Moore the Fool

[nelsondogg]

...Still not enough? Consider this from Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, who state:



There you have it: Moore's hatred of Bush is so virulent, he forgets that the one thing that might actually bring Bush down is FACTS! If people realized what Bush actually did, they wouldn't need Moore to spew his falsehoods, because Bush's failures are more than enough reason to not vote for him, unless he's got a first rate zero for an opponent in November. (Which means we'll probably be stuck with him for another four years.)

Moore is dishonest. He's a cheater, and in the end, that's what people are going to remember about him.

Well, since your so concerned with Moore's looseness with facts, you might want to check out this from Moore's website regarding Isikoff and Hosenball's piece:

Newsweek: Howard Rubenstein or David Rubenstein?

...In the story, which contends that the film was too tough on the Carlyle Group, the magazine identified high profile, well-known New York Public Relations executive Howard Rubenstein as the founder of the Carlyle Group. In fact, the founder of the Carlyle Group is David Rubenstein, a close confidante of the Bush family (David likes to go on safari trips with former First Lady Barbara Bush). Given the similar biographies of the two Rubensteins and how much they look like each other (see photos and stories below), we can understand how easy it must have been for a news magazine like Newsweek to get fooled - just like they were fooled when President Bush said that America needed to go into Iraq because of the WMD and the ties to Al Qaeda.

...feel free to analyze the info below, which is readily available and accessible after even a cursory search on the Internet, or call Newsweek's Messrs. Isikoff and Hosenball in Washington, DC to inquire about their research capabilities. 202 626-2000.

 

[MacGuffin]

Took a trip up to Vegas to see the film, do some shopping, see some magic, and be part of civilization for a few days. Actually ran into Penn on the street up there as well.

So just want to put in my two cents. Moore made a great film, it was two hours that had you glued to the screen. You'll laugh, you'll cry, what else do you expect from a trip to the movies.

Documentaries do not have the word "objective" anywhere in their definition so just drop that argument. As I mentioned before, complete objectivity just doesn't exist and all you can ask is that something is grounded in the facts, and this film is.

So for those bush-supporter skeptics out there - How do you come to terms with the fact that Shrub and his administration have continuously ignored science when making policy and budget decisions and spewed forth their religious agenda every chance they can get?

Kudos to Moore for a job well done.

Share and Enjoy - Aaron

 

[Grammatron]

So for those bush-supporter skeptics out there - How do you come to terms with the fact that Shrub and his administration have continuously ignored science when making policy and budget decisions and spewed forth their religious agenda every chance they can get?

Kudos to Moore for a job well done.

Share and Enjoy - Aaron

That one is easy, it's not that much different from other politicians. If it's not religion it's some other ideal that has no base in science -- like socialism (yeah flamebate). Basically, Kerry's economic policies scare me way more than Bush's foreign policies. And the BS Moore and other attribute to Bush doesn't help to change my mind either.

 

[a_unique_person]

That one is easy, it's not that much different from other politicians. If it's not religion it's some other ideal that has no base in science -- like socialism (yeah flamebate). Basically, Kerry's economic policies scare me way more than Bush's foreign policies. And the BS Moore and other attribute to Bush doesn't help to change my mind either.

That's right, stuff the rest of the world, just as long as your're right. That's OK, we get the message.

 

[Suddenly]

That's right, stuff the rest of the world, just as long as your're right. That's OK, we get the message.

Finally!!!

Took you long enough.

 

[RichardR]

Re: Re: Re: Moore the Fool

I forget who originally said it, but someone once said "I don't have to know how to lay an egg to spot a rotten one."

But you still need to see ("smell") it for yourself, don't you?

Your analogy is saying that you don't need to be a film producer/director to know a bad film when you see one. But you still need to see it. I think if you criticize a film without seeing it, you make yourself look pretty silly. Up to you, of course. Just my opinion.

 

[Roadtoad]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Moore the Fool

But you still need to see ("smell") it for yourself, don't you?

Your analogy is saying that you don't need to be a film producer/director to know a bad film when you see one. But you still need to see it. I think if you criticize a film without seeing it, you make yourself look pretty silly. Up to you, of course. Just my opinion.

When even those who ought to be on Moore's side are saying it's not worth seeing, that gets me wondering if I should spend the money to see it. Rikzilla pretty much covered this.

