Cun  ty.

Week of Jan 5 04.

I've actually been sitting on these thoughts for a while because I have friends who adore Michael Moore, and I'm not here to piss them off. I love my friends.

But I was talking to a sensible person the other week and she told me that Bowling for Columbine was a great movie. I flinched and realized that by not writing about it, I was guilty (even in a miniscule way) of perpetuating Michael Moore's propaganda.

To anyone who disagrees with me or thinks I'm boring when I write about politics, too bad. If you like me less because I have a contrary, well-thought out opinion, you're a fool. Liking me less does only you a disservice and besides, you're free to visit a less challenging website.

With spokesmen like Michael Moore, the left has itself to blame for the rise of neoconservatism and the far right. Michael Moore is to in-depth political analysis what a puddle of piss is to the ocean. He's a simplistic, manipulative egotist.

Bowling for Columbine: a great documentary? Hardly.

By now most people have heard that the opening scene at the bank was staged; producers pre-arranged for Moore to walk out with a gun. An "average joe" of the type multi-millionaire Moore professes to be has to make a deposit of at least $1000, undergo a background check with the FBI and then wait two weeks before picking up a gun at a different location; hardly an efficient way to obtain a weapon. But Moore makes it look like standard practice, even joking, "Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?"

We also now know that the Lockheed Martin factory that Moore claimed made missiles and weapons of mass destruction, "transporting them at night while the children of Columbine slept", actually made rockets for weather and tv satellites, not missiles or WMD. (Never mind that, other than living in Columbine, the Columbine killers had no relation to Lockheed Martin whatsoever; Moore still feels it appropriate to blame Lockheed for those murders.)

I wonder if Moore visited any towns with factories that did make missiles to see if the kids there were shooting each other up?

Both of the major scenes featuring Charlton Heston are mis-edited. In the first, separate speeches from different times are spliced into one in order to give the false impression of an arrogant Heston spouting off pro-gun slogans ("from my cold, dead hands!") in defiance of Columbine's grieving parents. You can tell because Heston's outfit magically changes in the middle of his speech.

The other Heston scene drives me to real fury.

At the end of the film, there's a shot from behind Moore as Heston hobbles away from him. We hear Moore's voiceover as he yaps about a little girl named Kayla killed by gunshot.

And then, we cut to a shot in front of Moore, presumably looking at Heston, as Moore holds a photograph up of dead Kayla while yammering on about Heston's supposed culpability.. and yet.. this shot from the front must have been staged, because in the shot above we see Moore from behind and there is no camera in front of him that could have recorded this 2nd shot.

And there is no camera behind Moore here which could have recorded the first shot!

This means that Moore, after Heston disappeared, directed his cameraman to shoot him from the front so he could nobly step forward and thrust dead Kayla's picture into frame while shouting sanctimonious bullshit.. at a Heston who wasn't even there anymore.

Watch the clip (56k, cable) and just look at that self-righteous twit. In fact for all we know Moore's entire holier-than-thou dead Kayla voiceover was added after-the-fact.

Frankly I think it was generous of Heston to grant an off-the-cuff interview to Moore. Moore took advantage of it, and of Heston's Alzheimer's, in every way.

After this setup, Moore leaves dead Kayla's photo on Heston's steps. It seems the callous, showboating bastard will stop at nothing in order to humiliate and cajole.

But it doesn't end there. Bowling for Columbine is actually full of lies or distortions of the truth.

- Moore suggests that the Columbine murderers went to bowling class the morning of the massacre. They didn't. They skipped that class.

- Moore claims that the US gave $245 million dollars to the Taliban in 2000-01. In reality, the US gave $245 million dollars worth of food and humanitarian aid to international relief agencies like Food for Peace and the UN who in turn used those goods in Afghanistan.

- Moore claims that the Second Amendment was written so that "every white man could keep his gun". In reality, the Second Amendment allowed black men to keep guns too and was welcomed by black activists because of that.

- Moore claims that the NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization" while showing cartoon NRA members giving Klan members guns which they use to shoot blacks. In reality, the NRA was founded by Union soldiers who hated the Klan, which was primarily made up of Confederate traitors.

- Moore claims that Canadians have just as many guns as Americans. In reality, Canada has about 1/3 as many guns as America does per capita.

- Moore either staged or misedited a scene buying ammunition in a Canadian department store. Their government has pointed out that the transaction as presented would be illegal.

