Gyroscope

A newsletter for those unmoved by spin.
No. 45, July 19, 2004

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All assessments of this movie, must, I think, understand that it is an argument. There seems to be considerable confusion about this - perhaps intentional. Moore has been criticized for being 'biased,' 'one sided', and the like. He only presents one side, he hates the President, etc., etc.

Moore is not writing a history, he's advancing an argument. An argument consists of a position to be defended and the evidence and logic advanced in favor of the position. Moore wants to convince you that President Bush and his administration are dishonest, have acted for hidden motives, is in bed with the Saudi's, has made ordinary Americans bear the cost while he and his cronies have reaped the profits and America would be better off if he was removed from office.

Moore advances a whole series of evidence in support of these points, and we'll get to that evidence in a minute. But to criticize Moore's movie because it fails to be a history, fails to let Bush present evidence on his behalf, or only cites the actions of the President that are objectionable - these and similar reasons are not effective attacks on Moore. He is making a case and he needs to be evaluated on the evidence and logic he offers in support of his case.

And what of this evidence? Moore is unwavering in contending that his facts are documented, accurate and unassailable. His website has considerable backup information and quotes the sources for his various claims. The movie also is largely tape of real events. Moore hasn't recreated scenes with actors, he's using images of things that really happened. Moore has said that you can argue about the opinions he expressed, but he defies anyone to refute his facts.

Conservatives have certainly claimed that Moore has his facts wrong "full of lies" is one standard reply. People I've read making this claim generally tend not to cite even one thing Moore got wrong. A second strand is to pick apart some minor aspect of the movie - like the one minute Moore spends on how a relative of Bush called the election for Fox News and how other networks followed suit. Other attacks on Moore facts generally inflate or misstate his claims and then do the standard straw man attack on that. Moore, contrary to conservatives, does not claim that we invaded Afghanistan to help a Bush oil crony build a pipeline. Moore claims the administration reluctantly invaded Afghanistan because Americans wouldn't have stood for it being ignored given its direct involvement in 9/11. He claims the administration neglected the Afghanistan war and the hunt for Bin Lauded in their haste to focus on Iraq - and then installed an Afghanistan president who is has financial connections to the Bush administration. Moore's position on this is hardly extreme and he does offer evidence for it.

But there is another significant dimension to how Moore makes his case. In using clips he often makes points by juxtaposing images. A young soldier talking earnestly about how we are going to teach the poor Iraqi's how to have a democracy is followed by film of other soldiers abusing Iraqis making a point that we are doing no such thing. The assumption is that these clips are representative. That of course, can't be proven by Moore. What Moore is expecting you to do is fit those images into what else you know of the war, or of a whole history of attempts to "teach people democracy" at gunpoint. From what I know of that history, Moore's images are right on.

Not all the complaining at Moore comes from the right. "Liberal" or "moderate" commentators also are upset at him. They tend to talk about how "strident" or "angry" he is, how "polarizing" his film is. An emerging favorite move here is to pair this movie with Mel Gibson's "The Passion" as polar opposites of offensive, extreme movies that appealed to groups who have already made up their minds.

In making this case, one reviewer sites how Moore shows an Iraqi woman in the depths of grief, wailing about her house being destroyed and all the funerals of relatives she has had to attend. This is followed immediately by a clip of a bubble gum chewing Brittney Spears saying how, you know, we should, like, trust the President, you know? How unfair, how exploitive, it is said.

I think something else is going on here. It is part of the liberal perspective on the world to maintain an ironic distance from commitments. Nothing too passionate, don't get too involved - have an intellectual rejection of conservatism, but don't actually get very passionate about it. Many liberals are not poor people and can live detached from the pain of the issues they are committed to. I lived in Boulder for some years and saw this first hand. Prove your commitment to the environment by wearing a pair of Birkenstocks, show you care about poor people by wearing an expensive shirt with designs from a third-world country. Make fun of Bush, but don't get angry about it. Anger destroys the detachment, anger demands involvement.

Moore is very angry and he demands you get involved. Thus the pairing of the clips I referred to above invites you to contrast the passionate direct involvement of the Iraqi woman with the careless detachment of a vapid entertainer. But most of us are no more involved than Brittney. Moore wants you to act - and most liberals consider the height of action to be signing a full page ad in the New York Times.

