In this corner..M. Moore and in the other..Hannity!

[DropGems]

and how can one survive in a cpitalist world without making money?

Never said they could. He already has money at this point though. He netted 18 million from Fahrenheit 9/11 alone.

I just believe he's limiting his message by releasing it against tough competition when he could've gone the Loose Change route and gotten way more eyeballs. He went the capitalist route though. My point was that he didn't have to go that route to get his message out there and in fact, if he went the other route, he probably would've reached a lot more people. He's a great capitalist though so what do you expect...

 

[Praktik]

Never said they could. He already has money at this point though. He netted 18 million from Fahrenheit 9/11 alone.

I just believe he's limiting his message by releasing it against tough competition when he could've gone the Loose Change route and gotten way more eyeballs.

Ummm...GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra went the internet route. My colleague downloaded the torrent yesterday.

Anything that gets made, even stuff released for theatres or DVDs, is on the internet.

So where is he losing out on "eyeballs"?? The camjobs are there now and I wouldnt be surprised to see a screener soon if there isn't one already.

 

[oldhat]

Never said they could. He already has money at this point though. He netted 18 million from Fahrenheit 9/11 alone.

I just believe he's limiting his message by releasing it against tough competition when he could've gone the Loose Change route and gotten way more eyeballs. He went the capitalist route though. My point was that he didn't have to go that route to get his message out there and in fact, if he went the other route, he probably would've reached a lot more people. He's a great capitalist though so what do you expect...

He gave Fahrenheit 9/11 away for free on the internet.

Please know what you're talking about before you offer up your opinion.

 

[Darat]

Never said they could. He already has money at this point though. He netted 18 million from Fahrenheit 9/11 alone.

I just believe he's limiting his message by releasing it against tough competition when he could've gone the Loose Change route and gotten way more eyeballs. He went the capitalist route though. My point was that he didn't have to go that route to get his message out there and in fact, if he went the other route, he probably would've reached a lot more people. He's a great capitalist though so what do you expect...

You do not seem to be aware that capitalism is not the only ideology that is OK with people being rich.

 

[Praktik]

The other point is that having a theatrical release puts you in contention for awards, the release itself gets reviewed in hundreds of newspapers and websites, if there is an award possibility that gets covered, its box office gets covered - in short, it's a great way to increase the visibility of your film and therefore the message therein.

And anyone who wants to can download it anyway.

 

[DropGems]

Why would he need to release the stuff for free on the internet - is this to avoid the intellectually incoherent claims of hypocrisy from the small minded?

Why would he need to tailor his efforts to suit the bleating of such sheep?

My pet peeve was that the criticism was levelled at all on that score. Same thing was done to John Edwards and anyone else with a lot of money that talk about the unequal outcomes of capitalism.

Its a BS charge and I think I outlined above why I think its an incoherent one.

Surely, there's other areas where you can level criticism without relying on such an intellectually bankrupt approach.

I agree that it's a cheap approach. I mean, one could simply destroy Michael Moore so many different ways with facts alone that the hypocrisy claim just looks like a cheap shot. It's a common cheap shot though and a relevant one since people are usually big fans of irony. Like when he lives off cheesesteaks then talks about preventative health care. He becomes a joke. Not quite in the same sense as when a politician tries to be the moral barometer and then gets caught in a sex scandal but similar and with the same effects.

Plus he chooses money over getting his message out to a broader audience. Just like he chooses cheesesteaks over preventative healthcare. He's a great capitalist pig and I kinda love him for that!

 

[Darat]

...snip.... He's a great capitalist pig and I kinda love him for that!

Again maximising your income is not something that only belongs to the ideology of capitalism, on what do you base your conclusion he is a capitalist?

 

[Praktik]

I agree that it's a cheap approach. I mean, one could simply destroy Michael Moore so many different ways with facts alone that the hypocrisy claim just looks like a cheap shot. It's a common cheap shot though and a relevant one since people are usually big fans of irony. Like when he lives off cheesesteaks then talks about preventative health care. He becomes a joke. Not quite in the same sense as when a politician tries to be the moral barometer and then gets caught in a sex scandal but similar and with the same effects.

Plus he chooses money over getting his message out to a broader audience. Just like he chooses cheesesteaks over preventative healthcare. He's a great capitalist pig and I kinda love him for that!

We were so close to leaving it DropGems!

Then you had to toss in the sentence in bold. My argument, on the narrow issue of "broader audience", is that he is doing precisely what you should do to get the widest audience possible through theatrical release. The publicity of a theatrical release is much, much larger and longer-lasting - and people can download it anyway.

 

[DropGems]

Ummm...GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra went the internet route. My colleague downloaded the torrent yesterday.

Anything that gets made, even stuff released for theatres or DVDs, is on the internet.

So where is he losing out on "eyeballs"?? The camjobs are there now and I wouldnt be surprised to see a screener soon if there isn't one already.

