Multi-million dollar weekend takings shows Michael Moore's FoxyNews network to have strong support. Having raised "infotainment" to new lows, the thinking man's Sean Hannity and his supporters look set to storm Congress in the not-too-distant future.Okay Bruce, I think our friendship can take this. The thing is, I just don't get it. Perhaps it's because I'm not what Brian and your president refer to as "an Amurkan". Perhaps it's something else. Either way, enlighten me. Reaction to this thing, F9/11, smells like a publicity machine's version of the WWF's Summer Slam.
Why are you so keen on it?
I agree (without having seen the movie) with the statement: "Moore has made a film suggesting the Bushies are anti-democratic warmongering profiteers and the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq are complete fuckups, mass murder for money, oil, and power lust, covered over in transparent lies enabled by the media."
I agree with the statement and the sentiment. For these things, the American people should drag George W. Bush before a properly constituted international war crimes tribunal. What does he get instead? Yeah, you guessed it: a bunch of people praising a mockumentary entitled Fahrenheit 9/11.
What is making normally sober-minded people so desperate to cast this film as a serious piece of journalism? It's not journalism. It's a mockumentary. Journalism needs tight editing to ensure accuracy. Filmmaking uses tight editing for effect and Moore makes no bones about it. This movie—based on fact—is all about effect. And its effect is timed to coincide with the July 4 weekend. It will prove as fleeting as any media moment we've endured these past three years and will be forgotten long before November.
Period.
I can just see our intrepid reporter (most of whose material is freely available many thousands of miles from the war zone) intoning a la Pilger: "500,000 Iraqis died during the filming of this documentary" and having it received as a profound statement. It's the sort of propagandist crap at which he excels and you know it.
Now, we know there's a place for such stuff and Moore, who is a smart guy, has stated his target is Bush. F9/11, to me, bears this out. So, what's he doing? Playing catch up? Lending a liberal respectability to infotainment? He's not doing a good job. Even the story lead-ins quoted above and below (picked from Google's news page) do a better job of spreading the Bush Gospel than Moore does to counter it (my embolding—just look how these guys use words).
I don't get to see much of Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh but, from what I have managed to pick up, the right has been doing "news as entertainment" for donkey’s years. Is it a good thing now that U.S. liberals have learnt to play the same game? I think not. John Pilger's been doing this stuff most of his career, but he maintains a veneer of respectability throughout.
Does Moore come anywhere close to making Bush look as vindictively pathetic as Pilger does Richard Bolton and Douglas Feith during formal interviews? I doubt it. I further doubt Michael Moore's film will sustain itself to counter the day-to-day barrage of burble emanating from the likes of Britain's The Sun:
Usually it's hard to get emotional about a 20-ton chunk of granite. But the lump lowered into place on the site of New York's World Trade Centre is very special. Ground Zero will always be a reminder of history's most horrific act of terrorism. The cornerstone of the new Freedom Tower is an act of faith. It's a message to the men of evil that they cannot win.What do we (out here in the world) see? We see Michael Moore as an unlikely small fish in a very large pond, about to disappear (with a grin) into the nearest banking hall. We see the world thrown, by professional spinmeisters, into a media-manipulated cycle of never-ending war and we see Americans responding to it by spending 90 minutes at the movies.
Has Disney rotted the American psyche to such an extent? Has everything been commoditized to the point where, if it's not crammed into 90 minutes, it doesn't exist? And, if it does exist, it does so only for an hour-and-a-half?
Do people really not know what is going on? If so, why? I see no black ink striking offending paragraphs from the pages of the New York Times. You've a free press and 200,000,000 Americans have Web access. If it hasn't been broadcast on the networks, the material used in F9/11 has been available (in far greater scope and detail) on the Web for a long time.
Nobody is able to claim "they did not know". Because this is so, I'm far keener to assess Americans reactions to George W. Bush four-year reign of terror than I am to assess their response to Michael Moore's ninety minutes of fame.
Look, Matt Taibbi is correct. "Say what you want about Moore, but he picked himself up and did something, something approximating the role journalism is supposed to play."
I do not doubt that Michael Moore has 'done something'. But, for this the man is eulogized? What disturbs me is that he is not the norm.
Again, Taibbi is on the button: "Everyone in the commercial media, and that includes Hitchens, knows what his real job is: feeding the monkey. We are professional space-fillers, frivolously tossing content-pebbles in an ever-widening canyon of demand, cranking out one silly pack-mule after another for toothpaste and sneaker ads to ride on straight into the brains of the stupefied public."
For "Hitchens", substitute "Moore" but bear this in mind. Like him or not, the vile Hitchens is a polemicist of infinitely higher caliber than Michael Moore who, as Hitchens is quick to infer, should mix it with the Hannitys and Limbaughs. In fact, Hitchens's review is queasily good and Limbaugh is quick to point out that "More people hear this show in a 15 minute period than saw Moore's movie on its opening weekend..."
If reaction to F9/11 is what the Bush Doctrine has most to fear, I'd say the U.S. president could get away with proclaiming himself emperor. The hysteria surrounding this movie comes across as groupthink at its most dangerous. It's a case of "Do your bit for your country and the world. Go see a movie, support Michael Moore, and feel righteous."
It doesn't wash.
Otherwise, the film sounds quite good.
