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| Fifth Column | |
| ro’Moore gets Spinsanity treatment. | |
| 2003-11-03 | |
| In his latest book Dude, Where’s My Country? — a polemic against President Bush — liberal gadfly Michael Moore again demonstrates why he has a reputation as a slipshod journalist who has trouble getting his facts right. ro’Moore doesn’t want the facts to get in the way so he deceives himself to avoid having to think. Moore established his reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth in his first film, the 1989 documentary "Roger and Me," centering on General Motors layoffs in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. As the New Yorker’s Pauline Kael wrote at the time, he manipulated the chronology of his film, implying that certain events were a response to GM’s large 1986 layoffs when in fact they had occurred years before. Moore’s best-selling book Stupid White Men was no less factually challenged. In it, he made a number of mistakes, ranging from the sloppy (suggesting that the multiyear cost of a new fighter plane was all being spent in 2001) to the outright ridiculous (reprinting an outdated list of attacks on Bush from the Internet virtually unedited). "Bowling for Columbine," for which Moore was awarded last year’s Academy Award for best documentary feature, continued the pattern. Critics, including my co-editor Ben Fritz and Dan Lyons of Forbes, documented how Moore repeated a well-debunked myth about supposed US aid to the Taliban, falsely portrayed a scene in a Michigan bank to make it appear as though one could open an account and walk out with a gun, and altered a Bush-Quayle ’88 campaign ad, among numerous other distortions. ro’Moore lied, people may die. Moore has generally brushed aside such criticism with suggestions such as "How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" as he put it to Lou Dobbs on CNN’s "Moneyline." More recently, however, he has gone on the offensive, going so far as to suggest critics of "Bowling for Columbine" are "committing an act of libel" in an August 19 appearance on MSNBC. And in a long article posted on his web site, he denounces criticism of the film as "character assassination" and "make-believe stories." "Of course, his lips fall off a lot." Despite repeatedly dismissing his critics, Moore has recently acknowledged some of his errors. For instance, in the DVD release of "Bowling for Columbine," he changed the caption he inserted over a Bush/Quayle ’88 campaign ad, making the text more accurate (although the viewer still is unlikely to realize that the text wasn’t in the original ad in the first place). On his web site, Moore explicitly admitted making this correction in the film. In two places in Dude, Where’s My Country?, Moore implicitly acknowledges mistakes in his earlier works. On several occasions over the past two years, Moore has asserted that (as he put it on "Politically Incorrect") "the Bush Administration gave $43 million in aid to the Taliban in part to — give money to the poppy growers for the money they would lose because they can’t grow heroin anymore." "Bowling for Columbine" continued the canard, asserting that the US gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Both of these are false; the aid, intended to help relive famine, was given to non-governmental organizations, not the Taliban. In his latest book, Moore finally gets it right, noting that the aid "was to be distributed by international organizations." (page 34)
Moore’s penchant for conspiracy theories often leads him to stretch the facts or make laughable claims. Bashing the proposed Terrorist Information Awareness project, he writes that "There is usually very little in the way of an electronic or paper trail when it comes to terrorists. They lay low and pay cash. You and me, we leave trails everywhere — credit cards, cell phones, medical records, online; everything we do. Who is really being watched here?"(page 110) In Moore’s fervor to indict the TIA system, he forgets about the credit cards used by the 9-11 hijackers, which were used to help retrace their steps. Moore also repeats a well-debunked myth about Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark. According to Moore, "Clark has said that he received phone calls on Sept. 11 and in the weeks after from people at ’think tanks’ and from people within the White House telling him to use his position as a pundit for CNN to ’connect’ Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein." (page 53) Moore cites a June 15, 2003 interview with Clark on NBC’s "Meet the Press." Despite somewhat ambiguous phrasing in that interview, however, Clark, has subsequently been consistent in his claim that it was a member of a think tank who contacted him, not the White House, a fact buttressed by a recent report that identified the man who made the call. And Moore pluralizes the single call Clark refers to in the "Meet the Press" interview to "calls" - a claim Clark has never made. In addition, Moore attacks the Patriot Act with an array of examples that have nothing to do with it. He introduces the list by writing that "To date, there are at least thirty-four documented cases of FBI abuse under the Patriot Act — and at least another 966 individuals have filed formal complaints. Many of these people were just minding their own business, or seeking