West Coast Connection Forum
Lifestyle => Train of Thought => Topic started by: Kaidy on April 01, 2003, 02:10:12 PM
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Just saw this for the first time. Pretty impressive documentary. On the whole it says a lot of things that the learned people here already know (USA's inherent institutional racism, US Govt double standards in foreign policy etc) but there were some really nice points brought up. The whole thing about the White Man's fear was genius, and I liked the thing relating fear to consumerism.
Michael Moore really outdid himself. I recommend EVERYONE here see it. It's not bullshit, it's fact after fact hitting you square in the chest with very, minimal spin put on it for entertainment. Check it out and make your own opinion.
It's things like this that help me to know my opinions are right and worth keeping. Thankyou Michael Moore...
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LOL Micheal Moore is the biggest fraud in the history of all hippies. He uses propaganda to get sheep to follow him. Being informed requires more than just looking at that which supports your view. Michael Moore is a degenerate, even when he is wrong, he will lie and misrepresent to make his point seem valid.
Seriously man, there s a reson why this guy got booed off stage at the Oscars. Don't be such a sheep....think for yourself.
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http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
Documentary or Fiction?
-David T. Hardy-
The first misconception to correct about Michael Moore's The Big One is that it is a documentary. It's not. Moore doesn't make those. . . . . it's best to consider Moore's films as entries into the ever-growing category of pseudo (or "meta") documentaries. Or, perhaps even more accurately, view it as an exercise in self-publicity.
James Berardinelli
The Michael Moore production "Bowling for Columbine" just won the Oscar for best documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary, by the Academy's own definition.
The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which (despite its real value) receives but a tiny fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry." The award of the documentary Oscar to a $4 million entertainment piece is unjust to the legitimate competitors, disheartening to makers of real documentaries, and sets a precedent which may encourage inspire others to take similar liberties with their future projects.
Bowling makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore invites the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which he never uttered.
These occur with such frequency and seriousness as to rule out unintentional error. Any polite description would be inadequate, so let me be blunt. Bowling uses deliberate deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.
A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be amusing, or it may be moving. But it is not a documentary. One need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary must be non-fictional, and even re-enactments (much less doctoring of a speech) must stress fact and not fiction. To the Academy voters, some silly rules were not a bar to giving the award. The documentary category, the one refuge for works which educated and informed, is now no more than another sub-category of entertainment.
Serious charges require serious evidence. The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or that its conclusions are incorrect. No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive. A viewer cannot count upon any aspect of it, even when the viewer believes he is seeing video of an event occurring or a person speaking. Words are cheap. Let's look at the evidence.
1. Lockheed-Martin and Nuclear Missiles. Bowling for Columbine contains a sequence filmed at the Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility, near Columbine. Moore interviews a PR fellow, shows missiles being built, and then asks whether knowledge that weapons of mass destruction were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters in committing their own mass slaying. After all, if their father worked on the missiles, "What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?" Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep."
Soon after Bowling was released someone checked out the claim, and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.
Moore's website has his response:
".T]he Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "
Nice try, Mike.
(1) the fact that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting in the movie... it's hard to envision a killer making a moral equation between mass murder and a recon satellite, right?
(2) In fact, one of that plant's major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: the Denver plant was in charge of taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and converting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units instead.
C'mon Mike, You got caught. As we will see below, the event is all too illustrative of Moore's approach. In producing a supposed "documentary," Moore simply changes facts when they don't suit his theme.
2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. The dominant theme in Bowling (and certainly the theme that has attracted most reviewers) is that NRA is callous toward slayings. The theme begins early in the film, and forms its ending, as Moore confronts Heston, asserting that he keeps going to the scene of tragedies to hold defiant rallies.
In order to make this theme fit the facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.
Bowling portrays this with the following sequence:
Weeping children outside Columbine, explaining how near they had come to death and how their friends had just been murdered before their eyes;
Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket over his head and happily proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'" to a cheering NRA crowd.
Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore in voiceover intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"
Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here."
The portrayal is one of Heston and NRA arrogantly holding a protest rally in response to the deaths -- or, as one reviewer put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy." [italics added]. Moore successfully causes viewers to reach this conclusion. It is in fact false.
Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine, but an annual meeting, whose place and date had been fixed years in advance.
Fact: At Denver, the NRA canceled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' meeting; that could not be cancelled because corporate law required that it be held. [No way to change location, since you have to give advance notice of that to the members, and there were upwards of 4,000,000 members.]
Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not given at Denver after Columbine. It was given a year later in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a response to his being given the musket, a collector's piece, at that annual meeting. Bowling leads off with this speech, and then splices in footage which was taken in Denver and refers to Denver, to create the impression that the entire clip was taken at the Denver event.
Fact: When Bowling continues on to the speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to change its theme.
Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and quite a few other things. Carrying it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK HERE for the comparison.
Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely, and spliced them together, to create a speech that was never given. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a still or video footage for a few seconds.
