Film review (well, kind of)
In this video clip shown in "Fahrenheit 9/11," "War President" Bush sits in an elementary school, stunned, after learning that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Rather than immediately leave, like a good war president would do, he remains at the school in a daze. (He had, remember, received a presidential daily briefing on Aug. 6, 2001 titled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S.") To watch this video clip, click here.
Fahrenheit 9/11
The Democratic Party owes Michael Moore big.
"Fahrenheit 9/11," which I saw today in a packed Sacramento movie theater that had sold-out showings -- the same movie theater where in October 2002 I saw "Bowling for Columbine" and saw Moore speak about his film, which would go on to win the Best Documentary Oscar -- easily could sway the November presidential election in John Kerry's favor.
First, let me dismiss Moore's detractors, such as Christopher Hitchens, who wrote an interminable piece-of-shit Moore-bashing rant for Slate (I've never liked Slate, which is owned by megacorporation Microsoft, so it doesn't come as a shock that Slate ran Hitchens' right-wing, Bush apologist piece), and Salon's reviewer, Stephanie Zacharek, who strikes me as one of the many "liberals" whose primary problem with Moore is that he is highly successful and they, compared to best-selling author and Oscar-winning filmmaker Moore, are nobodies. (In the end, these asswipes sell us out in order to get whatever rewards, real or imaginary, that they expect to get from their Masters for Defending The System. Even if it's just prestige that they're after, they're still selling us out. For a study of this sick phenomenon, see David Brock's Blinded by the Right.)
Self-serving Moore-haters have accused "Fahrenheit 9/11" of being grossly unfair. It isn't.
Moore doesn't claim to know every little connection between the Bush clan and the bin Laden clan, but he does the best he can, given the fact that the Bush regime is widely regarded as the most secretive White House administration at least since Richard Nixon's. What's Moore supposed to do? Not utter a fucking word until we know everything about everything that is shady about the Bush regime, which is just about everything? There's a lot of shit that we'll never know. It's best to say what we know right now rather than to sit on it until we can be absolutely certain that it's "fair."
The Republicans certainly don't lie awake at night worrying about whether or not they're fair. Shit, they'll make a "case" for war with things like obviously faked documents!
And they get away with it, too. They blatantly stole the 2000 presidential election by knowingly and intentionally disenfranchising thousands of Democratic-voting black voters in Florida and having the five U.S. Supreme Court justices who were appointed by Republican presidents decide the presidential election instead of the American people. They blatantly lied about an oil-rich nation's threat to the United States so that they could invade and occupy it for oil and war and reconstruction profits -- branding anyone who might question them in the least as al-Qaeda-loving, America-hating traitors. They tell the rest of the world to treat our prisoners of war according to international standards -- as "President" Bush does in a precious clip shown in the great documentary "Control Room" -- and then we find out that Americans treated the Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, most of whom were innocent of any crime, like the Nazis treated their detainees. So much for "liberation."
The Republicans get a free pass on these serious crimes, but when Bill Clinton got blown by an intern and lied about it, he was impeached. The Republicans get a free pass on these serious crimes, but when Michael Moore puts out a film, even those who claim to be on the left go over it with a fine-toothed comb for anything that even looks like it might be an inaccuracy or an unfairness so that they can triumphantly pronounce that the entire film, Michael Moore and everything he stands for are bullshit.
This shit is exactly what Jesus, who was a foaming-at-the-mouth liberal, was talking about when he said of the Pharisees of his time, "Blind guides! You strain out a gnat yet swallow a camel!" (Matthew 23:24). Hitchens, Zacharek and other Moore-bashers who wield fine-toothed combs for self-aggrandizement: You are modern-day gnat-straining Pharisees, and I have three words for you: Fuck you all.
(Think that Jesus wasn't a liberal? Would even a moderate have said this?: "Truly I tell you: A rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. I repeat: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." No, but Jesus did -- see Matthew 19:23-24. And "President" Bush and God knows how many of his rich supporters claim to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ.)
The Moore-bashers have also accused Moore of only exploiting people to make a political point. While there might have been a whiff of that in "Bowling for Columbine," in "Fahrenheit" Moore shows only respect for his subjects and I see none of the self-aggrandizement of which his self-aggrandizing critics falsely and hypocritcally accuse him.
If "Fahrenheit" seems unfair, that's only because for the past four years the corporately controlled mass media -- the mass media owned by the corporate elites, who make big money on wars and whose children don't have to join the military because they're rich -- have given the Bush regime a free pass, and consequently, the millions of Americans who rely on the corporately controlled mass media for their news have given the Bush regime a free pass. "President" Dumbfuck might not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he means well, an astounding number of Americans zombified by corporately controlled mass media incorrectly believe.
