More Distortions from Michael Moore

In an online exclusive for MSNBC/Newsweek, Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball demonstrate that Some of the main points in 'Fahrenheit 9/11' really aren't very fair at all.

Matthew Rothschild: "an odd mix between a PBS Frontline show and a Bush's Bloopers reel"

Matthew Rothschild, editor of the liberal periodical The Progressive, reviews F911 . . . and even he find Moore's Bush-bashing overbearing:

. . . he had a great movie on his hands, and he couldn't leave well enough alone.

Instead, he intruded, as is his trademark, too much into his own film. He used a sledgehammer approach when a dagger would have done the job, and he tarnished his whole enterprise with a tone that will be off-putting to all but the Moveon.org crowd.

Make no mistake: This was an in-crowd movie.

Moore has said he wants the movie to be a tool to defeat Bush. But if that's the intention, I'm afraid he's failed.

Byron York: "A political campaign disguised as a movie"

Byron York reveals the collaboration between MoveOn.Org and Michael Moore:

Last week, MoveOn asked members to sign a pledge to see Fahrenheit 9/11 during its first showings Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. Announcing the plan, [MoveOn Political Action Committee head] Pariser praised the movie, but said the real reason MoveOn wanted members to turn out during the film's first days in theaters was to create the impression that a wave of anti-Bush anger was sweeping the country. "We launched this campaign around Fahrenheit 9/11 because to the media, the pundits, and the politicians in power, the movie's success will be seen as a cultural referendum on the Bush administration and the Iraq war," Pariser told MoveOn members. "Together, we have an opportunity to knock this ball out of the park." . . .

Mark Steyn: "The Importance of Being Michael Moore"

Writing from "across the pond", Mark Steyn puzzles over Moore's audience:

Midway through the picture, a "peace" activist provides a perfect distillation of its argument. He recalls a conversation with an acquaintance, who observed, "bin Laden's a real asshole for killing all those people". "Yeah," says the "pacifist", "but he'll never be as big an asshole as Bush." That's who Michael Moore makes films for: those sophisticates who know that, no matter how many people bin Laden kills, in the assholian stakes he'll always come a distant second to Bush.

I can understand the point of being Michael Moore: there's a lot of money in it. What's harder to figure out is the point of being a devoted follower of Michael Moore. Apparently, the sophisticated, cynical intellectual class is so naive it'll fall for any old hooey peddled by a preening opportunist burlesque act. If the Saudis were smart, they'd have bought him up years ago, established his anti-Saudi credentials, and then used him to promote the defeat of their nemesis Bush.

Eric Johnson: "Michael Moore bigger than Jesus [but I won't see his film!]"

Eric Johnson concedes that Michael More is, literally, bigger than Jesus, but explains to a reader why he still won't see the film, concluding:

Anti-Americans in other countries should just give up, because Moore demonstrates our cultural superiority. We're so great, we can even do anti-Americanism better than foreigners! Everybody start chanting now: U! S! A! U! S! A!"

Andrew Sullivan: "A bar in Ptown on a Sunday night was more interesting"

Andrew Sullivan saw the film today, too -- and, like Mr. Cork, was driven away by sheer boredom:

I was expecting to be outraged, offended, maddened, etc etc. No one told me I'd be bored. The devices were so tired, the analysis worthy of something by an intern in the Nation online, the sad attempts to blame everything on Bush so strained and over-wrought even the most credulous of conspiracists would have a hard time giving them the time of day. This won the top Cannes prize? Only hatred of America can explain that. . . . I'd address the arguments, if there were any. There weren't. There was just a transparently failed attempt to construct conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory on the flimsiest of circumstantial evidence, and when the entire framework was teetering into absurdity, the occasional necessary lie. I left before the end. A bar in Ptown on a Sunday night was more interesting.

Bill Cork: "I don't remember the last time I left because a movie was so bad."

Fahrenheit 911 is inciting action, although not exactly the kind Moore anticipated. Fellow blogger Bill Cork (and several others) were compelled to head for the exits.

[Former] Mayor Ed Koch: Moore guilty of sedition?