to partake in our free society. Consider these examples." (page 111) Moore lists an anti-globalization activist who was questioned by "immigration officials" and a "State department agent"; a New York judge who asked a defendant if she was a terrorist; French journalists detained at the Los Angeles Airport; a local police officer in Vermont entering a teacher’s classroom to photograph an anti-Bush art display; a college student questioned by Secret Service agents about "anti-American" material; and a Green Party activist questioned on his way to Prague. None of the incidents he lists, however, happened as a result of the Patriot Act, nor did any of them involve the FBI (the French journalists were detained for improper travel documents, and the Green Party activist was questioned by the Secret Service, as Moore’s own sources note). Bush’s policies towards Iraq come in for particular criticism — and, in several cases, gross distortions. Moore writes that "There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq’s leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq’s oil exports. That’s $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator." (page 69) In reality, that "trade" was done under the auspices of the United Nations oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil to purchase humanitarian supplies. One can only imagine what Moore would have said if the U.S. refused to purchase Iraqi oil and allowed its citizens to starve. At another point, Moore attacks Secretary of State Colin Powell’s statement to the United Nations that "What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence." According to Moore, "Just days earlier, Powell apparently was not so sure. During a gathering of CIA officials reviewing the evidence against Saddam Hussein, Powell tossed the papers in the air and declared: ’I’m not reading this. This is bullshit.’" (page 82) Moore makes it appear as though the speech Powell gave at the UN included the evidence he had called "bullshit." In fact, the US News & World Report article that Moore cites does note Powell’s exclamation, but it details the process by which Powell winnowed out pieces of evidence he was uncomfortable presenting. The article concludes "And plenty was cut [from Powell’s speech]. Sometimes it was because information wasn’t credible, sometimes because Powell didn’t want his speech to get too long, sometimes because [CIA Director George] Tenet insisted on protecting sources and methods." Nor is Moore above twisting facts to attack the Bush administration’s tax cuts. Moore criticizes the 2003 Bush tax cut for reducing revenue to the states. As one example, he writes, "Take the kids in Oregon, whose schools were shut down early this year because they ran out of tax money." (page 160) While Moore makes it appear as though the 2003 Bush tax cut shut down Oregon’s schools, Oregon actually passed a law in May 2003 decoupling its state income tax system from the federal government’s, insuring that the 2003 tax cut would have no impact on the state’s budget. Moreover, as an article from the June 8 New York Times Magazine - one of Moore’s own sources - notes, Oregon voters had rejected a referendum earlier in the year that would have raised taxes to pay for schools and other spending. In a recent interview with Bookreporter.com, Moore was asked if he made a special effort to fact-check his new book. "All my work goes through a thorough fact-checking process," he said. "I hire three teams of people to go through the book and then two separate lawyers vet it. There is a reason that I have never been sued over anything in my three books — that’s because everything in them is true." Apparently, Moore needs to hire himself some new fact-checkers. Regardless of the supposed rigors of its vetting process, Dude, Where’s My Country? cements Moore’s reputation as one of our nation’s sloppiest commentators. | |
| Posted by:Atrus |
| #17 That link was hilarious! |
| Posted by: B 2003-11-4 7:18:10 AM |
| #16 Actually - I've had my doubts about Patrick, the purple starfish on Spongebob Squarepants, for quite some time |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-11-3 11:10:20 PM |
| #15 B. I think you are reffering to Jery Falwell pointing our that Tinky Winkie of the Tellitubbies might be a new gay icon because he carries a handbag. He was wrong about the Tellitubbies. They aren't gay they are communist. This link will fill you in. It is one of the Hose;s favor websites of all time. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-11-3 9:38:46 PM |
| #14 Well, I agree that propaganda works for all reasons stated above. But there becomes a point where you acquire the "stink of a loser" that results in more people who don't want to be associated with you than those who do. Sure, MM picks up the young and ignorant..and gives fuel to the true believers, but.... think what's-his-face who claimed that the blue Smurf was gay. Suddenly, all but the already--forever-faithful were denying they ever knew the guy. Push the pendulum too far, and back it swings. MM is all about comedy...but it's the Democrats who are becoming the joke. |
| Posted by: B 2003-11-3 8:17:52 PM |
