Moore Burns Bush at Cannes
Neocons start feeling the global heat
Michael Moore sticks it and the Palme d'Or up Bush's ass at the Cannes Film Festival...
For anybody who's been around a while, it came as no surprise. Given a 20-minute standing ovation on its first showing, Michael Moore's slap-on-the-wrist Bush mockumentary Fahrenheit 9/11 carried the day and the prestigious Palme d'Or at the close of the Cannes Film Festival.
Featuring select absurdities marking the neocons global reign of terror since September 2001, the U.S. movie-maker and self-styled publicist's take-down of the Bush regime has found a receptive European audience to which he will be able to distribute his latest Weapon of Mass Distraction.
Hey, don't get me wrong. I may be no fan of Michael Moore, but if his work contributes to bringing down the trans-continental gang of money-laundering, drug-running, oil-swilling neo-Nazi thugs and war criminals now slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents across the world, I'm all for it. Every little bit helps as they say. And given Disney's refusal to allow U.S. distribution through Bob and Harvey Weinstein's Miramax, an audience is what's needed.
Besides, Moore is, by all accounts, a nice guy. He dedicates the award to his "...daughter, to the children of Americans and to Iraq and to all those in the world who suffer from our actions." I do not decry his motives or, not having seen the movie, his reportage.
So, why the sour tone? Well, Moore is a lightweight (relatively speaking) and the people he takes to the cleaners and the local movie house are dressed too lightly for scum every bit as loathsome as Stalinist stooges on a bad-hair day at the OGPU. Yes, he details the theft of the U.S. presidency, makes the connection between the Bushes and Bin Ladens, and takes film crews into Iraq to document scenes of carnage, torture and despair.
My problem is Moore's apparent focus on and treatment of Bush as an idiot, a stupid, short-sighted and greedy man who makes a fool of himself while making a mockery of international law and fundamental human rights. To quote the Washington Post, Moore, who "slices and dices President Bush's presidency into a thousand satirical pieces", ... "frequently uses the president as his own tragicomic scourge - in other words, hanging him with his own words and facial expressions."
This creative use of Bush the Buffoon serves only to lessen the severity of atrocities for which he, his administration and his collaborators (most notably, Ariel Sharon and Tony Blair) should be hauled before an international war crimes tribunal. These people and their foot soldiers, reaching deep into the most trusted public and private instruments of civil society, are knowingly plotting their way to a repressive global hegemony. For this, they should be held responsible.
What's more, Moore may be delivering fresh footage, but is he telling us anything new? The neocon shredding of the U.S. constitution and its rape of the world's peoples and resources are documented in far greater detail on the Web than is possible in any 110-minute movie. While the sundering of the globe may not be the average U.S. voter's primary concern, the copious (almost overwhelming) online evidence of complicity in looting the U.S. and other economies for personal financial gain reaches deep into the pockets, stomach and heart of every man, woman and child on the planet.
Fahrenheit 9/11 may give many cause to feel justified in sending George W. Bush to the retirement home for former dictators, genocidal maniacs and syphilitic kings come November. However, by omitting to infuse his film and those watching it with a chill sense of the Bush Gang's fundamental evil, Moore belittles his audience and does them (and the countless thousands that have died to enrich the few) an injustice.
"C'mon, lighten up. It's just a movie..."?
Right.
Hey, as I said at the outset, "...if his work contributes to bringing down the trans-continental gang of money-laundering, drug-running, oil-swilling neo-Nazi thugs and war criminals now slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocents across the world, I'm all for it."
For that alone, well done Michael Moore.
