Fahrenheit Nine Eleven

http://www.fahrenheit911.com/

A film by MichaelMoore, who was awarded the Palme D'Or for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.

I haven't seen it yet, but there are already hundreds of messages about it at IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0361596/.

Ok, I have seen it now at the SuprNova?-plex. It is better than I thought it would be, and not as over-zealous in its persecution of Bush as I thought it would be. What it does for me (as well as two other documentaries I'll refer to below) is help cement two things: Bush's 2000 victory was illegal, and the Iraq war was unjustified, and in fact was in planning since before Bush even took office. 9/11 was just an excuse. I think two other documentaries I watched recently do just as good at cementing these two things, without the bias and flair of Moore, however. I really, really would recommend you see these two documentaries in addition to Fahrenheit 9/11: "Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential election" and "Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War" (from moveon.org). The first one especially is very very convincing, although less relevant to today. I still, unfortunately, think Bush may win re-election because we have a tendency to stay with the same President during a "war", justified or not. Then again, this is an improvement over my previous opinion. I used to think that the day Saddam was captured last December, Bush was guaranteed re-election. Now at least I think Kerry has a chance. We've already forgotten about Saddam.

People pronounce it either as "nine-one-one" or "nine-eleven."

Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed $21.6 million in the first three days making it the highest grossing documentary yet. Many consider the country very divided at this time, but may have difficulty defining the division line - people often dislike both MichaelMoore and PresidentBush, but would still like to see the movie, while Fahrenheit 911 is widespread even in "red states" that have historically supported bush.

Discussions about MichaelMoore and Fahrenheit 911 often reference a balancing of far left-wing(MichaelMoore/Democrats/Activisits/west-coast/new money/cnn/hippies) and right-wing elements(PresidentBush/Republicans/Neocons/industry/east-coast/old money/foxnews/warmongers). Obviously such divisions are only that clean in a true fundamentalist (a scary thing indeed).

Do not confuse Fahrenheit 9/11 with the dystopian novel, Fahrenheit 451, by RayBradbury. There is current ligitation regarding MichaelMoore's similar title to Fahrenheit 451, and a movie remake in the works. Only time and history will tell which title is more remembered. When a movie competes with a book for "media saturation", the cynical and safe bet is on the movie.

Litigation? Based on what? Titles of works are generally not copyrightable; and parody is protected as "fair use" under US copyright law.

That's all true, but in the U.S. you also have some presumed rights to sue. Doesn't mean you'll win. It could be dismissed out of hand as a frivolous lawsuit, which you might think would be the case over something like this, but that almost never happens, especially if the case is prepared by any halfway competent lawyer. Of course, that might be because the competent ones refuse to file the truly frivolous suits. But there's usually something you can come up with to sue over. Even more common is just to threaten but not file, which is probably what's happening here.

The movie is not about scandals or "right or left" or all the other camouflage patterns. Bush is not the villian; he is a patsy of the Saudis. Their "investments" in the USA have bribed a cabal of professional Saudi influence peddlars to buy the Whitehouse. Then the Saudis tricked the USA into attacking two of its most troublesome neighbors, instead of attacking the people that planned and financed the 9/11 terrorist attack. All with the help of the USA's TeeVee "journalism" outlets.

This has been a sad period in history, and the people of the USA need just a little help identifying the real enemy.

--PhlIp

Excellent! That sort of talk would have been treasonous, against the troops, supporting the terrorists, freedom-hating, conspiracy theory, etc before. but now that Moore has shown how far the left actually can go - maybe we can get some real answers to the Saudi involvement in 9/11.

Again, this is not about "left vs right". If I want a healthy state and strong business, then I want the Saudi influence out of our government too.

Of course it's easy to say that. Would you say the same of Israeli influence? Would you be comfortable saying that publicly or at work?

In my culture (California), I'm allowed to bust on Arabs, Mexicans, and Nordic Americans, but not Jews or Blacks.

But Isreal has no oil. The money goes from USA to Isreal, essentially to help them destabilize the region and keep oil cheap. Learn some history, and don't discuss politics at work period.

In my culture (America in the South), I'm allowed to bust on anybody - including whites, but risk being identified with hate groups. It's hard not to discuss politics at work when the more rabid conformist types are wearing flag-pins to work, talking about the war, criticizing "those dems", etc. It's a sorry state of affairs when speech blindly supporting the government is ok, but most criticism is seen as unpatriotic, bigoted, weak, etc. Nowadays, anywhere in this country, I can make racist jokes about Arabs and be commended as a "real american", but make the same jokes and substitute white/black/jew/hispanic and suddenly one is a bigot? Except the south of course, where it's ok to be racist - if you want to be a good ol' boy..

I don't see what the big deal is... no matter who wins the election, we'll have a rich crooked white guy running the country... the republicans believe in big government and high taxes, democrats believe in bigger government and higher taxes, not much difference from my point of view. Either way, it's more of the rich getting richer and the poor just getting by like we always do.