The mass media turned the other way when the Bush regime blatantly perpetrated election fraud in 2000 because Bush had been their pick. That's not an opinion -- that's what happened. As Al Franken writes on page 39 of Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them (which makes a great gift), "Any normal American who watched the news or read the papers that year would have noticed that the media just hated Al Gore. Somewhere along the line, the pack decided that Al Gore was a sanctimonious, graspy exaggerator running against a likeable if dim-witted goof-off. Instead of covering the issues and how they might affect average Americans, the media looked for little scraps of evidence to support its story line of Gore the Exaggerator. They found them in the unlikeliest places. For example, where he didn't exaggerate." (You really need to read the whole chapter, Chapter 7, "The 2000 Presidential Election: How It Disproved the Hypothetical Liberal Media Paradigm Matrix." Well, actually, you really need to read the whole book, or listen to the audio version of it, as I am, because to hear Franken read it is probably a lot funnier than it is to hear yourself read it.)
The corporately controlled mass media loved candidate Bush and they loved "President" Bush's war, too. From Day One of the March 2003 unprovoked invasion of Iraq, the corporately controlled mass media, especially the television "news" networks, played cheerleader to the invasion. It was great television! Great ratings!
I remember being filled with disgust -- I have a bachelor's degree in journalism, so I know what journalism is supposed to be -- when I watched the "embedded" "reporters" from the corporately controlled television "news" networks gleefully report from the battlefield in Iraq. Never did the "reporters" ask such unpatriotic questions as why the hell we'd attacked Iraq in the first place, and apparently they were very OK with the restrictions as to what they could report to and show their viewers that were put upon them by the U.S. military, because hey, being "embedded" sooooooo rocks! The "reportage" that we got from our media "watchdogs" were variations of "These tanks are so bitchen!" and "War is like so totally cool!"
The "embedded" "reporters" were bitches for the pimping Bush regime war machine. I was and remain appalled.
While "Fahrenheit" shows some of these Iraq war cheerleading clips (former real-life cheerleader Katie Couric gushed on NBC's "Today" show that "Navy SEALS rock," for instance), this subject alone could fill an entire documentary. (The closest thing to that documentary right now is "Control Room," which I saw but haven't reviewed -- but I give "Control Room" an "A+" and encourage you to see it if it's playing where you live, and if not, to see it when it comes out on DVD.)
The mass media have been out to lunch for at least the past four years. They don't answer to the people, but to their corporate masters. When the same corporate and government elites who send the young members of our lower socioeconomic classes off to fight their wars for profit and greed also control the mass media, we are in deep, deep shit. (The documentary "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" graphically illustrates the dangers of corporately controlled mass media, who do the bidding not of the people, but of their corporate masters.)
So given the fact that the American people have been outright lied to and kept in the dark as much as possible for the past four years, when Moore dare reminds us of the truth, he's seen as a radical.
Moore doesn't tell us much in "Fahrenheit" that I didn't already know. (But then, I try to keep myself informed; I don't watch the corporately controlled television network "news" -- NBC is owned by General Electric, another Iraq war profiteer, to give just one example of why I don't trust corporately controlled television network news -- but get most of my news via the Internet, such as from The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times and The Washington Post.) Moore does, however, show us images that the corporately controlled mass media don't show us, such as casualties in Iraq, both American and Iraqi; veterans of Gulf War II who are learning how to live as amputees or how to live with other permanent life-changing injuries; and how military recruiters aggressively target young people, mostly young men, from lower socioeconomic classes (see the still from the movie below).
Moore does a fantastic job of putting all of it together, of recapping the second Bush presidency, which is exactly why the Bush Nazis don't want you to see "Fahrenheit 9/11."
I don't know what went on in other cities today, but as I walked out of "Fahrenheit 9/11" this afternoon in Sacramento, they were registering people to vote, and I can't imagine any of the people who saw "Fahrenheit" in that movie theater with me today not voting on Nov. 2 and not voting for John Kerry.
Which brings me back to the Democratic Party.
I like John Kerry. I do. I shook his hand once, back in September at a small rally in San Francisco, before his campaign came back from the dead and he won the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary in January. I've been to two of his rallies, the one in San Francisco I just mentioned and one in Oakland in February. He has a lot more charisma in person than translates through television (maybe the corporately controlled television networks use a charisma filter to filter out his charisma -- just kidding).
I've given Kerry's campaign hundreds of dollars, have coordinated Meetups for him here in Sacramento, and have incurred considerable out-of-pocket costs, including buying Kerry stuff (bumper stickers, signs and buttons, mostly) that the national campaign hasn't had available to us -- all in helping get him win the Democratic presidential nomination (one down) and the presidency (one to go).
But I could never argue with the Deaniacs' criticism that Kerry, while I found him likeable and charismatic enough in person, isn't the most exciting candidate who ever lived.
