Micheal Moore Mk II

[Knife]

Ok, so I am watching 'Real Time' with Bill Mauher. Micheal Moore is on with Bill in the first segment (Yes, I watch Bill Mauher even if I can't spell his name). He seems to think that some of the Booos he got durring the Oscars, were people that were Booooing the people that were Boooing Micheal. He has gone on to imply that the people that were Boooing him, were the stage hands and other blue collar type (my interpertation) people, not the audiance. Ok, he is NOW an ass. While I disagreed with his statments, and I disagreed with his timing, he is now official an ass.

Too try to escape the fact that other people of his so called peers, would not Boooo his dumb fat all, is absolutely fucked up. He is living in a dream world. Fuck him and yes he still has the right to be fucked up.





PS, spelling with massive amounts of Rum and no edit funtion, is bad......

[Strafe]

Unless one of us was actually at the Oscars, we're really going to have no way of knowing the truth in this matter. Not that that will stop this thread from turning into 5 pages of Moore bashing.



And even if Moore was lying it's irrelevant. It's not Moore that is important, it his message/thoughts/ideas whatever you want to call it. I'd be far more impressed if someone went through the trouble of refuting Stupid White Men rather than simply calling insulting Moore.

[Darth Garden Gnome]

He thinks the people that were booing him were being booed by other people, thus doubling his boos, giving us the illusion hes getting booed twice as much?

What a fucking nutjob. I know he can't even begin to back that up. Everyoen there was booinghisfat ass, not each other.

[Illuminatus Primus]

And even if Moore was lying it's irrelevant. It's not Moore that is important, it his message/thoughts/ideas whatever you want to call it. I'd be far more impressed if someone went through the trouble of refuting Stupid White Men rather than simply calling insulting Moore.

We had a thread on it and I posted a compilation of the factual errors in Stupid White Men. Someone find that original thread.

Moore's an attention whoring nutbag. He needs to drownd in his own vomit.

[Knife]

And even if Moore was lying it's irrelevant. It's not Moore that is important, it his message/thoughts/ideas whatever you want to call it. I'd be far more impressed if someone went through the trouble of refuting Stupid White Men rather than simply calling insulting Moore.

I would agree with you, if he had a relevant message rather than going on a tirade about Bush. To go on about a fictcious leader when you are as ficticious as a hollywood documentarian, is absurd. The basis of his argument is as ficticious as the man who spews it, IMHO. His artistic acomplishments are non withstanding to the argument of weather he is full of shit on his opinions of the war on Iraq. He never puts forth any evidence nor alternate solutions, rather he just slams the current administration on bullshit that he let the former slide on.

[Crown]

I watched his speach at least 4 times on the news, and if you listen closely he was actually applauded during most of his speach. IIRC only when he said; 'Shame on you Mr Bush' did the boo-ing and jeering overpower the actual applause, or perhaps when he said 'ficticious president' or 'reason's'. Either way for at leas half of his speach he was being applauded.

[Skelron]

[quote="Knife
I would agree with you, if he had a relevant message rather than going on a tirade about Bush. To go on about a fictcious leader when you are as ficticious as a hollywood documentarian, is absurd. The basis of his argument is as ficticious as the man who spews it, IMHO. His artistic acomplishments are non withstanding to the argument of weather he is full of shit on his opinions of the war on Iraq. He never puts forth any evidence nor alternate solutions, rather he just slams the current administration on bullshit that he let the former slide on.[/quote]

What in a thirty second segment he was supposed to say something that indepth come on, he had time for a sound bite so he had one.

[Glocksman]

I'd be far more impressed if someone went through the trouble of refuting Stupid White Men rather than simply calling insulting Moore.

How about a refutation of Bowling for Columbine?


Link

The Michael Moore production "Bowling for Columbine" just won the Oscar for best documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary, by the Academy's own definition.

The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which (despite its real value) receives but a tiny fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry." The award of the documentary Oscar to a $4 million entertainment piece is unjust to the legitimate competitors, disheartening to makers of real documentaries, and sets a precedent which may encourage inspire others to take similar liberties with their future projects.