Authentic internet release is way different than camjobs. Camjobs all get pulled immediately on most sites. It takes 20 minutes to find one. Another 20 to find the right plug in to play it, another 20 to reload your browser after it crashed from all the redirects and pop-ups and then finally when you get to it, the quality sucks.

Moore is losing massive eyeballs. If he wanted the uprising that he claims, he would've had a global internet release and started a movement. He could've had 50 million viewers instead of a paltry 600,000. But him and Weinstein don't give a crap about the message, they just wanna make money. Nothing wrong with that though.

 

[Earthborn]

If we took this to its logical end it would mean the only people that could critique capitalism without having this charge levied against them would be paupers and missionaries

Who will then of course be accused of selfishly and greedily trying to get "other people's money"...

He could simply release his videos for free over the internet and write articles for free on his website instead of being a capitalist pig. He's actually limiting his message by releasing it in theaters against tough competition but that's just because he's a greedy capitalist.

 

[DropGems]

We were so close to leaving it DropGems!

Then you had to toss in the sentence in bold. My argument, on the narrow issue of "broader audience", is that he is doing precisely what you should do to get the widest audience possible through theatrical release. The publicity of a theatrical release is much, much larger and longer-lasting - and people can download it anyway.

I still disagree though. I believe going viral would net much more eyeballs and of course, would have a much greater chance at getting a movement started against capitalism. By the time it comes out in Australia in 2 years, or by the the time it stops getting pulled from every internet site due to copyright, it won't even be relevant.

 

[Cleon]

By the time it comes out in Australia in 2 years,

I assume that by "in 2 years," you actually mean "three weeks from now."

 

[Praktik]

I still disagree though. I believe going viral would net much more eyeballs and of course, would have a much greater chance at getting a movement started against capitalism. By the time it comes out in Australia in 2 years, or by the the time it stops getting pulled from every internet site due to copyright, it won't even be relevant.

Ok well I guess we'll just have to accept that the other person is wrong and leave it at that.

We can't square this circle!

 

[DropGems]

Again maximising your income is not something that only belongs to the ideology of capitalism, on what do you base your conclusion he is a capitalist?

It depends on how one defines things. Are you a capitalist if you live in a capitalist society and play by all the capitalist rules? He's a capitalist, right? Just because he opposes capitalism while engaging in it doesn't mean he isn't one. Right?

Does acting on an idea define it or does simply having the idea and not acting on it make it a legitimate position?

What about cannibalism? Can someone be a cannibal and not engage in eating other humans, but believe that it's the correct thing to do in there mind and preach it?

Moore could easily move to a different country with a different economic system. Moore is like an atheist who goes to church everyday. He's retarded.

 

[DropGems]

I assume that by "in 2 years," you actually mean "three weeks from now."

Let's try Mongolia then. Either way, 3 weeks and this flick will be history. It's already buried under a plethora of crappy movies. 3 more weeks and they'll be 3 times as many crappy movies and news stories to distract people from Mikey's uprising he was hoping for. If only he and Weinstein weren't so greedy...

 

[DropGems]

Ok well I guess we'll just have to accept that the other person is wrong and leave it at that.

We can't square this circle!

Fair enough.

I'm sure over time the same amount of people will watch it regardless of how it was released but for the impact of the message and garnering an uprising, the way Moore went with is ineffective. The slow release over different countries over a period of many months doesn't get the proletariat to rise man. He went the capitalist route! He should've gone anarchy and released it on youtube.

 

[Lurker]

Moore could easily move to a different country with a different economic system. Moore is like an atheist who goes to church everyday. He's retarded.

Marx could have moved to a different country with a different economic system. Instead he clearly is a Capitalist! He's retarded. Guess we can discard the term Marxist as a misnomer now.

 

[Sporanox]

Are you guys seriously kicking around the issue of whether Moore is a hypocrite?

His newest documentary comes out all guns blazing against the very system of capitalism, if his own mouth is to be believed. At the same time, he says he thinks his movies succeed because "they are good" and not due to capitalism (heavens no).

The dude enjoys all the trappings of a capitalist society while fervently denouncing it. Nobody wants him to cut off his income and starve in a self-made commune, but is it too much to ask that he not be so excessive by his own measure? Perhaps donate most of his fortune?

After all, as we know, the gap between the super rich and the super poor is increasing...guess which side Michael Moore falls into.

 

[ProbeX]

Thanks for posting the debate. Moore is charismatic, though he's too extreme for my taste, sensationalistic, and uses deceptively small "representative" examples to back his political views, etc. But anything is smarter than Hannity, who is fun fun fun to laugh at.

 

[DC]

Never said they could. He already has money at this point though. He netted 18 million from Fahrenheit 9/11 alone.

I just believe he's limiting his message by releasing it against tough competition when he could've gone the Loose Change route and gotten way more eyeballs. He went the capitalist route though. My point was that he didn't have to go that route to get his message out there and in fact, if he went the other route, he probably would've reached a lot more people. He's a great capitalist though so what do you expect...

you have a point there