| #13 Carzyfool, that cronyism is an example of that. You award a contract to a huge company because only a huge company has that type of capability. That start the the old "in-bed with big business" canard rebounding off the walls ad nauseum until those who no better get sick of arguing the point. Propoganda in the echo chamber works eventually becasue countering the argument is eventually boring and exasperating. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-11-3 7:27:10 PM |
| #12 Propoganda does work. Often Michael Moron's 'truth's are repeated and 'quoted' as fact by the left. Sometimes these people know that it is a bunch of crap but use it nevertheless to legitimate their own BS but often they are quoted by fools who think 'well its in a book so it MUST be true! - after all MM hasn't been sued yet!'. Remember the Mass media (at least here in the US) still says that Bush told america that Iraq was an IMMINENT THREAT even when he (Bush) went out of his way to say that it wasn't but that we should not wait for it to become an imminent threat? |
| Posted by: CrazyFool 2003-11-3 6:26:46 PM |
| #11 Yes propoganda does work--look at how many Americans believe Saddam Insane was behind 9/11! That number is actually very small. The left keeps adding together the number of people who think it's "possible" or "likely" that Saddam was aware or somehow involved, and then treating those people like idiots for having a better comprehension of world events than the left. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2003-11-3 2:39:34 PM |
| #10 NMM, everybody gets a limo ride in the end. :-) |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-11-3 2:08:13 PM |
| #9 Yes propoganda does work--look at how many Americans believe Saddam Insane was behind 9/11! And BTW, this librul is still waiting on his limo--when do I get one? |
| Posted by: Not Mike Moore 2003-11-3 1:59:52 PM |
| #8 However, it's always good to have limosine liberal media whores around. Also because they keep the country moving to the center. You have to be an idiot or a true believer to be willing to admit that Moore represents your POV. I disagree. Propaganda works. Most people are vulnerable to propaganda to one degree or another, and a I'll bet there are millions out there who take Moore's lies at face value. I know many people who have seen Bowling who haven't had the opportunity to learn what a crock of bulls*** it is - the media don't exactly shout about it, at least not in the UK. It doesn't help that Hollywood fawned over it, and disgracefully gave it the Oscar for Best Documentary [sic]. What Moore peddles are lies, on a big scale and they're told often. What was it Goebbels said? |
| Posted by: Bulldog 2003-11-3 1:15:55 PM |
| #7 However, it's always good to have limosine liberal media whores around. Also because they keep the country moving to the center. You have to be an idiot or a true believer to be willing to admit that Moore represents your POV. |
| Posted by: B 2003-11-3 12:05:54 PM |
| #6 It's funny how his message gets echo's. Here is an LA Times article repeated in Newsday: Report Ties Iraq, Afghan Contracts to Cronyism. The DNC must have a staffer assigned to zing the Halliburton frisbe out into the media once a week. A company I used to work for, Nucor Steel, was a heavy backer of Clinton because they had several mills in Arkansas, but they have probably benefitted much more from Bush's disasterous foray into protectionism. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2003-11-3 11:52:25 AM |
| #5 Notice that Moore's excuse when challenged is that its "satire". In other words, he isn't even courageous enough to stand up and defend his muck as accurate, critical and opinionated. Can you imagine P.J. O'Rourke having to backtrack on any of his writings as just "satire" when in fact he is such a master he can defend them as being accurate, funny and critical discourse all wrapped up in one. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2003-11-3 11:40:49 AM |
| #4 Satire is virtually suit-proof, but I think he's treading dangerously by calling it a documentary. Additionally, it's difficult to prove slander/libel against a public figure IIUC |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-11-3 11:13:31 AM |
| #3 Moore says "There is a reason that I have never been sued over anything in my three books -- that’s because everything in them is true." actually, the reason is that the books are entertainment and thus it is difficult to make a case that you have been damaged by a mistatement (no one sues South Park or SNL successfully either). |
| Posted by: mhw 2003-11-3 11:05:23 AM |
| #2 "He'll be history in 5 years, along with Franken" -Frank, probably true. However, it's always good to have limosine liberal media whores around. Keeps us vigilant of what we are fighting against. On a side note, Dean should be embarrassed of Franken's behavior at that fund raiser some months ago. |
| Posted by: Jarhead 2003-11-3 11:05:10 AM |
| #1 Moore can write or say anything he wants - I object to his media/Dem supporters labelling this tripe as a documentary, and any organization (can you say "Oscars") which accepts this fiction as a documentary loses their credibility as well. In a bit of delightful hypocrisy, Moore also has filed suit against someone "stalking" him with a camera - a la "Roger and Me" and his Lucianne Goldberg apartment camera stunt. The fat fu&k can't handle what he dishes out. He'll be history in 5 years, along with Franken |
| Posted by: Frank G 2003-11-3 10:22:16 AM |