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5.28.04 Michael Moore
My friend asks what I think of "Fahrenheit 9/11" by
Michael Moore, which won top
honors at the Cannes film festival. Of course, it'll be a while before
any of us see the movie because the Bush backers at Disney dropped their
plans to distribute it in the U.S. But I did read of good review of it
in the Sunday
New York
Times arts section.
Whatever you think of Mr. Moore, there's no question he's
detonating dynamite here. From a variety of sources — foreign
journalists and broadcasters (like Britain's Channel Four),
freelancers and sympathetic American TV workers who slipped him
illicit video — he supplies war-time pictures that have been largely
shielded from our view. Instead of recycling images of the planes
hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 once again, Mr. Moore can
revel in extended new close-ups of the president continuing to read
"My Pet Goat" to elementary school students in Florida for nearly
seven long minutes after learning of the attack. Just when Abu
Ghraib and the savage beheading of Nicholas Berg make us think we've
seen it all, here is yet another major escalation in the
nation-jolting images that have become the battleground for the war
about the war.
...
Last weekend The Los Angeles Times reported that for the first
time three Army divisions, more than a third of its combat troops,
are so depleted of equipment and skills that they are classified
"unfit to fight." In contrast to Washington's neglect, much of
"Fahrenheit 9/11" turns out to be a patriotic celebration of the
heroic American troops who have been fighting and dying under these
and other deplorable conditions since President Bush's declaration
of war.
In particular, the movie's second hour is carried by the
wrenching story of Lila Lipscomb, a flag-waving, self-described
"conservative Democrat" from Mr. Moore's hometown of Flint, Mich.,
whose son, Sgt. Michael Pedersen, was killed in Iraq. We watch Mrs.
Lipscomb, who by her own account "always hated" antiwar protesters,
come undone with grief and rage. As her extended family gathers
around her in the living room, she clutches her son's last letter
home and reads it aloud, her shaking voice and hand contrasting with
his precise handwriting on lined notebook paper. A good son,
Sergeant Pedersen thanks his mother for sending "the bible and books
and candy," but not before writing of the president: "He got us out
here for nothing whatsoever. I am so furious right now, Mama."
I have to confess that ever since I saw "Bowling at
Columbine" and "Roger and Me," Michael Moore has been a filmmaking hero
of mine. I am in awe of his boldness and intrigued by his mix of film,
cartoons, photos -- whatever it takes to get the message across. Of
course he is bombastic and egotistical. But I look upon him as the
left's answer to Rush Limbaugh -- a maniacal entertainer and influencer
-- although I think Moore is a more careful and energetic trial lawyer.
Limbaugh has descended into repeating old chestnuts and debunked
information.
Even Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he wasn't moved by
the prison torture scandal till he saw the pictures. So while I love
reading long scholarly analyses in the "New Yorker," it will be movies
and pictures that snap Americans out of their apathy.
The media has been very careful since 9/11, doing a lot of
self-censoring for fear of being seen as unpatriotic. And I'm tired of
hearing how criticism or a "change in course" would be "bad for troop
morale." Call me old fashioned, but somehow death seems worse than being
underappreciated.
So it will take someone like Michael Moore and his
no-hold-barred style to call this administration to task and reveal the
terrible consequences of its decisions.
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mad
in pursuit: greed & arrogance