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Michael Moore and Me [or Lies Told by the Lying Liar]
Note: the link is to an article in the weeklystandard.com, but it is difficult to resolve -- be patient, keep trying . . . :)Just from the intro, and EFL From the May 31, 2004 issue of The Weekly Standard: An encounter with the Cannes man by Fred Barnes A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, whoâs now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced heâd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote heâd once been "forced" to listen to my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group. I had whined "on and on about the sorry state of American education," Moore said, and wound up by bellowing: "These kids donât even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are!" Mooreâs interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. "Fred," he quoted himself as saying, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are." I started "hemming and hawing," Moore wrote. And then I said, according to Moore: "Well, theyâre . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine, you got me--I donât know what theyâre about. Happy now?" Heâd smoked me out as a fraud, or maybe worse. The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. Itâs a fabrication on two levels. One, Iâve never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for the record, Iâd learned what they were about even before college. Like everyone else my age, I got my classical education from the big screen. I saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus. But will the press follow up on this? I doubt it! So why didnât I scream bloody murder when the book came out in 2001? I didnât learn about the phony anecdote until it was brought to my attention by Alan Wolfe, who was reviewing Mooreâs book for the New Republic. He asked, by email, if the story were true. I said no, not a word of it, and Wolfe quoted me as saying that. That was enough, I thought. After all, who would take a shrill, lying lefty like Moore seriously? More people than I thought. * * * Posted by: cingold 2004-05-24 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=33827 |