. None of this is news … all Moore has done is link thinks up in a nice sequential chain and put it all out there as one package and it seems Bush doesn’t much like people talking about this in public …
Are you trolling your own blog?
Honestly, this type of news should surprise no one. Moore = big name producer who doesn’t have a distributer. Miramax = big company who were told a year ago to not expect Disney to distribute the film. They were going to get it out, and they were going to get it out in the summer. It was just a matter of signing papers. Now, let the fun begin.
The capitalist in me hopes he does his best at this: It’s a free country, and he’s allowed to say pretty much whatever he wants under the guise of Opinion and Free Speech. Unlike the blog comment insinuates, I’ve got zero hate for the guy. Like others I don’t know but disagree with, I think it’d be cool to sit down and have a drink with them. I’m sure I’d disagree with him when it’s done, but I’m sure I’d know if he was real or not. Same thing goes with ex-President Clinton. Given the choice between him and Socks, I’d vote for the cat. But, I’m guessing he’s an okay guy to go to the driving range with or sit around and joke with. I was happy to see him (and even Proud to call him my President) around NYC after 9/11 consoling people. Seeing him at the WWII memorial this weekend did the same thing. But, my problem with Moore is the same as ever – A light bit of research (among such Right-Wing hate machines like The AP, The New York Times and opinion sites like SpinSanity.com) can show that he plays fast and loose with the Truth. When questioned, he attacks,denies, and name calls. Film is a powerful medium, one that can be manipulated to distort. I believe he a master of this.
Again, it’s nothing personal with him. But he seems to have a problem with wanting to get his point across — so much that it doesn’t seem to matter if facts say otherwise.