The other strand of attack on Moore is just to smear him, like Clarke was smeared, like Kerry is being smeared: Moore hates America and his movie is full of hatred of American, claims Focus on the Family's Dobson, who admits he hasn't seen the movie. The movie may be many things, but hatred of America is the last thing you can accuse it of. Moore has composed one of the most moving tributes to the victims of 9/11 I have ever seen, an evocative and symbolic memory of the chaos and loss of that day, all the more powerful because it is understated. His love of ordinary Americans and his admiration of the commitment of lower and middle class Americans to serve in the armed forces is evident.

But the smears go on, Christopher Hitchens, who was once a serious journalist, starts off with this: "To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery."

After that start, one would expect some serious critiques of the movie. Instead we have Hitchens waxing outraged over a series of "contradictions:" Moore objects to the Afghan war but then praises the soldiers who fought there! Well, which is it Mr. Moore, are you for it or against it? Other pseudo contradictions are hauled out - Moore objects to police intrusion via the patriot act but supports ordinary highway patrolmen wanting more then eight officers on duty in the entire state of Oregon and some basic training in how to recognize terrorist preparation. That's a contradiction only if you can't tell the difference between useless investigations and important ones. Moore attacks the administration for ignoring terror warnings prior to 9/11 and then attacks them for issuing too many warnings afterward. Can Hitchens really think this is a contradiction? The point is obvious: Bush was asleep at the switch before and manipulating us now.

Hitchens is not alone, the "full of contradictions" line on Moore is showing signs of replacing the "full of lies" message, which evidently failed for lack of evidence.

Moore's movie has flaws, like any other composition. He claims Iraq never killed any Americans, but the regime was far to close to many people who did kill Americans. His clips of playing gottcha with congressmen have been criticized because the one he makes most fun of is the one whose kids are actually in the armed forces - but his larger point of privileged people avoiding the sacrifice others makes is true, even if his clips don't really prove it. His clip of Wolfowitz using his own spit to secure his hair is creepy but irrelevant to proving anything about the man's sinister involvement in American foreign policy. I suspect, but haven't proven, that some of the clips of the administration are taking out of sequence to enhance their impact. Administration officials getting makeup on suggests that they are actors getting ready to feed us lies, but Moore probably gets made up before TV appearances as well.

Sometimes the clips though are just revealing. He shows Bush before he goes on national TV to announce the start of the war in Iraq. We see Bush trying out expressions: giving his "determined" look a warm up so he'll be ready to look appropriately grim when he announces the war. It reveals what we all know: that it is an act, that the emotions are calculated and put on for their impact on us who do think it is all sincere.

Finally, I think the one analytical issue that cuts through much criticism of the film by left and right is that Moore is talking about economic class. And this is the one topic that cannot be mentioned in American media, and the one topic that most privileged commentators of the left and right cannot allow into their world view. That is what explains one common attack on Moore: He shows ordinary civilian Iraqi citizens enjoying life just before we bombed them, obviously implying - to Hitchens and others - that he thinks Saddam was just fine. No, it means he thinks ordinary people get hurt by war. If you can't see class, and you can see race, than Ordinary Iraqi = Saddam = Arabs. If you can see class then those ordinary Iraqi's have more in common with the ordinary American families who lost people than either do with their rich leaders.

Moore is also attacked for lacking an appreciation of irony and the complexities of the world. No, irony is not his strong suit. But he does understand the bitter irony of the patriotism of ordinary citizens being misused by cynical leaders.

I found Moore's film to be much better than I expected, and certainly powerful and moving. I recommend you see it. And get angry about what you see.

Just when the right thought they had safely dismissed Moore, now comes "OutFoxed" a movie ripping the propaganda machine of Fox News. Here is the announcement:

Common Cause, MoveOn.org, and a bunch of other organizations have launched a campaign to take on Fox for pretending partisan news is "fair and balanced." They've posted a really horrifying but funny video clip highlighting Bill O'Reilly's hypocrisy as well as a complaint to the FTC at:

http://www.moveon.org/fox/

Check it out. The challenges to Fox's partisanship are mounting. It's crucial that we
voice our disgust with Fox's deceptive advertising now.