First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech given a year later to a meeting in North Carolina.
Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration. The interlude is vital. He can't cut directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie. Or why the background draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments of this supposed speech to keep the viewer from noticing.
Moore then goes to show Heston speaking in Denver. His second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd at the meeting, while Heston's voice continues) deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its meeting:
"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that."
Moore has to take that out -- it would blow his entire theme. Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: Don't come here? We're already here!" as if in defiance.
Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence! Heston was actually saying (with reference Heston's own WWII vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."
Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." It thus becomes an arrogant "I said to the Mayor: as American's we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting to footage of protestors and a still photo of the Mayor as Heston says "I said to the mayor," cutting back to Heston's face at "As Americans."
Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing trick to cover the doctoring. As Heston speaks, the video switches momentarily to a pan of the crowd, then back to Heston; the pan shot covers the doctoring.
What Heston actually is saying in "We're already here" was not the implied defiance, but rather this:
"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine.
Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.
So, we have the same right as all other citizens to be here. To help shoulder the grief and share our sorrow and to offer our respectful, reassured voice to the national discourse that has erupted around this tragedy."
Don't take my word for it. Click here for CNS's full transcript of the speech, and here for the comparison.
Bowling continues its theme by juxtaposing another Heston speech with a school shooting at Mt. Morris, MI, just north of Flint, making the claim that right after the shooting, NRA came to the locale to stage a defiant rally. In Moore's words, "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally."
Fact: Heston's speech was given at a "get out the vote" rally in Flint, which was held when elections rolled around some eight months after the shooting.
Fact: Moore should remember. On the same day, Moore himself was hosting a similar rally in Flint, for the Green Party.
Moore follows up the impression with his Heston interview. Heston's memory of the Flint event is foggy (he says it was a morning event and he "then went on to wherever we were going." In fact it was held at night as the last event of the tour.). This is hardly surprising; it was one rally in a nine-stop tour of three States in three days.
Moore, who had plenty of time to prepare for the interview, carefully continues the impression he has created, asking Heston questions such as: "After that happened you came to Flint to hold a big rally and, you know, I just , did you feel it was being at all insensitive to the fact that this community had just gone through this tragedy?" Moore continues to come back at Heston, asking if he would have cancelled the event if he "knew" and "you think you'd like to apologize to the people in Flint for coming and doing that at that time?" Moore knows the real sequence, and knows that Heston does not. He takes full advantage of Heston and of the viewer.
Moore's purpose here is to convince the viewer that Heston intentionally holds defiant protests in response to a firearms tragedy. Judging from reviews, Bowling creates exactly that impression. Some samples: "Then, he [Heston] and his ilk held ANOTHER gun-rally shortly after another child/gun tragedy in Flint, MI where a 6-year old child shot and killed a 6-year old classmate (Heston claims in the final interview of the film that he didn't know this had just happened when he appeared." Click here for original; italics supplied] Another reviewer even came off with the impression that Heston"held another NRA rally in Flint, Michigan, just 48 hours after a 6 year old shot and killed a classmate in that same town." " What was Heston thinking going to into Colorado and Michigan immediately after the massacres of innocent children?" asks a third.
Bowling persuaded these reviewers by deceiving them. There was no rally shortly after the tragedy, nor 48 hours after it. When Heston said he did not know of the shooting (which had happened eight months before his appearance, over a thousand miles from his home) he was undoubtedly telling the truth. The lie here is not that of Heston, but of Moore.
The sad part is that the lie has proven so successful. Moore's creative skills, which could be put to a good purpose, are instead used to convince the viewer that a truthful man is a liar and that things which did not occur, did.
3. Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a burning cross. This sequence is intended to create the impression either that NRA and the Klan were parallel groups or (more likely) that when the Klan was outlawed its members formed the NRA. And viewers pick up just that message. "Throughout the film Moore mentions the history of the NRA and ties it closely with the history of white Americans' fear of African-Americans. He points out that the NRA was "coincidentally" founded in the same year that the KKK was founded." Source
Both impressions are not merely false, but directly opposed to the real facts.
Fact: The Klan wasn't founded in 1871, but in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that it technically became an "illegal" terrorist organization with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to suspend habeas corpus and to use troops to suppress the Klan.
Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina, sending troops into that and other states; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.
Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.
Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to oppose Klan terror.
Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded in New York by two former Union officers, its first president was an Army of the Potomac commander, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.
Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen.
.4. Shooting at Buell Elementary School in Michigan. Bowling depicts the juvenile shooter as a sympathetic youngster who just found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school. "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl."
Fact: The little boy was the class bully, already suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a knife.
Fact: The uncle's house was the neighborhood crack-house. The uncle (together with the shooter's father, then serving a prison term for theft and cocaine possession, and his aunt and maternal grandmother) earned their living off drug dealing. The gun was stolen by one of the uncle's customers and purchased by him in exchange for drugs.
Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
5. The Taliban and American Aid. After discussing military assistance to various countries, Bowling asserts that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, and then shows aircraft hitting the twin towers to illustrate the result.
Fact: The aid in question was humanitarian assistance, given through UN and nongovernmental organizations, to relieve famine in Afghanistan.
6. International Comparisons. To pound home its point, Bowling flashes a dramatic count of gun homicides in various countries: Canada 165, Germany 381, Australia 65, Japan 39, US 11,127. Now that's raw numbers, not rates, but let's go with what Bowling uses.
Verifying the figures was difficult, since Moore does not give a year for them, but I kept trying. A lot of Moore's numbers didn't check out for any period I could find. As a last effort at checking, I did a Google search for each number and the word "gun" or words "gun homicides" Many traced -- only back to webpages repeating Bowling's figures. So far as I can find, Moore is the only one using these numbers.
Germany: Bowling says 381: Where Moore could have found this number is beyond me. 1995 figures put homicides at 1,476, about four times what Bowling claims, and gun homicides at 168, about half what it claims. (And that is purely murder: if you add in accidents and suicides it becomes 12,888 for all, or about 1,207 for firearms.) No figure matches or comes close.
Australia: Bowling says 65. This seems to be close, albeit picking the year to get the data desired. Between 1980-1995, firearm homicides varied wildly from 64-123, although never exactly 65. In 2000, it was 64, which was proudly proclaimed as the lowest number in the country's history. If suicides and accidents are included, the numbers become 516 - 687.
US: Bowling says 11,127. FBI figures put it a lot lower. They report gun homicides were 8,719 in 2001, 8,661 in 2000, 8,480 in 1999. (2001 UCR, p. 23).
Going back 1997 (first year listed in the 2001 FBI report), I can't find Bowling's U.S. number anywhere. If Moore got it from an earlier timeframe, he's juggling years to compare US historic highs to Australia's and Canada's historic lows.
It's possible Moore is adding in gun suicides and accidents, but in that event he should have added them in to the other countries, as well, which as noted above would kick Germany from 381 to 12,888.
Canada: Moore's number is correct for 1999, a low point, but he ignores some obvious differences.
Bias. I wanted to talk about fabrication or errors, not about bias, but I've gotten emails asking why I didn't mention that Switzerland requires almost all adult males to have guns, but has a lower homicide rate than Great Britain, or that Japanese-Americans, with the same proximity to guns as other Americans, have homicide rate half that of Japan itself. Okay, they're mentioned, now back to our regularly scheduled program.
In short, where Bowling gets its crime figures is largely a mystery. Many of them seem to trace back only to Bowling itself, and are not elsewhere reported: the most apparent explanation is that they were invented for the movie.
7. Miscellaneous. Even the Canadian government is getting into the act. In one scene, Bowling shows Moore casually buying ammunition at an Ontario Walmart. He asks us to "look at what I, a foreign citizen, was able to do at a local Canadian Wal-Mart." He enters the store and buys several boxes of ammunition without a question being raised. "That's right. I could buy as much ammunition as I wanted, in Canada."
Canadian officials have pointed out that the buy is either faked or illegal: Canadian law requires all ammunition buyers to present proper identification. (The law, in effect since 1998, requires non-Canadians to present picture ID and a gun importation permit. Moore probably told the store clerk there was no need to bother with details since he wasn't really going to buy the ammunition.). Even when Bowling is praising an area, the viewer still can't count on it to be truthful.
While we're at it: Bowling shows footage of a B-52 on display at the Air Force Academy, while Moore solemnly pronounces that the plaque under it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972." Strangely, the camera only lets you see the plaque from a distance where you cannot read it.
The plaque actually reads that "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." This is pretty mild compared to the rest of Bowling, granted. But it illustrates that the viewer can't even trust Moore to honestly read a document. (The B-52 was rather lucky: the American plane ahead of it and the one behind it were lost).
8. Race. At one point in the evolution of this webpage, I suggested that Moore tries to suggest that Heston is a bigot. Upon reviewing the movie again, I'd have to say that Moore does not make that point, although many of his viewers hold it after watching. E.g, " Heston's racist excuse that Americans are maybe more violent than other countries because we have a greater ethnic mix." Source. "Heston looks like an idiot, and a racist one at that" Source. "BTW, one thing the Heston interview did clear up, that man is shockingly racist. Beyond revulsion I never felt pity for that privileged, ignorant hypocrite." Source.
The remarks stem from Heston's answer (after Moore keeps pressing for why the US has more violence than other countries) that it might be due the US "having a more mixed ethnicity" than other nations. When Moore asks if Heston thinks it's "an ethnic thing," Heston responds (as the camera zooms in) "We had enough problems with civil rights in the beginning." A viewer who accepts Moore's theme that gun ownership is driven by racial fears might conclude that Heston is blaming blacks and the civil rights movement for violence.