Exciting isn't his thing. And that's OK with me. We need a stable, sane, competent president, one who uses the office of the presidency to benefit all Americans, not to enrich his fellow warmongering, oil-and-taxpayer-money-grubbing frat buds by lying to the American people and to the world about his reasons for launching a fake war on an oil-rich, comparatively defenseless nation.
But gone are the days when intelligence and competence were enough in a presidential candidate. (Hell, gone are the days that intelligence and competence are even required in a president -- "President" Monkeyboy is proof of that.) We want to be infotained, dammit.
On this the Democrats are pretty fucking clueless and have been for the past four years. (Howard Dean was considered to be exciting, but I don't consider volatility to be exciting. Not in a good way, anyway.) Moore hit the nail on the head when he told Playboy in an interview that appears in the July 2004 issue, "Instead of fighting as the Republicans fight, they [liberals/Democrats] say, 'Let's all be nice.' 'Nice' has lost us the House [of Representatives], the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court and the majority of the governorships. As a result of 'Can't we all just get along?' we control nothing. It's a wonderful sentiment, but if the storm troopers are coming down the street, you don't meet them with daisies." (Sorry, but the interview isn't available online; you'll have to read it in the magazine.)
Al Gore's testicles just recently descended. Better late than never, but damn, it would have been nice if instead of sighing during his debates with Gee Dubya like the preppy captain of an Ivy League school debate team, he had let Shrub have it like he's letting the Bush regime have it in his speeches now.
As Moore shows in "Fahrenheit," the Democrats basically handed the White House to George W. Bush on a silver platter. With the exception of some black members of the House of Representatives, who were appropriately outraged at the voter fraud the Republicans perpetrated in Florida, apparently no other U.S. representatives would go on record to oppose the coronation of Bush II and not a single U.S. senator would do so.
And the Democrats -- including John Kerry -- sat impotently by while the Bush regime's war machine inevitably marched toward Iraq, which had done nothing to the United States whatsoever, and had not threatened to do anything whatsoever to the United States, but just happens to have the world's second-largest oil reserves.
As Ted Rall points out in his great new book Wake Up...You're Liberal! and as Moore states in the Playboy interview, "Inside the average American beats a good liberal heart," yet the Democratic Party has failed miserably to rally Americans during the past four years. (Don't even get me started on the 2002 midterm elections or the California gubernatorial recall election.)
I don't know how it is throughout the rest of the nation, but the Democratic Party in Sacramento -- and Sacramento is home to the state's Democratic Party -- is, from my experience with and observation of it, all about raising money and winning elections. It isn't inclusive, but is filled with party insiders, many of whom have a thinly veiled contempt for those who aren't as involved in and knowledgeable of the party's inner workings as they are. It's a Republican Lite club, not a party for and of the people. (Don't even get me started on the Kerry campaign's piss-poor minority outreach and how if you want to attend a Kerry fundraiser, you'd better have at least $500 or $1,000 -- but preferably $2,000 -- lying around.)
I started to coordinate the Sacramento-area Kerry Meetups in August and did so until after it was clear, in January, that Kerry was going to get the Democratic presidential nomination. Then the Meetups were commandeered in February by two local Democratic Party hacks who talk mostly about money, money and money. They sometimes allow but do not encourage the stupid people (that is, people who aren't Democratic Party insiders) to talk about the issues that they care about, which is what used to happen at the Meetups before the hacks' hostile takeover. The Meetups have become, in essence, a fund-raising arm of the Kerry campaign, something they were never supposed to be. If you were to attend one of them you'd think that you'd accidentally walked into a Republican Party Meetup, because about all that's discussed is money.
While I know that fund-raising is important -- as I said, I have given the Kerry campaign hundreds of dollars and I have encouraged others to give also -- you can raise money and address the issues that people care about. You can't meet everyone's personal needs, but you can do more than incessantly hit them up for money, which is about all that the Democratic Party seems to be about.
My personal experiences with Democratic Party hacks leads me to believe that the party has seriously lost its way, has devolved into a political machine that knows only how to raise money to try to win elections (emphasis on "try"). The political machine's two hacks I just mentioned have sucked the heart and soul right out of the Sacramento Kerry Meetups, which now are only worth going to if there is a good speaker, which more often than not is not the case.
I have seen, at the local and national levels, that the Democratic Party doesn't know how to inspire the people anymore. Unfortunately, I intuit that the majority of Kerry's supporters hate Bush a lot more than they love Kerry. (I've coordinated and attended Kerry Meetups where Kerry himself was discussed relatively little.) The Democratic Party and, to a lesser degree, the Kerry campaign, don't know how to inspire the people but only know how to ask them for money. The Democratic Party is old. It's tired. It forgot its purpose long ago and instead focuses on the process of raising money and winning elections.
