No documentary takes you through the range of emotions the way that Michael Moore's controversial film does.
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The Top-10 Reasons Why "Fahrenheit 9/11" Is Dismissed:
10) Because, as Time magazine explained, we live in a time of red and blue "parallel truths" (referring to colors on the political map), and red folks will never accept a truth that appears to come out of the blue. And for the moment, red folks rule. Never mind that there's but one truth, and the media has gotten too lazy to try to uncover it.
9) Because Michael Moore is not Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein. The public believed the damaging information that the pair revealed about Watergate and President Nixon because these guys were real reporters for a respected newspaper, not sloppy and eccentric "Indy" filmmakers, for crying out loud.
8) Because, despite President Bush's woeful 45 percent approval rating immediately prior to September 11th, Bush happened to be president during the worst attack on our nation, and the public has forged an emotional attachment to him. They're unwilling to believe that he can do anything wrong, especially during these fearful times (which, curiously, Bush's different colored terror alerts heighten—can anyone say what an orange alert means, or how we're more safe than paranoid for knowing it's an orange day?).
7) Because, like his hero Ronald Reagan, President Bush has had what historians have called a "Teflon presidency," where no allegation and no factual charge "sticks," no matter how damaging, and hey, these points that Moore raises? Better journalists than he have tried to bring them to the public's attention and failed. No one cares if Bush's first cousin was the Fox News honcho who called Florida for Bush, or that his brother was governor of the state, or that the chairman of his Florida campaign was also the woman responsible for decisions on the vote recount, or that Bush's father appointed the Supreme Court judges who gave his son the election. Conspiracy schmiracy. Gore lost. Deal with it.
6) Because, unlike John Kerry, who speaks French, uses big words, and talks in complicated sentences since he reads books and reports, and like Al Gore before him who was branded a "policy wonk" because he studied everything for himself rather than trusting advisors to tell him what to do, George W. Bush is a simple man, a regular guy, and a "charming" fellow who has convinced Americans that it's a good thing to see a complicated world in simple terms so you never have to change your mind.
5) Because it's BIASED. It's not a documentary. I mean, it was amusing when Moore used his same trademark techniques in "Roger & Me" (1989) as he tried to track down GM CEO Roger Smith to ask why he cut 30,000 jobs and hurt the already-hurting economy of Flint, Michigan. And it was thoughtful and provocative when Moore used the same techniques in "Bowling for Columbine," which won the Best Documentary Oscar in 2002, because it was fun watching him confront Charlton Heston and it showed both sides of the gun debate (though one side tongue-in-cheek). But this? He was just out to get our President! You'd think he interned with the Republicans who bulldogged Clinton.
4) Because it's "badly reasoned." Which is to say that if one part of this film is viewed as being illogical, the tendency is to dismiss the whole thing. The people who think this way also seem to think that George W. Bush has been doing a decent, if not swell job.
3) Because it's unpatriotic. It criticizes a wartime president, and as George W. Bush has told us time and again, you just don't do that. No matter how many countries he decides to attack and no matter how many forces he spreads thin across oil-producing nations, and no matter how many civil liberties are lost at home, you have to make sacrifices if you want to win the war on terror (incidentally, that's TERRORISTS, not terror, which is simply something frightening).
2) Because the French like it. "Fahrenheit 9/11" won Best Picture at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival. And the French represent intellectualism, which the public now mistrusts because they prefer plain speak and folksy talk, not witty repartee. The French also represent European anti-Americanism because they wouldn't go along with Bush's plan to launch the first U.S. unprovoked, pre-emptive strike on another nation. Freedom fries rule!
1) Because Michael Moore made "Fahrenheit 9/11," and Michael Moore is a big, fat, stupid white man, as conservative talk-show hosts keep reminding people. Michael Moore could tell someone his house was on fire and the man would say, smelling of smoke, "Yeah, right."
It's too bad, really, that there are so many reasons for this film to be dismissed, because as a documentary it's a regular tour de force. It's a must-see film, and not just because of the historical role it's playing in a historic election. Moore has created a genre all his own—a new breed of activist, in-your-face, seriocomic documentary that's by turns powerful and entertaining, sad and funny, and heavily researched as well as flippantly, even absurdly speculative in an attempt to be deliberately provocative. It's the flippant part that causes all the problems. Moore's absurd speculations, offered tongue-in-cheek, are evaluated alongside the hard facts that he presents and are unfairly found to be illogical leaps in thought. For example, he makes the Bush and Bin Laden families look as if they get together for cookouts all the time. Well, forgive me for arguing so, but these tongue-in-cheek moments strike me as deliberate exaggerations and distortions, as much a part of Moore's game as climbing into an ice cream truck and reading the Patriot Act over a loudspeaker to Washington lawmakers who voted to approve it without ever reading the thing. Moore can't resist seeing just how far he can push his case, and he always pushes it so it teeters on the edge. The serious is pushed into the realm of the comic, and vice versa, while the logical is pushed to an illogical extreme, or again, vice versa. But that's what makes Moore's documentaries test and stretch the boundaries of genre. It's also what makes his films outrageous, off-the-wall, and entertaining. If you liked "Roger & Me" and "Bowling for Columbine," you'll love Moore's latest effort.
