The puzzling phenomenon of �Fahrenheit 9/11�
June 28, 2004 ~ 1:31 p.m.
So Michael Moore�s latest �film��some would prefer to call it what it is: sinister anti-American, extreme-Left propaganda� Fahrenheit 9/11 is top of the North American box office. After Moore�s work received the prestigious Palme d�Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival last month, it has now stormed onto American movie theaters, having grossed $8 million on its first day of release.
Which makes me wonder, are Americans gluttons for punishment? Maybe they are viewing this rubbish in the hopes that they can catch a glimpse of just what kind of madman they are dealing with�and let�s be honest, any rich white man who derides and decries other rich white men for the horrible crimes of being both rich and white, has surely got loony-bin potential.
Or perhaps the barrage of the anti-American media, which reports every bad piece of news they can pick up upon while reporting absolutely no good news from the war front, has worked its magic, slowly transforming the American psyche from one of pro-Bush outrage at terrorism to anti-Bush outrage, blaming the President for terrorism.
Moore is a bitter man, extremely bitter at his country, his government and his people, and won�t rest until every person on the face of the planet hates America and Americans with an almost dangerous passion. Then he�ll liquidate all his impressive assets and join Johnny Depp on the French Mediterranean, looking forward to the next explosive terrorist attack on American soil in the hopes of stringing a Republican up by the cojones and fattening his bank account even further.
A newspaper editorial in the Chillicothe Gazette called Moore�s film out for the sloppy and profoundly biased non-documentary that it is. Problem is, everyone else in the world, including brain-addled Americans themselves, will be all too willing to take this as gospel.
Leftist Christopher Hitchens, enraged by Moore�s untruths and obviously very unhappy at the spectre of having such a malcontent resting in the shadows of his political philosophy, has it out with the (Anti-) American Fat-ass.
Some select quotes:
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.We are introduced to Iraq, �a sovereign nation.� (In fact, Iraq�s �sovereignty� was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore�s flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then�wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don�t think Al-Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic.
I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that �fact-checking� is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers�get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy � Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let�s see what you�re made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It�s only a movie. No biggie. It�s no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It�s kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out �the youth vote.� Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a �POV� or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your �narrative� a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don�t even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.
Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose �operation� murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled�Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more�the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Ba�athist �security� headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam�s regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as �threatening,� even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported�and the David Kay report had established�that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the �Dear Leader� Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Mr. Hitchens has said it all, much better than I could have. As he says, go out and see the film�I won�t be, but that�s of no consequence�and join in the post-showing conversation.
But just please, please, do not operate under any pretensions that this is a serious work.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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