But if you look at some history missing from Bowling, you get exactly the opposite picture. Heston is talking, not about race, but about racism. In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement was fighting for acceptance. Civil rights workers were subject to murder and beatings. The Kennedy Administration, trying to hold together a Democratic coalition that ranged from liberals to fire-eater segregationists such as George Wallace and Lester Maddox, found the issue too hot to touch, and prior to 1963 offered little aid.
Charlton Heston got involved, beginning with picketing discriminatory restaurants. He worked with Martin Luther King, and helped King break Hollywood's color barrier (yes, there was one.). He led the actors' component of King's 1963 march in Washington -- important precisely because it showed the strength (250,000 marchers) and acceptability of the civil rights movement, put spine into the Administration, and set the stage for the key civil rights legislation in 1964. Source.
Here's Heston's comments at the 2001 Congress on Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner (also attended by NRA's Executive Vice President, and presided over by NRA director, and CORE President, Roy Innes). You can find photos of Heston's civil rights activism here, just search for Heston if the precise page doesn't link.
So when Heston is talking about ethnic diversity and "problems with civil rights in the beginning," he's not suggesting that race is a factor -- he's suggesting that racism is. Most of the viewers likely were born long after the events Heston is recalling. To them, the civil rights struggle consists of Martin Luther King giving some speeches, people singing "We Shall Overcome," and everyone coming to their senses. Heston remembers what it was really like, and finds a possible explanation of violence in the legacy of racism.
9. Fear. Bowling probably has a good point when it suggests that we are prone to irrational fears, and the media feeds off this in a search for circulation and the fast buck. Bowling cites some glaring examples: the razor blades in Halloween apples scare, the flesh-eating bacteria scare, etc. The examples are taken straight from Barry Glassner's excellent book on the subject, "The Culture of Fear," and Moore interviews Glassner on-camera for the point.
Then Moore does exactly what he condemns in the media.
Given the prominence of schoolyard killings as a theme in Bowling for Columbine, Moore must have asked Glassner about that subject. Whatever Glassner footage was taken in this regard is, however, left on the cutting-room floor. That's because Glassner lists schoolyard shootings as one of the mythical fears. He points out that "More than three times as many people are killed by lightning as by violence at schools."
Bowling for Columbine follows the very adage it condemns: "If it bleeds, it leads." Fear sells -- and can win you an Oscar.
10. Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making (although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.
After making out Canada to be a haven of peace and safety, Moore asks why. He proclaims that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership," somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges, gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun toting, gun crazy country!" Or as he put it elsewhere, "then I learned that Canada has 7 million guns but they don't kill each other like we do. I thought, gosh, that's uncomfortably close to the NRA position: Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Bowling concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and gun nuts -- it has lots of those -- but because the Canadian mass media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American media is. (One problem).
Which leaves us to wonder why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued a press release. congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination.
Or does Bowling have a hidden punch line, and in the end the joke is on them?
One possible explanation: did Bowling begin as one movie, and end up as another?
Conclusion
The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity. One might hope that a documentary would be fair, but nothing rules out a rousing polemic.
The point is far more fundamental: Bowling for Columbine is dishonest. It is fraudulent. It fixes upon a theme, and advances it, whenever necessary, by deception. To trash Heston, it even uses the audio/video editor to assemble a Heston speech that Heston did not give, and to turn sympathetic phrases into arrogant ones. Moore's object is not to enlighten or to document, but to play his viewer like a violin, to the point where they leave the theater with heartfelt believe in that which is, sadly, quite false.
The bottom line: can a film be called a documentary when the viewer cannot trust an iota of it, not only the narration, but the video? I suppose film critics could debate that one for a long time, and some might prefer entertainment and effect to fact and truth. But the Academy Award rules here are specific. Rule 12 lays out "Special Rules for the Documentary Award." And it begins with the definition: "A documentary film is defined as a non-fiction motion picture . . . ."
David T. Hardy [an amateur who has for the last year been working on a serious bill of rights documentary], to include the Second Amendment.
dthardy@mindspring.com
[PS--if I don't reply quickly--I'm getting about 200 emails a day on this, so often I can reply immediately only to the more amusing threats and have to leave the rest for a quiet moment.]
A few additions:
Wall Street Journal weights in.
A list of some criticisms not given on this page, and reasons why.
Where Moore did have a point, and should have done his homework.
Equal time: emails critical of this page. [NB: I'm getting around 200 emails per day, of which about 40 are critical, for a total of 250-300 to date, and I've had time to post a half dozen or so. Please don't feel ignored if yours doesn't make it. And don't try to jump to the head of the list with "You don't have guts enough to post this." It's been done. I get 4-5 of those a day.]
A brief reply to two responses I've received in emails:
Objectivity: (sample from email): "In other words is fiction and non-fiction that far removed from one another. My immediate response is NO!" "Your entire article is retarded. We're talking about making FILM. ALL film is subjective. Have you not even taken an entry level course in film before?"