I have to break it down this way: I get paid by the load most of the time. On a local run carrying concrete pipe, I can make $70, and it takes me roughly two to four hours. Unfortunately, I don't get enough loads, so I can make maybe $140 a day. And keep in mind, this doesn't cover the time spent maintaining my truck or doing the voluminous paperwork the DOT and other agencies insist I have to do.

Now, do I really want to spend half my day's pay to go see a movie that people like Richard Cohen say isn't worth spending the time to see, particularly when he gets in on a freebie?

I'll likely go see it, mainly for the reasons I stated earlier.

 

[Victor Danilchenko]

You people who take hitchens's hatchet job so seriously, read http://www.efilmcritic.com/feature.php?feature=1150 -- Hitchens's article is taken apart there, piece by piece.

No, Moore did not[/i] lie in that movie. At most, he might have made one explicotly misleading statement. His greatest culpability is in having led the viewers to draw certain conclusions from available facts, no worse than that.

The Right is wrong. Again.

 

[Cain]

In yesterday's column Paul Krugman expresses a point I've been trying to emphasize:

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html


An extended ad hominem rant against Hitchens and the media appears here: http://www.nypress.com/17/26/news&columns/MattTaibbi.cfm

Money quote:

Such is the pretense of modern journalism, that we are to be lectured on courage by a man who has had his intellectual face lifted so many times, he can't close his eyes without opening his mouth. By a man who, if the Soviets had won the Cold War, would be writing breathless features on Eduard Shevardnadze for three bucks a word in Komsomolskaya Vanity Fair ("Georgia on His Mind: Edik Speaks Out." Photos by Annie Liebowitz...).

 

[RichardR]

Since this now appears to be the de facto F-9/11 thread, I thought I'd post the Spinsanity review of the film.

Spinsanity is a group that works to "counter the increasing dominance of techniques of deception and irrationality in American politics by identifying and dissecting outrageous and important examples of this rhetoric". They also state "We all have been politically active in Democratic and progressive politics and disclose those affiliations... Our pledge to our readers is that we will always be non-partisan, fair and civic-minded." They bend over backwards to be scrupulously fair, and are meticulous about getting the facts straight. So their review is worth looking at, IMO.

Their (unfavorable) review ignores many of the sillier criticisms I've seen elsewhere. However, they have identified some key factual errors. Summary of the main ones:

1. Reviewing the 2000 election, Moore uses a quote from CNN saying, "if there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election". This wasn't true: the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found that if the statewide recount had gone ahead, Bush would have won the election.
   
   (Of course, this ignores the people illegally removed from the electoral roles, but that is a different aspect to the story.)
   
2. Moore suggests that a James R. Bath invested Bin Laden family money in a Bush company (Arbusto). But Bath has stated this investment was his money, not the Bin Ladens', and Moore presents no evidence to the contrary.
   
3. Moore suggests that the Bin Ladens profited from the post-Sept. 11 IPO of the company United Defense. However, the Bin Ladens withdrew their investment before the IPO, therefore they did not profit from it.
   
4. Moore claims the Saudis have given the Bush family $1.4 billion. However, nearly 90% of that total comes from contracts awarded by the Saudi government to BDM, a defense contractor owned by Carlyle. When the contracts were awarded and BDM received the Saudi funds, Bush Sr. had no official involvement with the firm, though he made one paid speech and took an overseas trip on its behalf. He didn't actually join Carlyle's Asian advisory board until after the firm had sold BDM. And though George W. Bush had previously served on the board of another Carlyle company, he left it before BDM received the first Saudi contract.
   
5. Moore implies that the war in Afghanistan was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline, but Unocal dropped support for the pipeline in 1998 and it has still not been built.

They also point out several arguments by innuendo, not supported by facts.

I was aware of points (1) and (5) above, and was suspicious of the other points, when I saw the film.

I posted on another thread that I thought Moore hit the following points well:

• Bush didn't win the election; many thousands of black voters had been deleted from the voting lists in Florida
• Massive demos against his inauguration were not covered by the media
• The Bush administration ignored the al Qaeda threat before 9/11
• Bush himself is clueless
• Bush was obsessed with Iraq, and wanted to attack Iraq after 9/11
• Numerous bin Laden family members and other Saudis were whisked out of the US within a few days of 9/11 without being interviewed by the FBI on what they might know about Osama and the terrorist actions
• The was in Iraq was unnecessary

I still think that is true. I do think the importance of the Saudi connection is overstated, although I believe he generates some questions that need answering. (For example, why were the Saudis allowed to leave the US without being interviewed?) Moore's weakness is that although he gets some of it right, he also gets a lot wrong. And that means he misses some things he should have covered.