Bowling fails the first requirement of a documentary: some foundation in the truth. In his earlier works, Moore shifted dates and sequences for the sake of drama, but at least the events depicted did occur. Most of the time, anyway. Bowling breaks that last link with factual reality. It makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore invites the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Dates are transposed and video carefully edited to create whatever effect is desired. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which he never uttered.

These occur with such frequency and seriousness as to rule out unintentional error. Any polite description would be inadequate, so let me be blunt. Bowling uses deliberate deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.

A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be amusing, or it may be moving. But it is not a documentary. One need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary must be non-fictional, and even re-enactments (much less doctoring of a speech) must stress fact and not fiction. To the Academy voters, some silly rules were not a bar to giving the award. The documentary category, the one refuge for works which educated and informed, is now no more than another sub-category of entertainment.

Serious charges require serious evidence. The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or that its conclusions are incorrect. No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive. A viewer cannot count upon any aspect of it, even when the viewer believes he is seeing video of an event occurring or a person speaking. Words are cheap. Let's look at the evidence.

James Bernardelli sums Moore up best:

Reality ­ a fragile commodity in any "fact-based" motion picture ­ takes a back seat to what will play well on a movie screen. As a result, it's best to consider Moore's films as entries into the ever-growing category of pseudo (or "meta") documentaries. Or, perhaps even more accurately, view it as an exercise in self-publicity.


Indeed

[Darth Wong]

I haven't watched this film, but does anyone have any criticism which cites specific facts and how they are distorted? I'm seeing a lot of Darkstar-style "Moore does this, and he's dishonest, and he distorts the facts, and his methods don't qualify" type of arguments which are long on criticism but short on examples of facts and distortions thereof. I'm not necessarily denying that the criticisms are valid (I haven't even seen this film), but I find the vague nature of these criticisms disturbing.

[Perinquus]

I haven't watched this film, but does anyone have any criticism which cites specific facts and how they are distorted? I'm seeing a lot of Darkstar-style "Moore does this, and he's dishonest, and he distorts the facts, and his methods don't qualify" type of arguments which are long on criticism but short on examples of facts and distortions thereof. I'm not necessarily denying that the criticisms are valid (I haven't even seen this film), but I find the vague nature of these criticisms disturbing.

Here's one example:

There is an early scene in "Bowling for Columbine" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America. It was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Michigan, that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," which is a hunting rifle.

But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

Another example is how Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.

But the most complete example of how he distorts evidence to lead his viewers to a false conclusion I will excerpt from an article on the subject by David Hardy. It's a bit long, but it sets it out in detail, and leaves you in no doubt that Michael Moore is making in propaganda, not an objective documentary.

The portrayal is one of Heston and NRA arrogantly holding a protest rally in response to the deaths -- or, as one reviewer put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy." [italics added]. Moore successfully causes viewers to reach this conclusion. It is in fact false.


Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine, but an annual meeting, whose place and date had been fixed years in advance.


Fact: At Denver, the NRA canceled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' meeting; that could not be cancelled because corporate law required that it be held. [No way to change location, since you have to give advance notice of that to the members, and there were upwards of 4,000,000 members.]


Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not given at Denver after Columbine. It was given a year later in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was a response to his being given the musket, a collector's piece, at that annual meeting. Bowling leads off with this speech, and then splices in footage which was taken in Denver and refers to Denver, to create the impression that the entire clip was taken at the Denver event.

Fact: When Bowling continues on to the speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to change its theme.

Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and quite a few other things. Carrying it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK HERE for the comparison.

Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely, and spliced them together, to create a speech that was never given. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a still or video footage for a few seconds.

First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech given a year later to a meeting in North Carolina.

Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration. The interlude is vital. He can't cut directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie. Or why the background draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments of this supposed speech to keep the viewer from noticing.

Moore then goes to show Heston speaking in Denver. His second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd at the meeting, while Heston's voice continues) deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its meeting:

"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that."

Moore has to take that out -- it would blow his entire theme. Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: Don't come here? We're already here!" as if in defiance.

Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence! Heston was actually saying (with reference Heston's own WWII vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."

Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." It thus becomes an arrogant "I said to the Mayor: as American's we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting to footage of protestors and a still photo of the Mayor as Heston says "I said to the mayor," cutting back to Heston's face at "As Americans."

Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing trick to cover the doctoring. As Heston speaks, the video switches momentarily to a pan of the crowd, then back to Heston; the pan shot covers the doctoring.

What Heston actually is saying in "We're already here" was not the implied defiance, but rather this:

"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine.

Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.

So, we have the same right as all other citizens to be here. To help shoulder the grief and share our sorrow and to offer our respectful, reassured voice to the national discourse that has erupted around this tragedy."


Don't take my word for it. Click here for CNS's full transcript of the speech, and here for the comparison.

Bowling continues its theme by juxtaposing another Heston speech with a school shooting at Mt. Morris, MI, just north of Flint, making the claim that right after the shooting, NRA came to the locale to stage a defiant rally. In Moore's words, "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally."


Fact: Heston's speech was given at a "get out the vote" rally in Flint, which was held when elections rolled around some eight months after the shooting.

Fact: Moore should remember. On the same day, Moore himself was hosting a similar rally in Flint, for the Green Party.

Moore follows up the impression with his Heston interview. Heston's memory of the Flint event is foggy (he says it was a morning event and he "then went on to wherever we were going." In fact it was held at night as the last event of the tour.). This is hardly surprising; it was one rally in a nine-stop tour of three States in three days.

Moore, who had plenty of time to prepare for the interview, carefully continues the impression he has created, asking Heston questions such as: "After that happened you came to Flint to hold a big rally and, you know, I just , did you feel it was being at all insensitive to the fact that this community had just gone through this tragedy?" Moore continues to come back at Heston, asking if he would have cancelled the event if he "knew" and "you think you'd like to apologize to the people in Flint for coming and doing that at that time?" Moore knows the real sequence, and knows that Heston does not. He takes full advantage of Heston and of the viewer.

Moore's purpose here is to convince the viewer that Heston intentionally holds defiant protests in response to a firearms tragedy. Judging from reviews, Bowling creates exactly that impression. Some samples: "Then, he [Heston] and his ilk held ANOTHER gun-rally shortly after another child/gun tragedy in Flint, MI where a 6-year old child shot and killed a 6-year old classmate (Heston claims in the final interview of the film that he didn't know this had just happened when he appeared." Click here for original; italics supplied] Another reviewer even came off with the impression that Heston"held another NRA rally in Flint, Michigan, just 48 hours after a 6 year old shot and killed a classmate in that same town." " What was Heston thinking going to into Colorado and Michigan immediately after the massacres of innocent children?" asks a third.

Bowling persuaded these reviewers by deceiving them. There was no rally shortly after the tragedy, nor 48 hours after it. When Heston said he did not know of the shooting (which had happened eight months before his appearance, over a thousand miles from his home) he was undoubtedly telling the truth. The lie here is not that of Heston, but of Moore.

The sad part is that the lie has proven so successful. Moore's creative skills, which could be put to a good purpose, are instead used to convince the viewer that a truthful man is a liar and that things which did not occur, did.

Here's a link to the complete essay if you care to read it:

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

[Glocksman]

Didn't I put up that link in my previous post?

[MKSheppard]

[Ender]

What in a thirty second segment he was supposed to say something that indepth come on, he had time for a sound bite so he had one.

Actually he ws supposed to have time for a whole speech, they just cut him off when he started to go on a tirade.

[jegs2]

He seems to think that some of the Booos he got durring the Oscars, were people that were Booooing the people that were Boooing Micheal. He has gone on to imply that the people that were Boooing him, were the stage hands and other blue collar type (my interpertation) people, not the audiance.

Riiiiiiiiiight ... and the worthless teenagers in Vermont weren't aiming at that female Army sergeant they were pelting with rocks either...

[Howedar]

[img]http://cagle.slate.msn.com/news/War-Med ... rsfgfg.gif

Why does he have a G-36?