Former New York Mayer Ed Koch lashes out at Michael Moore, practically accusing him of sedition:

Senator John Kerry in criticizing United States’ foreign policy and the incumbent president is acting responsibly, albeit I disagree with many of his views. On the other hand, Michael Moore, writer and director of the film "Fahrenheit 9/11," crosses that line regularly. The line is not set forth in the criminal statutes, but it is determined by Americans who know instinctively what actions and statements taken and uttered violate the obligations of responsibility and citizenship they deem applicable in time of war.

. . . and recalls this little exchange from a previous encounter:

A year after 9/11, I was part of a panel discussion on BBC-TV's "Question Time" show which aired live in the United Kingdom. A portion of my commentary at that time follows:

"One of the panelists was Michael Moore, writer and director of the award-winning documentary "Roger & Me." During the warm-up before the studio audience, Moore said something along the lines of "I don’t know why we are making so much of an act of terror. It is three times more likely that you will be struck by lightening than die from an act of terror." I was aghast and responded, "I think what you have said is outrageous, particularly when we are today commemorating the deaths of 3,000 people resulting from an act of terror." I mention this exchange because it was not televised, occurring as it did before the show went live. It shows where he was coming from long before he produced "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Tom McNamee: "Just the facts on 'Fahrenheit 9/11'"

Tom McNamee, reporting for the Chicago Sun-Times, demands "Just The Facts" from Fahrenheit 911. Given Moore's reputation that's a pretty tall order. He does, however, manage to present a number of facts himself, including this concerning the charge that, shortly after 9/11, the Bush administration let Saudis leave the country:

Moore is guilty of a classic game of saying one thing and implying another when he describes how members of the Saudi elite were flown out of the United States shortly after 9/11.

If you listen only to what Moore says during this segment of the movie -- and take careful notes in the dark -- you'll find he's got his facts right. He and others in the film state that 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country after Sept. 13.

The date -- Sept. 13 -- is crucial because that is when a national ban on air traffic, for security purposes, was eased.

But nonetheless, many viewers will leave the movie theater with the impression that the Saudis, thanks to special treatment from the White House, were permitted to fly away when all other planes were still grounded. This false impression is created by Moore's failure, when mentioning Sept. 13, to emphasize that the ban on flights had been eased by then. The false impression is further pushed when Moore shows the singer Ricky Martin walking around an airport and says, "Even Ricky Martin couldn't fly."

Pejman Yousefzadeh reviews Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man.

Moorewatch.com: "An effective campaign tool [to persuade the completely ignorant]"

Lee -- of MooreWatch.com -- reviews the film:

As I sat there in the dark I kept wanting to scream out rebuttal facts and arguments to the screen, and this is a point that I want to drive home. The vast majority of people out there, be they liberal or conservative or otherwise, do not get as involved in political discourse as most people in the blogosphere. The analogy I use is with sports or cars. We all have friends who know everything there is to know about sports. They can rattle off every insignificant fact or statistic at the drop of a hat, and are able to do so because they have an interest in the subject and spend a lot of time learning about it. There are people who are the same way about cars or computers. I, for example, know very little about sports. So if I was watching a documentary about sports, without having specific knowledge to the contrary I would tend to believe the facts presented therein. Most of the people watching Moore's film tonight will undoubtedly take a similar tone towards this film. Since they are most likely not politics or news junkies they lack the information necessary to formulate any kind of a reasonable counter-argument, which is why Moore's tricks and omissions are going to be effective. . . .

When the film was over and the credits rolling, the young man who had just failed the 12th grade turned to his friend and said, "Man, our president is a [expletive] idiot, yo!" It seems that the master had reached the pupils, even one who just failed his senior year of high school.

By providing such a slick piece of election-year propaganda Moore has created a very effective campaign tool for the Democrats. He knows that the average person viewing the film will lack the knowledge to formulate a counter-argument and thus accept his assertions as fact. And all he has to do is hope that they remain ignorant and deluded until November.

Will it work? I'll go out on a limb and predict that this is not going to significantly hurt Bush in the long run. I think that there are going to be a number of people who will come out of the theater with an anti-Bush feeling, but that over the next few weeks this will dissipate as they talk to their friends and discuss the movie. Moore will have a short-term gain and Bush will lose a percentage point or two, but I think that Moore will ultimately fail in his quest to significantly damage Bush's chances.

Pejmanesque: "This is fact-checking?"

Pejman Yousefzadeh has a long post questioning Michael Moore's "fact checking" capabilities.