For example, I would have liked to see an expose of the Office of Special Plans: the shadow intelligence agency staffed mainly by neocon ideologues. It worked within the CIA to cherry pick intelligence supporting the need for war, and "stove piped" it uncritically to the White House.

Also, an examination of who in the White House leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame. And why no one has yet been arrested for treason in relation to this.

Why Colin Powell said at the UN, that "most US experts" believed certain steel tubes the Iraqis had ordered, were for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. His experts have gone on record saying none of them thought this.

An examination of the religious fundamentalism that seems to drive a lot of this administration, and the implications of this.

And much more, probably. That might have been a more difficult film to make. I think the film is good in parts. Certainly better than Columbine – nothing out and out made up this time, as far as I can tell. (The above errors, notwithstanding.) And if it influences anyone to vote Bush out, then it will be a good thing IMO. But it missed a lot.

 

[RichardR]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moore the Fool

When even those who ought to be on Moore's side are saying it's not worth seeing, that gets me wondering if I should spend the money to see it. Rikzilla pretty much covered this.

I have to break it down this way: I get paid by the load most of the time. On a local run carrying concrete pipe, I can make $70, and it takes me roughly two to four hours. Unfortunately, I don't get enough loads, so I can make maybe $140 a day. And keep in mind, this doesn't cover the time spent maintaining my truck or doing the voluminous paperwork the DOT and other agencies insist I have to do.

Now, do I really want to spend half my day's pay to go see a movie that people like Richard Cohen say isn't worth spending the time to see, particularly when he gets in on a freebie?

If you don't want to waste time seeing it because of what you heard, that's totally understandable. Sensible, in fact. But I don't think you should criticize the film unless you have seen it.

Just a thought. I don't want to labor it.

 

[RichardR]

In yesterday's column Paul Krugman expresses a point I've been trying to emphasize:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

I saw that too. I normally like Krugman, but unfortunately for him, Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy.

 

[Cain]

I saw that too. I normally like Krugman, but unfortunately for him, Tu Quoque is a logical fallacy.

From the site:

a charge of wrongdoing is answered by a rationalization that others have sinned, or might have sinned. For example, Bill borrows Jane's expensive pen, and later finds he hasn't returned it. He tells himself that it is okay to keep it, since she would have taken his.

But Krugman is not rationalizing.

War atrocities and terrorism are often defended in this way.

Krugman is not saying that these parts in the film are OK.

From the article, next paragraph:

And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it.

It's a legitimate criticism of the Bush apologists who are attacking Moore.

 

[Roadtoad]

Since this now appears to be the de facto F-9/11 thread, I thought I'd post the Spinsanity review of the film.

Spinsanity is a group that works to "counter the increasing dominance of techniques of deception and irrationality in American politics by identifying and dissecting outrageous and important examples of this rhetoric". They also state "We all have been politically active in Democratic and progressive politics and disclose those affiliations... Our pledge to our readers is that we will always be non-partisan, fair and civic-minded." They bend over backwards to be scrupulously fair, and are meticulous about getting the facts straight. So their review is worth looking at, IMO.

Their (unfavorable) review ignores many of the sillier criticisms I've seen elsewhere. However, they have identified some key factual errors. Summary of the main ones:

1. Reviewing the 2000 election, Moore uses a quote from CNN saying, "if there was a statewide recount, under every scenario, Gore won the election". This wasn't true: the recount conducted by a consortium of media organizations found that if the statewide recount had gone ahead, Bush would have won the election.
   
   (Of course, this ignores the people illegally removed from the electoral roles, but that is a different aspect to the story.)
   
2. Moore suggests that a James R. Bath invested Bin Laden family money in a Bush company (Arbusto). But Bath has stated this investment was his money, not the Bin Ladens', and Moore presents no evidence to the contrary.
   
3. Moore suggests that the Bin Ladens profited from the post-Sept. 11 IPO of the company United Defense. However, the Bin Ladens withdrew their investment before the IPO, therefore they did not profit from it.
   