The people with me in the crowded movie theater today watching "Fahrenheit 9/11," however, were inspired. They were quite jazzed up. You'd have thought that you were at a Howard Dean rally. (Truly, the movie was more like an event than just a movie.)
I saw today that the people want to be inspired. They want to get jazzed up.
The Democratic Party doesn't know how to do that, so thank God for Michael Moore, MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, Democracy for America (what's left of Dean's once-impressive organization), progressive webloggers and others in the coalition of the willing, because if we had to rely on the Democratic Party alone on Nov. 2, we'd be fucked. (Although when Kerry wins, I'm sure the Democratic Party hacks will take all of the credit.)
I am not exaggerating when I say that, with the polls so close -- Kerry and Bush have been neck-and-neck in the polls for months now; sometimes one is up a little, but then the other is up a little, and overall it's been a dead heat) -- yes, a movie could make the difference. (Think I'm full of shit? Well, at least one writer for The Washington Post agrees with me.)
If "Fahrenheit 9/11" couldn't affect the November election, the Bush Nazis wouldn't be trying to censor it, would they? (As Moore tells The Washington Post: "That's the difference between our side and their side: Even when we disagree, we're respectful of freedom of speech. But when they disagree, they try to shut you down. Well, it's un-American. And it's wrong, and people are not going to stand for it. People in this country don't like to be told they can't watch something or see something.")
After having watched "Fahrenheit 9/11" today, I can tell the Bushies: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
I haven't seen people riled up like I saw them riled up today in the movie theater in a long time. As I said, as they left the movie theater, people were registering to vote.
Think the Democratic Party doesn't want some of that Moore Magic? You're wrong. I got this e-mail today:
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Plan your own hot Fahrenheit 9/11 rally!
"Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore's acclaimed documentary about the actions of the Bush administration after 9/11 and in Iraq, opens today across the country. The film won the grand prize in the world-famous Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times said, "[These are] pictures that have been largely shielded from our view."
Join thousands of California activists in seeing the movie. We have a list of theaters throughout the state that are showing the movie on our site.
Additionally, you can do more than just watch the movie. Here are a few ideas for what you can do:
- Plan your own rally. Call up your local TV stations and newspapers and tell them you'll be outside the theater.
- Organize a Voter Registration Drive at the theater or hand out Kerry's position paper, Strategy for Success in Iraq.
- Sign up to pledge your attendance this weekend with MoveOn.
- Host a house party this Monday that will culminate in an online chat with Michael Moore. You can sign up or find out more at MoveOn's Web site.
So burn up your activism energy this weekend -- take in the movie that tells the story about how the Bush Administration handled 9/11 and Iraq. If that doesn't get your blood boiling, nothing will. |
California Democratic Party
1401 21st Street, Suite 100
Sacramento, California 95814
(916) 442-5707 phone
(916) 442-5715 fax
www.cadem.org |
The Democratic Party, which for the past four years hasn't had the guts to take on the Bush regime for fear that it would offend people (gasp!) and potentially cost them some votes (gasp! gasp!), is all too happy to coattail on Moore's success, so if I ever hear a Democratic Party hack bash Moore, I just might have to bash that hack.
In "Fahrenheit 9/11," Moore unleases upon the Bush regime all of the valid criticisms that the effete, shell-shocked Democrats should have been unleashing during these past four years. Moore is, to steal a line from Howard Dean (who, I understand, stole the line from the late Sen. Paul Wellstone), a one-man Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
If "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a smash -- and I can't see it not being a smash -- yes, it could tilt the election to John Kerry.
As I wrote on June 12:
Will Michael Moore singlehandedly prevent "President" Dumbfuck from getting a second term?
No, but "Fahrenheit 9/11" will be an important piece of the overall Bush removal effort in the coming months. (Other important pieces of the overall Bush removal effort -- besides, of course, the John Kerry campaign and the Democratic Party -- include MoveOn.org, Air America Radio, numerous left-leaning Web sites, and, if I may say so, weblogs.)
What about the movie itself, you're wondering? Well, as I indicated, just as "The Passion of the Christ" was more than just a film, but was a sick and twisted "Christian" event, "Fahrenheit 9/11" also is not just a film but is an event (although a film and an event of which Jesus Christ would actually approve.) Therefore, I don't want to regurgitate the contents of "Fahrenheit" here, and countless other reviewers are doing that anyway.
I will say of the film that the opening credits and the very last clip of "President" Dumbfuck that Moore shows alone are worth seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11," and that while it's rare to hear an audience clap after a movie these days, the showing of "Fahrenheit 9/11" that I attended here in Sacramento today got a vigorous applause.
Go see it. Then tell your friends, family members and co-workers about it. Encourage the people you know to vote on Nov. 2 and come Nov. 2, vote.
My grade: A
Click here to go to the film's Web site.
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