"Fahrenheit 9/11" alludes to Ray Bradbury's futuristic novel, "Fahrenheit 451" (the temperature at which books burn), about a society that has banned all books, and it's meant, obviously, to suggest that President Bush has cultivated a climate of anti-intellectualism and used patriotism to insist that people should follow, not question their President. But Michael Moore has a problem with President Bush's job performance. He also has a problem with the American media, and it's clear from watching "Fahrenheit 9/11" that Moore is annoyed that he has to do their job for them. And you know something? He's right. The public shouldn't have to get their in-depth reporting from a filmmaker.
A filmmaker shouldn't have to be the one to point out that for seven minutes after the second plane hit the World Trade Center and it was clear that this nation was under attack, President Bush, who has since sold himself to the American people as a strong and decisive leader, sat in a classroom looking befuddled and thumbing through "My Pet Goat"—for seven silent minutes. Moore speculates what might have been going on inside Bush's head: "Was he wondering if maybe he should have shown up for work more often? [Moore reminds us of the documented fact that Bush was on vacation 42 percent of the time during his first eight months in office]. Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism? [It's a matter of record that Bush held no such meetings]. Or maybe Mr. Bush was wondering why he cut terrorism funding from the FBI [a highlighted memo flashes across the screen, showing the cuts]. Or perhaps he should have just read the security briefing on August 6, 2001, which said that Osama Bin Laden was planning to attack inside the United States."
One of the extras on this disc is the unaltered testimony of National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice speaking before the 9/11 Commission, looking guarded and apparently contradicting herself at least twice. When she was asked about a presidential briefing memo that said Bin Laden terrorist cells were operating inside the United States and were planning on hijacking airplanes to use in an attack, Rice fudged and wouldn't answer yes or no at first. Finally, she said that she couldn't remember if she discussed the memo with the President (and this is the National Security Advisor?). And yet, asked if she could remember the TITLE of the memo, she rattled it off: Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S. So much for memory. Another contradiction occurs when she defends the administration's lack of action by saying that the memo wasn't a "warning" but rather a historical document prepared at the request of the President, who wanted to know where things stood. It was just history, she said. Well, if the President requested the information, then why wouldn't his National Security Advisor present it to him? Why wouldn't they talk about it? There would be no follow-up to these questions, because, as Moore noted, the Bush White house tried to block Rice from testifying and only agreed on condition that there be no call-backs. Bush finally testified before the Commission himself, but only with Vice President Dick Cheney at his side and under the conditions that neither man be under oath and that the sessions be kept secret. Please, people, partisan politics be damned. If Bill Clinton can be made to publicly testify under oath about an affair with an intern, which is hardly a matter of national security, shouldn't a sitting president be made to testify under oath about the most devastating attack on the continental U.S.? And isn't a refusal to testify under oath something that should raise suspicions? Apparently, not to anyone other than Michael Moore. And "Fahrenheit 9/11" shows plenty of clips of television newscasters gushing in unbiased support of the "wartime president."
An abbreviated version of the above is an example of the kinds of clips you see during this 122-minute journey, which starts with Moore's comic "Was it all a dream?" recap of the 2000 election and the turmoil which followed, then details George W. Bush's silver-spoon life, the Bush family's ties to oil and the Bin Laden family, and, finally, the Iraq war both on the home front and abroad. The logic is most strained when Moore tries to make connections between the Bush and Bin Laden families—though there are certainly coincidences. Throughout the film there are facts which Moore has since had to defend, and you can pause your DVD and go to his website and check every single fact to see where Moore obtained the information and then judge for yourself if the information came from a trustworthy source, or if the argument holds water. I personally was struck by the section that brought out more details of Bush's investigation by the SEC over his dealings as director at Harken Energy. Before stocks tumbled, Bush unloaded $848,000 of his personal stock a week after company lawyers advised him not to do so, apparently after he knew the stocks were going to drop. Why, I'm wondering, is Martha Stewart serving five months for doing essentially the same thing, while Bush is angling for four more years?
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