Stupid flaw in Moore's 'Congressman' stunt

Fritz Schranck blogs his review of the film, and notes another typically-Moorish underhanded tactic:

One of the minor stunts he pulls off in this film also helps illustrate how fast and loose Moore is with the underlying facts.

He goes to Washington, allegedly in an attempt to entice Members of Congress to enlist their own children into the armed services. At one point, you can hear him call out to Delaware's lone representative, Mike Castle, as Castle walks past.

Here's a tip -- if you want a Congressman to enlist his children in the Marines, you might first want to make sure he has some.

Castle has no children, a simple, easy-to-confirm fact which Moore conveniently ignores for the sake of this shtick.

Some are worrying about Moore's influence on the minds of the masses in the coming election; Schranck, however, expresses the hope:

Moore is one of the folks about whom a particularly apt lesson applies: you can't make an a**hole feel like one. Fortunately, not many people fit that description. And just because he's immune to logic and any notion of fair discourse doesn't mean that the American people won't eventually understand the error of Moore's ways -- especially the means by which he created this mockumentary.

Matt Labash (Weekly Standard): "he could easily seek employment as an Al Jazeera cameraman"

Matt Labash ("Un-Moored from Reality" Weekly Standard July 5-12 2004):

Moore offers a full hour's worth of Bush-centric conspiracies so seemingly random, disjointed, and pointless that one's ticket stub should come with a flow-chart and a decoder ring. In my line of work, when you hear this strain of rhetoric, it's usually from a man in a sandwich board touting the apocalypse or Mumia's innocence, pushing stacks of literature at you while standing on the wrong side of a police cordon. It doesn't typically come from someone whose premiere is attended by half of respectable Democratic Washington, and whose film won the coveted Palme d'Or prize at Cannes. . . .

. . . if we're going to play connect-the-dots, a few questions are in order. For starters, are we really supposed to believe that 9/11 and the ensuing wars were a collaborative profiteering scheme between the bin Ladens, the Bushes, and defense contractors? Furthermore, will Moore's DVD director's cut elucidate Bush ties to the Illuminati, the Trilateral Commission, and the Freemasons? Who knows? Who cares? Moore doesn't seem to, as he speedily moves on, making another tray of fudge.

When Moore takes us to Iraq, on the eve of war, he shows placid scenes of an untroubled land on the brink of imperial annihilation. With all the leisurely strolling and kite-flying, it is unclear if Iraqis are living under a murderous dictatorship or in a Valtrex commercial. In Moore's telling of the invasion, the shock-and-awe is less high-value-target/smart-bombing, more Dresden/Hiroshima. According to the footage that ensues, our pilots seem to have hit nothing but women and children. If Moore's documentarian gig were to fall through, he could easily seek employment as an Al Jazeera cameraman.

Ralph Nader: "Hey Michael, where were your friends?"

In an open letter posted to his website, Ralph Nader charges Michael Moore with having forsaking him and his friends for the The Democratic political establishment:

Once upon a time, there was Michael Moore the First. He never forgot his friends. Come time for the Washington, DC premiere of Bowling for Columbine a while back, he invited his old buddies in Washington—gave them good seats and spent the rest of the evening with them. During his other movie's premiere, he affectionately recognized how much those old friends helped him and supported him after he was mistreated and let go by Mother Jones. He was generous with his words and time.

Now there is Michael Moore the Second. Last night he hosted the Washington, DC premiere of Fahrenheit 9/11, and who was there? The Democratic political establishment, the same people whom he took to such mocking task on the road with us in campaign rally after campaign rally in 2000. Who was not there? His old buddies! Not personally invited, not personally hung out with.

A few weeks ago, Michael, I sent you a message: "Hey, Dude, where's my Buddy?" . . . READ MORE

Michael Moore reveals true feelings about Americans, Iraqi terrorists

According to David Brooks ("All Hail Moore" New York Times June 26, 2004), Michael Moore has a tendency to reveal his true feelings about America in his speeches to European audiences:

Like Hemingway, Moore does his boldest thinking while abroad. For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

It transpires that Europeans are quite excited to hear this supple description of the American mind. And Moore has been kind enough to crisscross the continent, speaking to packed lecture halls, explicating the general vapidity and crassness of his countrymen. "That's why we're smiling all the time," he told a rapturous throng in Munich. "You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

Here's Moore explaining the complexities of the U.S. - Iraqi conflict:

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Moore helped citizens of that country understand why the United States went to war in Iraq: "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

And at a time when our troops are falling prey to ambushes of merciless thugs, and hostages in Iraq are being executed by beheadings at the hands of militant Islamic revolutionaries, here is Moore justifying the actions the enemy:

But venality doesn't come up when he writes about those who are killing Americans in Iraq: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win." Until then, few social observers had made the connection between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Paul Revere.