NY Begins Construction of Freedom Tower
"The cornerstone of a new skyscraper that will one day soar over ground zero has been unveiled, a symbolic step for victims' relatives and a chance for Manhattan to reclaim its broken skyline." USA Today
An Alternative View
Criticism of the above post added July 8, 2004
Bruce Partridge, the famed Atlantan blogger who makes The River flow, has taken time out to trash my above entry by e-mail. That's after doing so in the comments feature below. As a journalist who cares little for anything remotely "fair and balanced", I suppose I should take umbrage and wipe the blogs with Bruce, a liberal-pinko-commie terrorist who'll get his comeuppance spending Christmas in an Atlanta concentration camp.
But, what the hell, he has seen the movie and is entitled to his principles. For what it's worth, they're principles I admire and he uses them to balance my take-down of Michael Moore and his film. Bruce is fair and balanced and he counters every point I make with a valid counter point. Because of this, and because there are two sides to every story, I asked him if I could summarize his mail and append it to this post.
I didn't wait for a response as I had to get this in before work, so I hope I do justice to what is a thoughtful rejoinder.
For my entry on F9/11, I use a couple of quotes to illustrate the pervasive rot trotted out second nature by the U.S. media. Partridge gets straight to it, addressing the first piece of propaganda issued by Associated Press. He points out, quite correctly, that it's written from within the media-manufactured socio-political context that Fahrenheit 9/11 seeks to obliterate. Nothing like going for the jugular at the outset eh, Bruce?
As for my scene-setting introductory paragraph, in which Moore's rabid fans march on Capitol Hill (there to ensconce their hero in public office), Partridge offers an off-hand "Would that it were so." Can I argue with that? Moore in office? Hell, I wouldn't want to argue with that. Most anything's better than Bush and the likes of Moore are infinitely better than the dirt-brains currently cluttering the Beltway or beating at the White House Door.
I then equate Moore to Hannity and Limbaugh. This upsets Bruce because "...the level of dishonesty in their rhetoric is so far from equal." Stay upset, Partridge, they've been around longer than Mikey and know what it takes to succeed. I'm not a great fan of 'moral equivalence' or whatever it would take to measure the quantity and quality of mud slung or rolled in. I more readily accept that one should point out that, in F9/11, on TV, and in public life, Michael Moore retains his obvious humanity. The Limbaughs, Coulters and Hannitys of the infotainment circus do not.
How could they. They had none to begin with.
I'll also readily agree with Bruce that, if Moore is playing catch-up, he's doing so in a market ripe for exploitation. Like it or not, Moore's business (making movies) is either about giving the audience what they want or making them believe they want that which you're giving them. Infotainment might be fast-food data poison, but if Americans want it, why should the right hog manufacturing rights? Besides, Hannity is trailer-trash humor. At least Moore is capable of both nuanced humor and cogent argument, no matter how circumstantial his evidence (and most of it is more than circumstantial).
Denigrating the movie by associating it with the general media's reaction to it? Okay, that's unfair. As Bruce asks, what did I expect of the media? Well, let's not start... Why is he so keen on the film? Simple. It's a "...powerful anti-war, anti-war-cheerleading statement, based on a true story." As for it being a mockumentary ("What's wrong with that?" asks Bruce), it does offer (or hide) good journalism "...in the sense that there is information here, some of which can be read in NYT, much of which has never been presented, and none of which has ever been put out with the questions/interests of everyday people as its foundation."
Fact is, as far as Bruce is concerned, this thing is unique. "This ain’t Sam Smith, John Pilger, or Greg Palast, it’s Michael Moore, and that’s OK." What does Moore deliver? A "...powerful anti-war, anti-Bush, anti-media movie..." I think part of Moore's attraction for Bruce, and his need to refute my entry, derives from the way Moore actually engages his characters and his audience. I can't argue with that. "Hey, it’s not what Moore says, it’s who he talks to. Poor kids, peace activists, senior citizens, recruiters, military officers, and Lila Lipscomb. Plus authors, FBI agents, ex-congressmen..."
Backatcha, as it were. Humphhh...
Will F9/11 have lasting effect? To my mind (and because the average U.S. citizen appears to have none), a movie released in July will be erased from memory by November. Yeah, well, Yankees may be dumb but they're not stupid. Bruce tells me the DVD will be released November and, unlike this neck of the woods, most people in the States are in a position to watch DVDs. Why keep it in memory if you can save it to disk? Indeed. Why? It'll be around at the end of the year.
But this is where, for a foreigner, things get interesting. Bruce says "...much of [this material] has never been presented." He further avers that the movie is generating praise because it allows Americans to see "...real people talking about the war, they’re seeing a little bit of what the war looks like, and plenty of other things they should have seen on the news..." Given what I think of the U.S. media, why am I not surprised they don't see these things on network TV?
Again, Partridge delivers: "We don’t have a free press; it’s completely beholden to the corporate dollar. We do have the Internet. Unfortunately, that ain’t nearly enough." It ain't and, as he points out, we do not live in a perfect world "...that would see Bush and other war criminals in the dock. Would that America withdrew troops and sent out diplomats, would that power didn’t corrupt and absolute power didn’t corrupt absolutely."
Why's this guy not working for Michael Moore? Sorry, I forget. He is. And he accuses me of "...attacking the American public..." rather than the schools, the media and the world we live in. God, they don't come more patriotic than that. Mind you, such patriotism is so rare and irrefutable, it's bloody refreshing.
Does Bruce hold out much hope the movie will achieve what it sets out to do? In large part, yes. But, as far as he's concerned, it's not up to the movie to do that. It's up to the American public to eject Bush from the White House in November. After that? Well, I guess that's when the struggle really begins...
