Fahren-hate 9/11

In the madness of the past year, I haven't taken much time out for movies, but tonight I joined a few friends to see what all the fuss is about Michael Moore's new movie "Fahrenheit 9/11".

(Advance warning: this is a review by a Democrat who voted for Gore and will vote for Kerry - but also supported "regime change" in Iraq (I also support regime change in the USA.) )

I had read a lot of reviews - from half-article attacks on Moore the man (isn't this called "ad hominem" in logical argument?) in the Wall Street Journal to rave reviews in leftie sources. But I was curious to see what *I* would think.

Predictably, when it was simple Bush-bashing (he makes it so easy!), I enjoyed the movie - like the Bonanza take-off with Bush as Little Jo. But when it was war-bashing (and Moore doesn't seem to find any war worth any price - even, apparently, WWII), I wanted to cry "foul". You would never know that there had ever been any president in Iraq like Saddam Hussein. The pre-war Iraq is presented as all flowers and light - laughing children, men playing chess, veiled women smiling at their kids on swings. No Abu Ghrayb (the one Saddam had running for decades), no gassing of villagers, no ethnic cleansing of Kurdish areas, no mass graves of Shi'ites shot down by government helicopters after Gulf War I.

Moore's moral seems to be that when a country is ruled by an egotistical, but half-brained fascist dictator from a powerful cleptocratic family that ignores the poverty and the suffering of its citizens and tramples on their rights (i.e.the US), it's bad, but when another country is ruled by an egotistical, but half-brained fascist dictator from a powerful cleptocratic family that ignores the poverty and the suffering of its citizens and tramples on their rights (i.e. Iraq), it's fine and dandy.

The film is a wild, ramble of a take-down of Bush and the Bush dynasty - some fun spots on the ride - but reminded me of nothing so much as a freshman essay with no thesis - or rather a new thesis every paragraph. He could have made 10 documentaries out of all of his different views: Bush stole the Florida election; the Bush family is in bed with the Saudi royal family; the Bushes ignore the economic depression of mainstream America (as in Flint, Michigan); our current military suckers lower class US kids into being cannon fodder for wars for oil and Halliburton; the Iraq war never was "mission accomplished"; war creates grieving mothers (what, the Civil War and WWII didn't?) If I had been his script writing teacher, I would have x-ed out 9/10 of "9/11" and written "so what's your main point?" in the margins.

In the end, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a collage of a 10,000 separate film clips that, when edited, somehow seem to say exactly what Moore wanted to say - and nothing else. "Stacking the deck" is an apt phrase here. Clever, occasionally. Honest, not really.

But some images stick with you: the mass of footage of various Bushes kowtowing to the Saudi royals and the Saudi ambassador to the US (also a prince), the fancy Mariott business conference on how US companies can make a profit in the new Iraq.

Well, so much for my break. Now it's back to prep time for the dissertation defense this Monday.

Say a prayer for me!