Christianity Today: "[Moore] a fearmonger, preying on the ignorance of his audience"

Peter T. Chattaway reviews the film for Christianity Today:

. . . despite the occasional intriguing revelation—such as the fact that one of Bush's buddies in the National Guard, one James R. Bath, went on to be a financial advisor for the bin Laden family—the most striking thing about Fahrenheit 9/11 is not what Moore puts into the film, but what he leaves out. For example, in a montage mocking the various useless countries that joined the "coalition of the willing," such as Iceland and Morocco, Moore never mentions England or Australia. Moore also gives his viewers the impression that Iraq was a happy paradise in which children flew kites and dictators danced with their people, until that awful day when the Americans attacked; he never acknowledges the hundreds of thousands of civilians that human rights groups say were killed under Saddam Hussein's regime, nor does he address Hussein's sponsorship of terrorism in Israel or his sheltering of a key figure in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. In fact, Moore seems to want his audience to think that Hussein posed no threat whatsoever, and in one of his more astoundingly bizarre insinuations, Moore suggests Bush attacked Iraq as a favor to his Saudi friends—but if this is so, then why did Saudi Arabia oppose the war?

And concludes:

The problem with Fahrenheit 9/11 is not that it is one-sided, per se; it is that Moore barely acknowledges there even is another side. The problem is not that he fails to give the other side equal time or equal validity; it is that he shows virtually no interest in what that other side might be, and in how he might best deal with it. Inevitably, this weakens Moore's own arguments—or it would, if he was all that concerned about making any. Moore's appeal is more emotional and visceral than intellectual; in his own way, Moore is a fearmonger, and preying on the ignorance of his audience just as he accuses Bush of doing.

Jeff Jarvis: Moore "downright rabid"

Jeff Jarvis explains why he no longer enjoys watching Michael Moore:

Now he's still poking fun but in the immortal words of Billy Crystal, it's not fun, it's not funny. He's deadly serious. He's downright rabid. And that makes him harder to take; don't you always want to back away from somebody who's seething at you? It also makes his role as a filmmaker and political activist different: He's no longer just ridiculing the powerful; he's no longer turning them into punchlines; he's now trying to convince us that these particular powerful people -- Bush et al -- are evil, venal, corrupt, incompetent co-conspirators out to ruin our world. If you're going to try to convince us of that, then you have a different obligation of fact and argument than if you're just trying to make fun of somebody. You should give us legitimate facts and arm us with arguments by showing both sides of an issue and beating down the other side. If you don't do that, you're only shrieking. You're weakening your own argument by ignoring the other side. You're insulting the intelligence of your audience by not giving them both sides. You're just seething. That's what Moore is like now. He wants to convince us he's telling the truth but he's afraid to tell the whole truth.

According to Moore, Bush is capable of being "all things, to all people"

In his review, James Bowman notes an interesting paradox of Moore's portrayal of President Bush:

One thing that is clear is that Michael Moore is a stranger to all forms of restraint, and that he is able to find anti-Bush material in just about anything. To him, the president is guilty both of stupidity and of diabolical cunning, of laziness and of leading the march to totalitarianism, of cowardice and of insouciance under pressure in that Florida classroom -- Goat-gate, as perhaps we ought to call it -- of fear-mongering in order to sell the war and of neglecting warnings of terrorist activity, of over-zealousness about security and of laxness about security. Not only is he guilty of all these things, his whole family is. So are his friends. So is his administration.

Michael Moore grilled on ABC News

ABC News' Jake Tapper grills Michael Moore. During the interview, Moore vehemently defended his charge that Saddam Hussein's regime "did not commit a premeditated murder on an American citizen":

TAPPER: You declare in the film that Hussein's regime had never killed an American . . .

MOORE: That isn't what I said. Quote the movie directly.

TAPPER: What is the quote exactly?

MOORE: "Murdered." The government of Iraq did not commit a premeditated murder on an American citizen. I'd like you to point out one.