Response: The point is not that Bowling is non-objective, or even that it is biased. The point is that it is intentionally deceptive, and that is a different matter entirely.
Nothing is real: I've received several responses to the effect that the camera changes everything, etc., so in video there can be no truth or falsity, hence lying is not unethical. Sample: "tv and movies, newspapers or even documentaries *are* constructions, not "the truth" ("truth" is subjective personal opinion/experience, which would be impossible to commit to videotape or celluloid)."
Response: This certainly has given me some insight into how some in the media view things!
Can we agree upon one core premise: to deliberately deceive a viewer is wrong? I'm not talking bias, nor emphasis. Editing a speech to create sentences that were not spoken. Telling the viewer that this is the history, when you know the opposite happened. Talk basic ethics. Is that what you'd teach your children? Everything is subjective, so truth and lies are ultimately the same, all that matters is whether you're good at it?
Finally, let me plug a book I've published, on the Waco affair (OK, what's a page without some shameless commercialism? At least it wasn't one of those %$#^^@ popups, and I stuck it at the very end.)
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Thanks for posting that CWalker, I took the time to read it all. I agree with some of it, but to be honest any intelligent person can pick out the editing by themselves. I didn't like it either but it was actually very obvious. I also didn't like the way the doc started, ridiculing rednecks just for giggles. but it moved on fast.
But I think what he was going for is to appeal to the lowest common denominator. To make the everyday Joe take a different look at things. If those techniques make someone pick up a history book, then its done its job. its what the government do to help their publicity every day.
I can't explain the figures (5 year averages maybe? i dont know) but there was a lot of historical fact in there. All the undecover actions of the US Govt and CIA have been well documented elsewhere and are common knowledge to people like myself.
I could pick apart that whole article, but its not like you wrote it so i wont waste the time. As for Heston though, it's another known fact that he is far from a liberal guy. I mean, he tried to ban gangsta back in the mid 90s. Talk about a hypocrit, he uses the constitution to back up his gun club, but ignores it when looking at music.
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Let's play an SAT Game.
Rush Limbaugh is to Bill Clinton and the Democratic party as
Michael Moore is to ____________ and the _________________
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LOL Micheal Moore is the biggest fraud in the history of all hippies. He uses propaganda to get sheep to follow him. Being informed requires more than just looking at that which supports your view. Michael Moore is a degenerate, even when he is wrong, he will lie and misrepresent to make his point seem valid.
Seriously man, there s a reson why this guy got booed off stage at the Oscars. Don't be such a sheep....think for yourself.
thanks...you saved me from a lot of typing
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that movie wasn't all that great......if you want to see a real good movie go see Chicago or that movie with robin williams as a wal mart photo developer
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Dear sweet mother of Christ...
Ah, CWalker, your skills at libel amaze me. You've read Stupid White Men, haven't you? Can you deny ANY of those facts? That 44 million adult americans cannot read beyond 4th grade level, etc?
Please, stop being so venomous in your posts. They may be good or informative, but they lose my respect as soon as they become evidently bias.
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C-walker is only venomous in his posts because look at what 95% of the topics on this forum are about.
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So did anyone else actually see this? Or am I just going to get more of these inane and pointless responses. I actually respected CWalker for posting that article, but the rest of you haven't really offered me anything.
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great documentary.
we went wit tha whole senior classes to the movie. we rent a cinema for that. great anti-americanism ;D
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great anti-americanism ;D
well i think thats unfair. yes it would be great fuel FOR an anti-american. But on the whole it was only against the ruling powers of America. it was very sympathetic to minorities of America, children/youth of America and the people who we should be caring about.
I guess Moore is kind of like me in his views. i actually love a lot of things about America, i even want to live there. I just think the powers that be are rotten to the core.
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i didnt mean the movie is I meant OUR SCHOOL DID ANTI AMERICANISM BECAUSE it was a DUTY to watch the movie. during school-time.
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44 million adult americans cannot read beyond 4th grade level
WOAH
:o
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that movie wasn't all that great......if you want to see a real good movie go see Chicago or that movie with robin williams as a wal mart photo developer
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great documentary.
we went wit tha whole senior classes to the movie. we rent a cinema for that. great anti-americanism ;D
Why is your school brainwashing you with "doumentaries" like that?
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Ah, CWalker, your skills at libel amaze me. You've read Stupid White Men, haven't you? Can you deny ANY of those facts? That 44 million adult americans cannot read beyond 4th grade level, etc?
Everything Michael Moore does is full of lies and half truths. Seriously man, don't be such a sheep.
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020403.html
One Moore stupid white man
With his factually challenged bestseller, Michael Moore becomes an unfortunate poster boy for dissent.
By Ben Fritz (ben@spinsanity.org)
April 3, 2002
[First published on Salon.com (Salon Premium subscription required)]
Michael Moore's latest success might be his most remarkable. At a time when the public remains strongly supportive of the Bush administration -- and few dissenting voices have risen above the din -- his book "Stupid White Men" stands atop the New York Times bestseller list for a third week running.
