Saturday, June 26, 2004
Fahrenheit9/11
Since it is being universally discussed, we too should say something about this ugly documentary. Presented in a good cause, it has few scenes that add anything to public knowledge and many that do nothing but confuse. One of the surprising for me were a group of our Representatives trying to present a petition asking for a discussion of the election results at a joint session of Congress. They failed because they did not have the single senatorial signature they needed (the Senate is almost entirely white while they were mostly black). If I had known of this episode the time, I have forgotten. (But of course it was quite irrelevant to the main thesis of the film.) Another good scene was President Bush glued to his chair in a public school reading class as news of the 9/11 talks came in. He evidently simply did not know what to do. His aides came in twice without effect.
But so much of the film is devoted to innuendo, proof that isn't proof or to wailing and weeping. One of the most egregious examples is the picturing of the happy lives of Iraqis followed immediately by bursts of bombs destroying their way of life. There is no hint that the war had any other purpose than corporate greed, the enriching of the wealthiest Americans. Most of the film had the flavor of an old Communist picture decrying the crimes of capitalism and the wealthy combined with the flavor of paranoiacs trying to "connect the dots" of vast conspiracies, as in a famous Kennedy Assassination film. But my greatest objection might be to Michael Moore himself, a coarse egotist who, as detailed by David Brooks in today's Op-Ed, goes around the world attacking not just American policy but the American people as stupid — and picturing our opponents in Iraq as the true revolutionaries of our day.
It is all too bad. There is more than enough good material (much of it in the film) to make an effective and damning picture of Bush policy over the last few years. But for me this is the wrong picture.
Since it is being universally discussed, we too should say something about this ugly documentary. Presented in a good cause, it has few scenes that add anything to public knowledge and many that do nothing but confuse. One of the surprising for me were a group of our Representatives trying to present a petition asking for a discussion of the election results at a joint session of Congress. They failed because they did not have the single senatorial signature they needed (the Senate is almost entirely white while they were mostly black). If I had known of this episode the time, I have forgotten. (But of course it was quite irrelevant to the main thesis of the film.) Another good scene was President Bush glued to his chair in a public school reading class as news of the 9/11 talks came in. He evidently simply did not know what to do. His aides came in twice without effect.
But so much of the film is devoted to innuendo, proof that isn't proof or to wailing and weeping. One of the most egregious examples is the picturing of the happy lives of Iraqis followed immediately by bursts of bombs destroying their way of life. There is no hint that the war had any other purpose than corporate greed, the enriching of the wealthiest Americans. Most of the film had the flavor of an old Communist picture decrying the crimes of capitalism and the wealthy combined with the flavor of paranoiacs trying to "connect the dots" of vast conspiracies, as in a famous Kennedy Assassination film. But my greatest objection might be to Michael Moore himself, a coarse egotist who, as detailed by David Brooks in today's Op-Ed, goes around the world attacking not just American policy but the American people as stupid — and picturing our opponents in Iraq as the true revolutionaries of our day.
It is all too bad. There is more than enough good material (much of it in the film) to make an effective and damning picture of Bush policy over the last few years. But for me this is the wrong picture.
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