- Moore claims that 13% of the Canadian population is minority ethnic, the same as the US. In reality, 31% of the US population is minority ethnic.

And then there's the omission of key facts; Moore spends a lot of time on an incident in which a six year old boy shot a girl to death at school. He cites a Michigan welfare-to-work program which required the boy's mother to have a job. What he doesn't mention is that the boy had a history of violence. He once stabbed another student; he also lived in a crack house where his uncle kept both drugs and guns. You'd think those facts would be central to the story. But Moore doesn't; it's so much easier (and more fun) for him to blame Dick Clark!

Why? Because the kid's mom worked at one of Clark's American Bandstand restaurants. It's an utterly outrageous, baseless connection.

There are reality shows with more truth than Bowling for Columbine.

Besides the simple lack of factual information in Bowling, none of Moore's arguments make any logical sense. This is what makes it perfect propaganda for a self-righteous (if well-meaning) liberal culture that isn't used to streaming, logical discourse. One sound byte after another may sound good and flatter the viewer's sensibilities, but bother to connect Moore's "points" and his argument collapses.

First, Moore says that maybe the kids of Columbine were violent because America is violent. Maybe they see America using violence to solve its problems and so then they think violence is OK too. Moore then lists a dozen American atrocities from the last 50 years - from the US overthrowing the PM of Iran in 1953 to our backing of the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem in 1963 and so forth.. all horrible things.

But I'd wager that American teenagers, by and large, have no knowledge of these atrocities. I'd wager most of Bowling for Columbine's audience had no idea either, until seeing this movie. We are pretty well indoctrinated here, especially in high school, to believe that America is a peace-loving symbol of freedom throughout the world; and this was especially true before 9/11 when the Columbine massacre occurred. There is no evidence to suggest that those two murderers, or anyone who commits gun crimes are history buffs.

Another of Moore's illogical arguments is that evening news broadcasts create a "culture of fear", and that it's this fear that makes Americans violent. Hmm. Did the Columbine murderers watch the evening news every night? Or did they probably have other issues?

If violent, fear-provoking evening news broadcasts cause violence, then wouldn't Marilyn Manson's violent, fear-provoking music cause violence as well? What about violent, 1st person shooter video games? Moore seems to accept at face value that rock music with violent lyrics and violent video games couldn't possibly cause violence; but that evening news broadcasts can. Why? Would gun violence disappear if evening news broadcasts did?

Moore accuses evening news programs of reporting violent crimes too often because statistically, violent crime has gone down in the last decade; but isn't Bowling for Columbine itself doing the exact same thing - stoking fears of gun violence even though actual gun violence is on the decrease?

And why would actual gun violence decrease in the 90s if the evening news instigated "culture of fear" increased during the same period?

Here is the uncomfortable truth: 54% of murders are committed by young black men. An appallingly high portion of these murders are young black men killing other young black men. According to Michael Moore's theory, are we to believe that all of these troubled black men are troubled because they're scared by the evening news? Do they even watch the evening news? Or is the truth much more complicated than Moore's pandering faux-liberal "white people are afraid of black people" bullshit?

I can understand why people who saw Bowling for Columbine in a movie theater would be hoodwinked by it. We turn off our critical, intellectual instincts in movie theaters. We don't have the means to fact-check in movie theaters. But Bowling for Columbine is nothing more than a tabloid style reality mockumentary masquerading as "truth".

Bowling for Columbine gives viewers the impression that they're more sophisticated and intelligent than the average dupe watching Fox News. But anyone who falls for Bowling is as equally misguided as those Fox-watching dupes. In fact, Bowling uses many of the same techniques Fox News does in presenting its "fair and balanced" hogwash, from the sensationalism to the exploitation of real-life tragedy to the character assassination to the misleading edits to the musical cues that tell us how to feel to the boldface lies presented as facts.

In his Oscar acceptance speech, Moore called President Bush a "fictitious" President fighting a "fictitious" war for "fictitious" reasons. He should have also thanked the Academy for giving the best documentary Oscar to a "fictitious" feature film.

Michael Moore is the Rush Limbaugh of the left. He's just as fat and stupid. But I despise him more than I despise Limbaugh because frankly I expect more out of liberals. Corporate America does suck. Our government is too violent. I hate Bush. But the sheer volume of Moore's lies and hypocrisy obscure any of his valid points.