And at a time when some Republican leaders are using Bush's popularity to equate any criticism of U.S. policy with treason, Moore's success should be a reason for any democracy-loving American to cheer.
It should be, but it isn't.
"Stupid White Men" is full of the biting satire Moore has honed on a large scale ever since the release of his 1989 documentary of General Motors' mistreatment of its workers in Flint, Mich., "Roger and Me," became a hit. He followed that up with a mid-'90s TV series, "TV Nation," the bestselling book "Downsize This!" and the 1998 documentary "The Big One," all of which employ his trademark defense of the little guy against the unchecked callousness of corporate America. [Disclosure: My co-editor Brendan Nyhan and I helped bring Moore to speak at Swarthmore College while we were students there. Moore was paid an honorarium by the college for his speech.]
With the success of "Roger and Me" also came a critical rap: That he took liberties with the truth, fiddling with the chronology, for greater dramatic effect. But that criticism doesn't seem to have made an impression on Moore, and that's nowhere more apparent than in "Stupid White Men." In it, readers are told that 10 million people left the welfare rolls during the '90s, brutally kicked off by Bill Clinton. He writes that five-sixths of the defense budget in 2001 went toward building a single type of plane and that the recent recession is nothing more than a fabrication by the wealthy to keep down the working classes. And readers who uncritically accept those "facts" -- along with a number of other egregious and sloppy distortions -- will be duped. Good satire also should be grounded in fact. Regrettably, Moore gets his facts wrong again and again and again, and a simple check of the sources he cites shows that lazy research is often to blame.
Consider, for instance, his claim that "two-thirds of [the over $190 million President Bush raised during the presidential campaign] came from just over seven hundred individuals." Given the $2,000 federal limit on individual donations, this claim is obviously false. To back it up, he cites the Center for Responsive Politics Web site (opensecrets.org) and an August 2000 article from the New York Times. As opensecrets.org clearly indicates, however, only 52.6 percent of Bush's total $193 million in campaign funds came from individuals. The Times article Moore references actually states that 739 people gave two-thirds of the soft money raised by the Republican Party (which uses its money for "party-building" activities that support all GOP candidates, not just Bush) in the 2000 election cycle as of June of that year. Whether out of malice or laziness, Moore conflates the party's soft money with Bush's campaign funds.
This pattern -- the very sources Moore cites proving him wrong -- continues throughout the book.
In a discussion of Pentagon spending, he refers to the "$250 billion the Pentagon plans to spend in 2001 to build 2800 new Joint Strike Fighter planes" and states that "the proposed increase in monies for the Pentagon over the next four years is $1.6 trillion." To back this up, he refers to the Web site of the peace activist group Council for a Livable World. CLW's own analysis of the 2001 budget, however, shows that $250 billion is the total multiyear cost of the Joint Strike Fighter program, not the amount spent in one year. $1.6 trillion, meanwhile, was the total amount of money requested by the Pentagon at the time for 2001-2005. It covers five years, not four, and is a total budget request, not a "proposed increase" over previously requested budget levels. It shouldn't even take this much research, however, to determine that out of the total defense budget request of $305.4 billion in 2001, $250 billion was never intended to go toward one type of plane, nor that an increase of $400 billion per year in military spending was never proposed.
Most baffling of Moore's misstatements may come in a listing of categories that the U.S. tops, such as per capita energy use and births to teenagers. In a blatant misrepresentation, he states: "We're number one in budget deficit (as a percentage of GDP)." When Moore wrote his book last year, the United States was running a budget surplus, as it had for the previous three years.
Just how did Moore get so many of his facts wrong? Lazy cribbing from media outlets and the Internet seems the most likely culprit, as evidenced by a four-page list of allegedly dubious policy accomplishments by President Bush, including cutting funds from libraries and appointing former business executives to regulatory posts. All but one of the 48 accusations appear in the same order and with very similar phrasing to a list that has been printed this winter (but before Moore's book came out) on liberal Web sites and, according to Dr. David A. Sprintzen (often wrongly cited, though not by Moore, as its author), was circulating via e-mail last summer. Belying a lack of original research, Moore even apes many of the negative characterizations of individuals, calling judicial appointee Terrence Boyle a "civil rights opponent," for example (the list refers to him as a "foe of civil rights"), with absolutely no context for why exactly Boyle deserves that moniker (one certainly has to wonder whether Moore himself knows).
Curiously, Moore cites no source for this list. He only notes that readers "can keep track of what Bush did and does during his administration" by reading Molly Ivins' syndicated column and the Web sites smirkingchimp.com and bushwatch.com. The latter two did print the list, but not until this winter, well after Moore wrote his book, though before it was published.
Just as worrisome as Moore's frequent mistakes is the distorted manner in which he presents some of his claims that have a factual basis. Consider, for example, this critique of Bill Clinton.
