Fahrenheit 9/11 #3

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Op donderdag 22 juli 2004 13:12 schreef Chewie het volgende:

Wanneer heeft hij dat gezegd? Volgens mij rekende hij Irak alleen maar tot de "axis of evil".

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Op donderdag 22 juli 2004 13:10 schreef MikeyMo het volgende:
Volgens Bush had Saddam connecties met Al Quaida....

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Op donderdag 22 juli 2004 13:30 schreef MikeyMo het volgende:

insinueren/impliceren is iets anders dan keihard beweren

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I’m a fan of Michael Moore, admittedly. And I am not a fan of George W. Bush. I just wanted to get that out of the way right off the bat. I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this afternoon and was deeply moved and angered by what I saw. Moore didn’t exactly tell me too much that I didn’t know already, but he presented his material in a way that I found compelling and, at some points, wrenching.

A few points:
1. People who are critical of Moore and this movie have come out with charges that Moore is biased, and that his movie only depicts one side of the argument. Yeah, no shit. Moore has been openly critical of Bush on many occasions (he called the guy out during his acceptance speech at the Oscars, for Christ’s sake). He has an agenda, he is biased, and he makes no attempt to hide his bias. So any charges that he’s biased are utterly ridiculous, particularly when they come from a media that prides itself on being “fair and balanced.”

2. People are attempting to slander Moore, saying that he hasn’t checked his facts, that he isn’t telling the truth about certain issues, the same charges that people levied against him after Bowling for Columbine. Jonathan Foreman from the notoriously right-wing New York Post (who was a movie critic, then an embed during the war in Iraq and is now , I guess, an opinion columnist and a movie reviewer) points out some of these “fictions” including the fact that Moore said that the Bushes have made $1.4 billion in their dealings with Saudis. Foreman said that, only upon a second viewing of the film can one hear Moore add “very quietly and quickly” that the $1.4 billion was made by the Bush family and their friends and associates. I don’t know. I only saw the movie once, and I heard, rather clearly, what Moore said. He also says that the “’congressmen with no kids at war’ stunt” was a scam, and points out that one congressman (Tim Johnson, D-S.D.) has a son in the military, as do Joseph Biden and John Ashcroft. But Moore said that there was one congressman who did have a son who was a combat troop in Iraq. So Foreman is attempting to convince readers of the Post that Moore is a liar by...lying?

3. Let us say, for arguments sake, that these inaccuracies that many members of the conservative media are reporting are indeed true. Fair enough (not really, but okay). How do they explain the fact that Bush sits in a elementary school classroom in Florida for seven minutes after being told that the second plane had flown into the WTC (he was informed of the first plane hitting right before this photo op began)? Or how, when Bush’s military service records were released (in which Bush was reprimanded from not taking a physical, a point Moore underscores on his soundtrack with a riff from Clapton’s “Cocaine”) the name of James R. Bath was blocked out, probably because he is the link that initially ties the Bush family with the bin Ladens? Or the fact that members of bin Laden’s family were not detained or questions at all after the attacks? Or the fact that Bush was on vacation for over 40% of his first eight months in office? Or the fact that Bush didn’t read or ignored security debriefings that warned of bin Laden’s plan to orchestrate an attack on American soil at least one month before the attacks? I could go on, but you should probably just go and see it.

I liked the movie, and I like Moore, but even I thought that there were points in which he got a little heavy-handed, particularly the scene in which he shows a woman whose son had been killed in active duty in Iraq sobbing uncontrollably across the street from the White House. There were also some rather horrifying images of dead or severely wounded soldiers and Iraqi civilians, imagery that has been largely censored from our view by the media. (Isn’t it ironic that during the Vietnam era, the last time our country was involved in so unpopular a conflict, a war that was stopped, in part, by the outrage of the American public, these images were shown on the nightly news on a daily basis.) But this was Moore’s agenda: he wanted to smack the viewers in the face with the reality of this situation that we all have been led into as a result of the marriage of big business and politics. You want to argue that Moore is a blowhard, that he is a sly propagandist slickster, fine. But look past anything that you consider shtick and see the forest for the trees. Government is big business. It is controlled by big business and big money, money that you and I couldn’t dream of making no matter what field we are in and no matter how hard we work. And it’s not just Bush and the Republicans, it’s everyone on every side. (Well, maybe not Nader, but he’s just a kook.)
Don’t listen to me, or to anything else that anyone else has to say about this movie, just go and see it and form your own opinions based on what you see. I just want to say that it made me very sad and very angry. Really really fucking angry. If Moore’s depiction is indeed an accurate portrayl of the leaders of this country (and his portrayl is supported with facts, and he also, according to a NY Times article about the expected attacks from pro-Bush conservatives, carefully and extensively check his facts), then fuck America. And if this is your America and this is what you think and what you believe and you agree to be led like sheep, like pigs to the fucking slaughter then fuck you, too.
Johnny Hotcox

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Op zaterdag 24 juli 2004 00:10 schreef evert het volgende:
opvallend dat in veel media (van Vrij Nederland tot Elsevier) de onwaarheden en retoriek van Moore genadeloos onderuit gehaald wordt.

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Op zaterdag 24 juli 2004 01:45 schreef Reticulin het volgende:
Genadeloos? Voor zover ik 't kan beoordelen worden er slechts trivialiteiten uitgepikt die onwaar zouden kunnen zijn en dat de film als geheel nogal ongenuanceerd is.

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Op zaterdag 24 juli 2004 18:43 schreef Ghettobob het volgende:
Iedereen zegt wel dat het heel eenzijdig is, maar hebben we de andere kant van het verhaal niet al uit den treure gehoord? tuurlijk is Sadam slecht en is het goed dat het taliban regime weg is (alhoewel het probleem in beide landen nog niet is opgelost).

Maar zijn er niet 2 extremen nodig om in het midden uit te komen? Ik kan natuurlijk alleen voor mezelf spreken maar ik heb door deze film een beetje perspectief gekregen die ik, als hij het op een andere manier had gepresenteerd, waarschijnlijk niet had gehad.

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Op zaterdag 24 juli 2004 18:52 schreef BlaatschaaP het volgende:

[..]

Hier ben ik het helemaal mee eens.

Moore is zonder twijfel een propagandist (noem je dat zo? .), maar is Bush en z'n hele regering (en for that matter, pers) dat niet evengoed ook? Ik vind het juist fijn dat er eindelijk eens iemand recht tegenover Bush gaat staan en precies hetzelfde doet zodat er idd wat perspectief komt.

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Op zaterdag 24 juli 2004 18:43 schreef Ghettobob het volgende:
tuurlijk is Sadam slecht en is het goed dat het taliban regime weg is