4. Moore claims the Saudis have given the Bush family $1.4 billion. However, nearly 90% of that total comes from contracts awarded by the Saudi government to BDM, a defense contractor owned by Carlyle. When the contracts were awarded and BDM received the Saudi funds, Bush Sr. had no official involvement with the firm, though he made one paid speech and took an overseas trip on its behalf. He didn't actually join Carlyle's Asian advisory board until after the firm had sold BDM. And though George W. Bush had previously served on the board of another Carlyle company, he left it before BDM received the first Saudi contract.
   
5. Moore implies that the war in Afghanistan was really a front for Unocal to create a pipeline, but Unocal dropped support for the pipeline in 1998 and it has still not been built.

They also point out several arguments by innuendo, not supported by facts.

I was aware of points (1) and (5) above, and was suspicious of the other points, when I saw the film.

I posted on another thread that I thought Moore hit the following points well:

• Bush didn't win the election; many thousands of black voters had been deleted from the voting lists in Florida
• Massive demos against his inauguration were not covered by the media
• The Bush administration ignored the al Qaeda threat before 9/11
• Bush himself is clueless
• Bush was obsessed with Iraq, and wanted to attack Iraq after 9/11
• Numerous bin Laden family members and other Saudis were whisked out of the US within a few days of 9/11 without being interviewed by the FBI on what they might know about Osama and the terrorist actions
• The was in Iraq was unnecessary

I still think that is true. I do think the importance of the Saudi connection is overstated, although I believe he generates some questions that need answering. (For example, why were the Saudis allowed to leave the US without being interviewed?) Moore's weakness is that although he gets some of it right, he also gets a lot wrong. And that means he misses some things he should have covered.

For example, I would have liked to see an expose of the Office of Special Plans: the shadow intelligence agency staffed mainly by neocon ideologues. It worked within the CIA to cherry pick intelligence supporting the need for war, and "stove piped" it uncritically to the White House.

Also, an examination of who in the White House leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame. And why no one has yet been arrested for treason in relation to this.

Why Colin Powell said at the UN, that "most US experts" believed certain steel tubes the Iraqis had ordered, were for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. His experts have gone on record saying none of them thought this.

An examination of the religious fundamentalism that seems to drive a lot of this administration, and the implications of this.

And much more, probably. That might have been a more difficult film to make. I think the film is good in parts. Certainly better than Columbine – nothing out and out made up this time, as far as I can tell. (The above errors, notwithstanding.) And if it influences anyone to vote Bush out, then it will be a good thing IMO. But it missed a lot.

Okay, with that in mind, it would probably be good to look it over. At least once you've got where the errors are, you can take it the time to see what worked and what didn't.

 

[RichardR]

It's a legitimate criticism of the Bush apologists who are attacking Moore.

I was referring to this direct quote of yours:

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?

That is Tu Quoque. It is also a criticism of the Bush apologists who are attacking Moore, I agree. So we're both right.

 

[crimresearch]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the factual significance of the movements/actions of the Bin Laden family, from whom Osama has long been estranged?
Or for that matter, long time Washington favorite Prince Bandar?

And how exactly does Democratic legislator Tanner, a military veteran with grown children, and an outspoken critic of the current war, factually figure into Moore's 'Rightwingers support the war but won't put thieir own or their children's asses on the line' implication? Couldn't Moore find a real rightwing chickenhawk in all of DC?

 

[rikzilla]

No, Moore did not[/i] lie in that movie. At most, he might have made one explicotly misleading statement. His greatest culpability is in having led the viewers to draw certain conclusions from available facts, no worse than that.

The Right is wrong. Again.

Eh? So how does Moore challenge Bush the "Misleader"?? By misleading his viewers! Nice.

-z

 

[rikzilla]

In yesterday's column Paul Krugman expresses a point I've been trying to emphasize:

"Fahrenheit 9/11" is a tendentious, flawed movie

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

 

[tedly]

In yesterday's column Paul Krugman expresses a point I've been trying to emphasize:


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html

edited, deleting comments already covered

 

[a_unique_person]

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

The movie's moral core is a harrowing portrait of a grieving mother who encouraged her children to join the military because it was the only way they could pay for their education, and who lost her son in a war whose justification she no longer understands.

This theme keeps coming up, I notice. Not just in this film, either.