"[H]e has been able to kick ten million people off welfare," he writes in a list of attacks on the former president. While the welfare rolls did drop substantially while Clinton was in office (although the total number as of June 2000 was 8.3 million), many people left voluntarily to take jobs as the economy grew or for other reasons. Far fewer were booted from the rolls by the five-year limits Clinton signed into law in 1996 or by stricter state limits.
Grossly misrepresenting the facts to make Bill Clinton look bad is a pattern in his chapter "Democrats, DOA." Moore also derides Clinton's record on feminism, stating "Clinton learned that by talking a good feminist line, he could arrange it so that not one feminist leader would decry the order he signed in 1999 to deny federal funds to any foreign group that discussed abortion during consultations."
Moore is correct about the law here (although Gloria Feldt of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America did criticize the move). In framing Clinton as having a crafty antiabortion agenda, however, he blatantly ignores that Clinton eliminated the so-called "Mexico City Policy" banning U.S. funding of overseas clinics that perform or promote abortion in 1993 and only reluctantly signed it back into law in 1999 as part of a deal to pay nearly $1 billion in arrears to the United Nations. The funding was then restored in the next year's budget, albeit with concessions to delay its implementation, which Moore also fails to note.
To truly understand how absurdly Moore twists the truth to advance his agenda, consider his description of the economic downturn. After accurately describing the hard times that have hit the country in the past year, he offers this analysis to his readers:
"There is no recession, my friends. No downturn. No hard times. The rich are wallowing in the loot they've accumulated in the past two decades, and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie."
Forget about overinvestment during the tech boom, a sharp drop in business spending or even the simple facts of the business cycle. Michael Moore has the real answer: "[The rich have] decided to perform a preemptive strike in the hope that you'll never even think of eyeing their piles of cash." Not content to simply berate the wealthy for their disproportionate advances in income and wealth during the '90s boom, Moore takes his aggressive jargon to extremes by concocting a conspiracy in which the elite simply created a downturn that he claims doesn't really exist. This isn't satire, it's paranoid propaganda.
For the bestselling nonfiction book in the country, "Stupid White Men" has received remarkably little scrutiny and few serious reviews. Moore is much beloved in Britain, and a review on a BBC show called his book "fantastic" with "loads of research." Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have read much of it -- though the thousands of people who have bought his book surely don't know that.
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This website is copyright (c) 2001-2002 by Ben Fritz, Bryan Keefer and Brendan Nyhan. Please send letters to the editor for publication to letters@spinsanity.org and private questions or comments to feedback@spinsanity.org.
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great documentary.
we went wit tha whole senior classes to the movie. we rent a cinema for that. great anti-americanism ;D
Why is your school brainwashing you with "doumentaries" like that?
Because I said so
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If you think BFC was a great film, perhaps you should get to know Moore and his filmmaking techniques a little better:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1209/059.html
http://www.galun.com/misc/seasonal/2002/12/17-Moore.html
http://www.whatever-dude.com/posts/327.shtml
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html
This pic really dosen't have anything to do with the topic above, but it makes me laugh:
(http://www.binarystorage.net/clients/flashbunny/pics/hollywoodfpr.jpg)
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Everything Michael Moore does is full of lies and half truths. Seriously man, don't be such a sheep.
Nice article. But...
1) Sloppy research is different to doublespeak.
2) This "concocted conspiracy"; well, the WMF, IntBank, the National Reserve, and Alan Greenspan (the last off the record) have all said there have been 100s of VERY unusual actions in this respect in recent years, these facts all supporting Moore's theory. I'm truly surprised MM didn't use these respected voices.
3) Please prove these facts, all admitted by the Clinton and Bush administrations, wrong:
44 million adult americans are functionally illterate; that is, they cannot read beyond a 4th grade level.
67 % of welfare recipients are children.
(this one has not been admitted by the government, but by the city mayor and the state governor) Only three African countries have a lower mortality rate than Detroit
The only American state capital without a Mickey D's is Montpelier, Vermont; it is estimated by the government, during Clinton's administration, that around 50% of non-graduate Americans worked in the fast food industry. The other 50% was used up in the primary and partial secondary industries, and gas stations, etc-unskilled tertiary industries.
(this is from the NRA and the government, though more the NRA) There are about 250 million guns in America; one for EVERY person in the country. When one of these guns is used in self-defence, only 2 percent of the time, when the bullets hit, do they hit the intruder. 98 percent of the time, they either shoot the user or a loved one, or are used BY the intruder. 500k guns are stolen every year; these guns, the vast majority of the time, end up in minority neighbourhoods. Have you ever seen a gun factory in Compton?
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Everything Michael Moore does is full of lies and half truths. Seriously man, don't be such a sheep.