TAPPER: If the government of Iraq permitted a terrorist named Abu Nidal who is certainly responsible for killing Americans to have Iraq as a safe haven; if Saddam Hussein funded suicide bombers in Israel who did kill Americans; if the Iraqi police -- now this is not a murder but it's a plan to murder — to assassinate President Bush which at the time merited airstrikes from President Clinton once that plot was discovered; does that not belie your claim that the Iraqi government never murdered an American or never had a hand in murdering an American?

MOORE: No, because nothing you just said is proof that the Iraqi government ever murdered an American citizen. And I am still waiting for you to present that proof.

Who's side is Michael Moore on, anyway?

Byron York: "Democrats and the Fahrenheit 9/11 Trap"

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe says he believes radical filmmaker Michael Moore's assertion that the United States went to war in Afghanistan not to avenge the terrorist attacks of September 11 but instead to assure that the Unocal Corporation could build a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan for the financial benefit of Vice President Dick Cheney and former Enron chief Kenneth Lay.

McAuliffe and a number of other prominent Democrats attended a screening of Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11, at the Uptown Theatre in Washington Wednesday night. McAuliffe called the film "very powerful, much more powerful than I thought it would be." When asked by National Review Online if he believed Moore's account of the war in Afghanistan, McAuliffe said, " I believe it after seeing that." The DNC chairman added that he had not heard of the idea before seeing the movie, but said he would "check it out myself and look at it, but there are a lot of interesting facts that he [Moore] brought out today that none of us knew about."

A short time later, McAuliffe was asked by CNN, "Do you think the movie was essentially fair and factually based?" "I do," McAuliffe said. "I think anyone who goes to see this movie will come out en masse and vote for John Kerry. Clearly the movie makes it clear that George Bush is not fit to be president of this country."

[. . .]

Since Fahrenheit 9/11 is so heavily identified with Democratic causes, it seems likely that a number of Democratic leaders, possibly including presidential candidate John Kerry, will be asked whether they endorse the conclusions of the movie. That could present a dilemma. To do so would mean associating with some of the least credible theories of the radical Left, while declining to do so would tend to undermine Moore's status as an anti-Bush hero.

Source: "Democrats and the Fahrenheit 9/11 Trap"
by Byron York. NRO, June 24, 2004.

Jeff Jarvis: "He is the O'Reilly... the Bush of the left."

Jeff Jarvis ("Buzz Machine") blogs his first impressions of Fahrenheit 911:

• "As I walked out of the theater on the opening day of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, I thought (read: hoped) that even here, in the East Village of Manhattan, true Moore country, where the flick was already sold out all night, surely even here they wouldn't fall for all his obvious, visual/rhetorical tricks, his propaganda too unsubtle for the cheapest tin-horn demagog . . .
  

• Moore's assumption is venality. He assumes that President Bush and his confreres are venal, that their motives are black, that they are out to do no good, only bad, and that the only choices they make in life are between greed and power. That's inevitably a bad analysis. . . . Oh, you can argue Bush is incompetent; sometimes I do wonder. You can disagree with his policies; I disagree with many. You can question his intelligence; jury's out still. I didn't vote for Bush the last time and don't plan to this time. But I don't buy Moore's Bush. To say that he's the dark force of the universe only leads to simple-minded over-generalizations and bilious caricatures.
  

• "The real problem with the film, the really offensive thing about it, is that in Fahrenheit 9/11, we -- Americans from the President on down -- are portrayed at the bad guys."
  

• "Of course, it was all about Iraq.... Wasn't it?... : If you don't believe that, well, says Moore, you're an idiot. You're Britney Spears, shown in all her ditziness saying, "Honestly, I think we should just trust our President." There's your spokesman for the other side: Britney.
  

  Or you're a bloodthirsty American goon, which is how Moore portrays soldiers who rush into battle hopped up on rock 'n' roll. He spares us the obvious napalm, morning, smell thing.
  

  In Moore's view, you're either with him or against him. Hmmm, who else looks at the world that way?
  

  Yup, Moore is just he mirror image of what he despises. He is the O'Reilly... the Bush of the left.