If Moore is so pro-union, why did he pressure the writers on his now-defunct tv show not to join the Writer's Guild? If Moore is so anti-corporate, why doesn't he visit any independent bookstores on his book tours? If Moore is so populist, why are the working class people in his films so often portrayed as backwoods hicks? Why are low-level security guards and blue collar receptionists so often the butt of his humiliating jokes? Is it so faux-liberal urban hipsters can laugh at the middle-American working class?

I used to hate the right for spewing lies and propaganda but now, via Michael Moore, the left does that too. It used to be that liberals demanded action against fascism worldwide; today, conservatives are more likely to and liberals are the ones shouting "America First" and isolationism. Liberals used to stand for big government but Bush's spending has far eclipsed that of Clinton's. The words "liberal" and "conservative" are losing their meaning.

Pointing out Michael Moore's lies doesn't make me less of a liberal than anyone because an honest liberal ought to see through Moore's specious crap. Facts must come first; facts must determine a point of view. A point of view must not determine facts.

Truth exists above labels. I suppose in some ways I'm a liberal. In other ways I'm a conservative; in more I am a libertarian. But in every way I am a factualist; I base my opinions on facts. I don't trust my own preconceived notions or a party line and neither should anyone.

One problem with the plethora of news outlets these days is that if you're liberal, its very easy to get all of your news from liberal news sources. But by doing that, you limit yourself. Your opinions are less and less challenged until finally you accept anything that adheres to your preconceived notions (like Bowling for Columbine) as truth. The same goes for conservatives who only watch Fox news.

Is this why we have such an angry, divided electorate? No one pays attention to anything that doesn't re-confirm their pre-existing worldview. Everyone walks around a rigid, non-thinking robot of closeminded partisan dogma, and facts means nothing.

Rather than respond logically, Moore's response to criticism is always that it comes from gun crazies and wackos. Nonsense.

Here are some rational thoughts from non-crazy lawyer David Hardy, who was the first person to investigate Moore's claims in Bowling for Columbine. His critique remains one of the best.

'Bowling for Columbine: Documentary or Fiction?' by David Hardy

Moore Exposed is David Hardy's somewhat vitriolic main site.

Spinsanity is one of my favorite websites. Like me, they are left-leaning, and like me, they're interested in facts, and they don't care what your politics are; if you lie, they'll point it out. Spinsanity has a whole section on Michael Moore's lies.

Moore is prone to a kind of insidious, pandering racism. He joked during his stage show in England that the terrorists of 9/11 wouldn't have succeeded had there been black men on the planes because black men "as we all know take no disrespect from anybody".. ignoring the fact that the white passengers of one plane did fight back and perpetuating the stereotype of black male aggression in one fell swoop. Patronizing, simplistic comments about race are endemic to Moore.

Here's a dissection of Moore's racism from libertarian (and African-American) writer Larry Elder:
'Is filmmaker Michael Moore a bigot?' by Larry Elder, WorldNetDaily

Here's an investigation of the Michael Moore phenomenon by the great analyst Kay S. Hymowitz:
'Michael Moore, Humbug' by Kay S. Hymowitz, CityJournal

And here are some forthright liberal thoughts on Moore:
'The Perils of Michael Moore: Political Critisicm in an Age of Entertainment' by Kevin Mattson, Dissent

Even some Brits get it, and in a liberal paper no less:
'When Moore Is Less' by David Aaronovitch, the Guardian Unlimited

And criticism, this time predictably, from the right:
'Bowling's Truths' by Dave Kopel, the National Review  
'Unmoored from Reality' by John Fund, Washington Journal

Some of Moore's critics are the victims of Columbine themselves. As Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel died at Columbine, says of Moore, "This is just a guy trying to capitalize on the tragedy of others."

And finally, here is Moore's short, pitiful reaction to all of Bowling for Columbine's critics, along with David Hardy's brilliant refutation of said pitiful reaction. Reading both would give anyone a good lesson in logic and reason, and what distinguishes fact from empty propagandistic rhetoric.

We conclude from the above links that criticism of Moore isn't, as he would like us to believe, all from gun crazies and wackos. It crosses ideological boundaries. It comes from not just from the most unlikely source, the victims of Columbine, but from anyone - liberal, conservative, libertarian - who holds truth paramount.

The only thing I give Michael Moore is that his drag is flawless; no other millionaire could pull off that "average working class joe" illusion so well.

I got my education.

until next week, remember..
when you dance, we are a part of what you feel.