44 million adult americans are functionally illterate
Judging from your text, you are probably not Amerikkkan, but I'll take a guess that you are a Caucasian male from England or some European nation, but like you tried to get at me in another thread that I must be part of the 44 million illiterates in Amerikkka. I have to say this: IN THE PAST FEW MINUTES, I SEE THAT YOU MUST BE PART OF UNTOLD MILLIONS OF PEOPLE WHO CANNOT SPELL PAST THE 5TH GRADE. HERE, IN CASE YOU NEED HELP FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS IS HOW YOU SPELL THE WORD THAT MEANS "THOSE WHO ARE UNABLE TO READ OR WRITE"
I-L-L-I-T-E-R-A-T-E
This word also means "showing a lack of education; not cultured: illiterate spelling. ;)
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the black man is god..... uhm.... nation of gods and earth?
welcome allah.
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Damon X-Investigate concept: typos.
Go back to your corner and your little dunce cap, you're embarassing yourself.
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Damon X-Investigate concept: typos.
Go back to your corner and your little dunce cap, you're embarassing yourself.
How is that when I know how to spell a word that is taught in grade school? Your responses still proves that A. You're corny and B. you still can't spell.
End it Owen, the FACT was proven. Live with it and consult a dictionary in the future.
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How is that when I know how to spell a word that is taught in grade school? Your responses still proves that A. You're corny and B. you still can't spell.
End it Owen, the FACT was proven. Live with it and consult a dictionary in the future.
Corny? My dear friend, you're the one coming out with hackneyed clichés like "The Black Man Is God".
I can't spell? You obviously refuse to read posts that disprove what you said.
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How is that when I know how to spell a word that is taught in grade school? Your responses still proves that A. You're corny and B. you still can't spell.
End it Owen, the FACT was proven. Live with it and consult a dictionary in the future.
Corny? My dear friend, you're the one coming out with hackneyed clichés like "The Black Man Is God".
I can't spell? You obviously refuse to read posts that disprove what you said.
Okay Owen, whatever you say. ::)
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Okay Owen, whatever you say. ::)
I've now demonstrated your ignorance on two threads over the basic facts of internet life, and I can only imagine that you are now sitting in the corner crying-again.
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Okay Owen, whatever you say. ::)
I've now demonstrated your ignorance on two threads over the basic facts of internet life, and I can only imagine that you are now sitting in the corner crying-again.
Again, whatever you say Spelling Bee Champ! ::)
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Again, whatever you say Spelling Bee Champ! ::)
Funnily enough, I did win my 5th Grade Georgia Spelling Bee. As you're from ATL (as, indeed, am I, though I was born in SAV), and claim to be able to spell better than me, I wonder why I won? Is it because it's all a white conspiracy to stop blacks winning spelling bees, and therefore becoming president?
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Again, whatever you say Spelling Bee Champ! ::)
Funnily enough, I did win my 5th Grade Georgia Spelling Bee. As you're from ATL (as, indeed, am I, though I was born in SAV), and claim to be able to spell better than me, I wonder why I won? Is it because it's all a white conspiracy to stop blacks winning spelling bees, and therefore becoming president?
No, the conspiracy is that you actually think you are intelligent and can challenge and debate against someone like me or others you feel are inferior to your intelligence.
The fact is "ATL" does not denote the city in Atlanta, Sherlock. It means "A"bove "T"he "L"aw (a rap group from the westcoast).
Not only are you ignorant when it comes to politics, but you are in a west-coast based rap forum and couldn't figure that out.
Damn, I guess there is someone on this forum just as ignorant as Scott Shepard. "Damn country bamas."
I guess it is possible. Someone can post over 2,200 threads/replies and still be a fuckin' dummy 2,200 times over.
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No, the conspiracy is that you actually think you are intelligent and can challenge and debate against someone like me or others you feel are inferior to your intelligence.
The fact is "ATL" does not denote the city in Atlanta, Sherlock. It means "A"bove "T"he "L"aw (a rap group from the westcoast).
Not only are you ignorant when it comes to politics, but you are in a west-coast based rap forum and couldn't figure that out.
Damn, I guess there is someone on this forum just as ignorant as Scott Shepard. "Damn country bamas."
I guess it is possible. Someone can post over 2,200 threads/replies and still be a fuckin' dummy 2,200 times over.
I love how you failed to answer my main jibe, instead turning it into an insult.
So, you think I'm stupid? Well, I've been moved up two grades, I already have university offers from Princeton, Cambridge and Oxford for politics courses, and I'm regularly asked for articles from respected political periodicals.
You, on the other, have not achieved any of those things. Well done, your idiotic insults just cut the ground from underneath your feet.
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thought ATL stood for Atlanta? ;D
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thought ATL stood for Atlanta? ;D
Hmm. Have you never heard of Outkast?
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Another thing,
if you are going to be complaing about the excess of American Capitalism, why eat enough meals for 4 people??
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Another thing,
if you are going to be complaing about the excess of American Capitalism, why eat enough meals for 4 people??
Well, I don't, so it's all good.