Although the US seems to be shifting toward the right, there does seem to be a growing sense that the overly-rich are getting out-of-hand, like it was in the early 1900's. People don't mind others being rewarded for their hard work or good ideas, but after a few million it just becomes gluttony and a self-protecting good-ol-boy network.

What makes Moore a GoodThing is that he goes the same distance to the left as the neocons do to the right and balances the equation. It's like having RichardStallman - it makes less extreme views seem downright "normal". Things that were relegated to conspiracy theory status are now viewed simply as leftist (as in opposition to flying robot spy planes, massive government info on you, legal limbos, torture, etc). So the more extreme theories (Bush knew 9/11 would happen) can be discarded, while more moderate views (Cheney supported the war to make Halliburton some money) are reasonable and can enter public discussion. The neocons know that's how the media works; Moore is just the flip side of the coin.

So we need idiots to make us semi-idiots seem more normal? Okay.

More like, we need propagandists on both sides so the middle can stay the middle and not be swept to the left or right. . .

The movie is stridently and openly anti-Bush. So what? It always amuses me to see the same folks who spent years savaging and slandering the previous President, treating any attack on GeorgeBush as tantamount to treason. (Of course, many of the folks now happily savaging Bush didn't appreciate much the relentless attacks on Clinton.)

Moore's movie is no less irresponsible (if at all) than the numerous allegations - some of them quite fanciful - levied against Clinton during his eight years in office. (And, of course, some rather fanciful stories have been cooked up against Bush and other republicans...)

Where was Moore's camera when Lewinski was smoking Bill's cigars with her......um. Now THAT would have been a movie.
- Better question, where was Moore's camera when the top of the white house was directly linked to a scandal involving satellite tech being given to the Chinese? The implications in that were astounding, but all anyone could focus on was the very noisy Lewinski case. Convenient, that. Now, if I mention to people that our last vice-president might actually be guilty of treason at the highest level, no one seems to remember.
He's mentioned when he was bombing Serbia, and not in a friendly way. Lives are more important than affairs, believe it or not.

[It should be interesting to see whether, if JohnKerry? wins the election in November, he receives the same treatment as Clinton did. As far as we know, Kerry has so far kept his nose clean in both his professional and personal life...]

I think Clinton kept his nose clean too. :-)

Moore and Stallman in the same paragraph? Except there is a slight difference in method: Stallman doesn't perpetuate fraud or lie with visuals to make his point. Stallman doesn't ridicule the community to which he belongs.

When I first encountered Moore's work, I was dismayed at its "revelations" -- until further investigation revealed that he plays fast and loose with things like time, sequence, location, importance, relevance, and so on. He presents the scrambled data visually and as a string of sound bytes and "allows" the viewer to "draw his own" conclusions. This is a heinous form of fraud, and I have no further use for the man.

Don't lie to me, and then pretend you're "just expressing an opinion" or that what is clearly constructed to be perceived as a documentary is "just my viewpoint" and that you're trying to get people to "think for themselves" using artistic license. That's bullshit.

If you want to dig up the dirt and present it as it really is, I don't have a problem with that. But when you alter the color, texture, and substance of the story to mislead me, you only get to do that once. From that point forward you have no credibility, I won't waste more time doing the research to find out what parts are lies, what parts are distortions, what parts never happened but seem to have. Why would I bother? If I catch you in a deliberate lie then, in my world, you're done.

And Moore has done this. And he owes me a week of my life back for the damage control I had to do to disabuse my children of the idea that his reportage was accurate or pertinent. I won't spend a dime to see his latest "work" to see if he has accidentally learned to tell the truth.

Ironically, I have the exact same disgust towards the neocons for doing the exact same thing.

[Ditto.]

I have yet to see a specific example of Moore's "lies" hold up to analysis.

A compendium of "lies": http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html
Moore's response: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/

For instance, yes, he edited Heston's speech at the NRA convention in Denver. No, his editing didn't distort the message of the speech. Read the transcript. Heston was very much mocking the mayor's plea that the NRA not meet in Denver, and the sequence in Columbine correctly conveys that sense. And yes, this kind of editing is absolutely standard journalistic practice (though perhaps it shouldn't be). You think those sound bites you see on Fox News aren't cherry picked out of context from much longer speeches?

Well, I'm in the "Moore is a propagandist jerk" camp, but I still think he serves a useful purpose in helping make sure bush isn't re-elected. Hopefully two wrongs don't make the right win''

[You know, the Supreme Court has held that it is perfectly legal for journalists to completely paraphrase someone, yet still call it a direct quote. Ever since then, this has become completely standard practice, so one has to stay on one's toes if one cares about true direct quotes from any source.]

[I thought Moore was a bigger propagandist before I saw the film. After seeing it yesterday, I thought the criticisms of him/the film were somewhat overblown.]

[Anyway, yes, whatever you think about that, hopefully he just balances out the right wing extremists, and Bush doesn't get re-elected.]

Well...he wasn't really elected the first time, either...but that's a different page.

CategoryMovie