David Edelstein (Slate): "a blend of insight, outrage, and sniggering innuendo"

David Edelstein reviews F911 for Slate.com ("Proper Propaganda" June 24, 2004):

Fahrenheit 9/11 never waffles. The liberals' The Passion of the Christ, it ascribes only the most venal motives to the other side. There is no sign in the filmmaker of an openness to other interpretations (or worldviews). This is not quite a documentary—which I define, very loosely, as a work in which the director begins by turning on the camera and allowing the reality to speak for itself, aware of its complexities, contradictions, and multitudes. You are with Moore, or you are a war criminal. The film is part prosecutorial brief and part (as A.O. Scott has noted) rabid editorial cartoon: a blend of insight, outrage, and sniggering innuendo, the whole package threaded (and tied in a bow) with cheap shots, some of them voiced by Moore, some created in the editing room by intercutting stilted images from old movies. Moore is largely off-screen (no pun intended), but as narrator he's always there, sneering and tsk-tsking.

Dr. Mehmet Caner denounces Moore's "HATRIOTISM"

In an article for the Jewish World Review, Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner, a Persian Turkish immigrant raised a Sunni Muslim, denounces Moore's "Hatriotism":

As yet another innocent person has their head severed by Islamic "extremists," Moore apparently glosses over the fact that democracy in general and America specifically is under attack. I am innately aware that Michael Moore is first and foremost a provocateur, and he thrives on controversy. I am also sure that he will smile gleefully at this Op-Ed piece, because I mention his film, which is free advertising. He has gone on record on his web site as saying that he hopes we will watch his movie, even if we disagree, because his facts and analysis are correct. He notes that he has a "dogged commitment to uncovering the facts."

I am not holding my breath. With the aforementioned facts in mind, I must still speak. Michael Moore has released the cinematic equivalent of a French kiss to all who hate America. He is the leading exponent of HATRIOTISM.

"HATE-RIOTISM" describes the new breeze blowing through the American media. It is now "cool" and "relevant" to mock everything for which our soldiers are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Criticizing democracy and America has long been in vogue in continental Europe, from those who look with disdain at American "naiveté," while still lamenting the Islamic onslaught. Now imported to our shores, hatriotism is the simplest way to get the growing contingent of professional protestors who populate television audiences to cheer. Mock America. Mock our involvement in Iraq. Mock President Bush…and get rousing applause.

The only problem is…America has freed my kinsmen.

Sarasota principal defends Bush from "Fahrenheit 9/11" portrayal

SARASOTA -- Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" criticizes President Bush for listening to Sarasota second-graders read a story for nearly seven minutes after learning the nation was under attack on Sept. 11, 2001.

But Gwendolyn Tose'-Rigell, the principal at Emma E. Booker Elementary School, says Bush handled himself properly.

"I don't think anyone could have handled it better," Tose'-Rigell told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune in a story published Wednesday. "What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?"

"Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the top honor at last month's Cannes Film Festival, portrays the White House as asleep at the wheel before the Sept. 11 attacks. Moore accuses Bush of fanning fears of future terrorism to win public support for the Iraq war.

Bush told the federal 9/11 Commission, which released its report last week, that he remained in the classroom because he felt it was "important to project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening." Moore says Bush failed to take charge.

Tose'-Rigell, who was at Bush's side, did not hear what White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispered when he squeezed past her to tell the president of the attacks, but "I knew it was something serious."

"The president bit his lip and clenched his jaw," she said. "I didn't know what happened, whether it was something with his wife or children or something with the nation. I remember praying that God would watch over our school and protect our children."

She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day."

Tose'-Rigell said she plans to publish her account of the morning of Sept. 11 from pages she wrote in her journal following the attack. The principal said she didn't vote for Bush. "But that day I would have voted for him.

Source: Associated Press, June 24, 2004

Hezbollah promoting Fahrenheit 911?!?

Apparently the anti-Semitic terrorist organization Hezbollah is doing their part to promote the film, with the consent of Michael Moore and the distributors. Their justification?

In terms of marketing the film, Front Row is getting a boost from organisations related to Hezbollah which have rung up from Lebanon to ask if there is anything they can do to support the film. And although Chacra says he and his company feel strongly that Fahrenheit is not anti-American, but anti-Bush, "we can’t go against these organisations as they could strongly boycott the film in Lebanon and Syria."

Blogger BirdDog has the story.

Christopher Hitchens: "fusion of MoveOn.org and Leni Riefenstahl"

With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

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 . . . "

Source: "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore", Slate June 21, 2004.