Mike Moore booed - for being the ***** he is

[Chiak47]

at the oscars for speaking against the PRESIDENT!!!



(Edited by Chiak47 at 9:22 am on Mar. 24, 2003)

[Ghost Writer]

I would have been happier, if you would have told me that he had been shot. However, I can appreciate the booing, even if it was faked by a pretentious group of embeciles that are only now beginning to read the writing on the wall. What do you say, is it time for another Hollywood blacklist?


(Edited by Ghost Writer at 9:58 am on Mar. 24, 2003)

[Liberty Lover]

"is it time for another Hollywood blacklist?"

Yeah, I would say the time is ripe for another one of those.

[Ghost Writer]

Only this time it will not be conducted by the House Un-American Activitees Committee, but rather the American public. When we make it apparent that we do not support those who spout anti-Americanism, the producers will be sure to blacklist those useful idiots of all the world's dictators themselves, in the interest of their own profit margin.

[Liberty Lover]

You must include Australian actors aswell...Heath Ledger was marching in Sydney the other day. You'd never see Russel Crowe doing that :)

[Ghost Writer]

That's because he values his career. I have never even heard of that other lady, sounds like she is probably as washed up as Micheal Jackson, which is another celebrity whose death I would celebrate.

(Edited by Ghost Writer at 10:09 am on Mar. 24, 2003)

[Ghost Writer]

If you have time read my "Psyops, Al-Jazeera, and the American Media: How to Win the Propaganda War" post. I am interested in everyone's feedback.

[Chiak47]

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

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

Documentary or Fiction?

The first misconception to correct about Michael Moore's The Big One is that it is a documentary. It's not _ Moore doesn't make those. As was proven after the release of Moore's debut, Roger & Me, the director uses real people, places, and circumstances, then stages events (see Harlan Jacobson's piece in the November/ December 1989 Film Comment for more details). 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.

James Berardinelli

The Michael Moore production Bowling for Columbine just won the Oscar for best documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary.

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. 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 11 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. But words are cheap. Let's look at the evidence.

1. Lockheed-Martin and Nuclear Missiles. Bowling for Columbine contains a sequence filmed at the Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility, near Columbine. Moore interviews a PR fellow, shows missiles being built, and then asks whether knowledge that weapons of mass destruction were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters in committing their own mass slaying. After all, if their father worked on the missiles, "What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?" Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep."

Soon after Bowling was released someone checked out the claim, and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.

Moore's website has his response:

"Well, first of all, the Lockheed PR people would disagree with your use of the term, "missile." They now call their Titan and Atlas missiles on which nuclear warheads were once (and still are but in less numbers) attached, "rockets." That's because the Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "

Nice try, Mike.

(1) Yes, some Titans and Atlases (54 of them) were used as ICBM launchers -- they were deactivated 25 years ago, long before the Columbine killers were born;

(2) the fact that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting in the movie... it's hard to envision a killer making a moral equation between mass murder and a recon satellite, right?

(3) In fact, one of that plant's major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: the Denver plant was in charge of taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and coverting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units instead.

C'mon Mike, You got caught. As we will see below, the event is all too illustrative of Moore's approach. In producing a supposed "documentary," Moore simply changes facts when they don't suit his theme. The viewer cannot count on what he sees, or is told, having any relation to facts. Whenever Moore desires, facts will be manufactured in the editing booth.

2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. The dominant theme in Bowling (and certainly the theme that has attracted most reviewers) is that NRA is callous toward slayings. The theme begins early in the film, and forms its ending, as Moore confronts Heston, asserting that he keeps going to the scene of tragedies to hold defiant rallies.

In order to make this theme fit the facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.

Bowling portrays this with the following sequence:

Weeping children outside Columbine, explaining how near they had come to death and how their friends had just been murdered before their eyes;

Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket over his head and happily proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'" to a cheering NRA crowd.

Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore in voiceover intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"

Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington West, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here."

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.


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 rally 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.

Bowling's thrust 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. Here are some samples of reviewer's writings: "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."

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.

That may win an award at Cannes. It may make some serious money. But it is a disgrace to the documentary creator's art.

3. Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.


Fact: The Klan wasn't founded in 1871, but in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that it technically became an "illegal" terrorist organization with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to suspend habeas corpus and to use troops to suppress the Klan.


Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina, sending troops into that and other states; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.

Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."

Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.

Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to oppose Klan terror.

Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded in New York by two former Union officers, its first president was an Army of the Potomac commander, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.

Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen.

Fact: The tradition continues. Moore does his best to suggest Heston is a racist. Heston picked discriminatory restaurants and from 1963 (i.e., when the civil rights movement was still struggling for support) worked with, and admired, Martin Luther King, and helped King break Hollywood's color barrier (the fact that there was a barrier illustrates how far Heston was in advance of the rest of the celebrity-types.) Here's Heston's comments at the 2001 Congress on Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner (also attended by NRA's Executive Vice President, and presided over by NRA director, and CORE President, Roy Innes).



4. Shooting at Buell Elementary School in Michigan. Bowling depicts the juvenile shooter as a sympathetic youngster who just found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school. "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl."


Fact: The little boy was the class bully, already suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a knife. (Sources for all data are given at the end of this section).


Fact: The uncle's house was the neighborhood crack-house. The uncle (together with the shooter's father, then serving a prison term for theft and cocaine possession, and his aunt and maternal grandmother) earned their living off drug dealing. The gun was stolen by one of the uncle's customers and purchased in exchange for drugs.

Bowling further depicts the shooter's mother as a victim of welfare reform, which forced her to work two jobs at low pay, to be evicted from her house, and to place the shooter in his uncle's house. "In order to get food stamps and health care for her children, Tamarla had to work as part of the State of Michigan's welfare-to-work program." "Although Tamarla worked up to 70 hours per week at the two jobs in the mall, she did not earn enough to pay her rent."


Fact: The shooter's mother had been promoted, and was making $7.85/hour, or about $1250 per month from that job, and an unknown amount from the other, plus food stamps and health benefits.


Fact: The rent for the house from which they were evicted was $300 a month.


Fact: Under the Michigan welfare reform, the family qualified for free child care and rent subsidies.

Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

5. The Taliban and American Aid. After discussing military assistance to various countries, Bowling asserts that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, and then shows aircraft hitting the twin towers to illustrate the result.


Fact: The aid in question was humanitarian assistance, given through UN and nongovernmental organizations, to relieve famine in Afghanistan.

6. Canadian Comparisons. Bowling compares the US to Canada, depicting the latter as an Eden of nonviolence and low homicide rates (despite having a plentiful supply of firearms). Only a cynic would suggest this might be linked to the film's Canadian funding.


Fact: Canada is hardly comparable to the far more urbanized United States. Violence rates correlate strongly to population density. Canada has about 3.3 persons per square kilometer; the U.S. about 29.1. Canada has only four cities with population over a million.

Fact: In 2001 (the most recent year for which FBI data are available State by State) the nine American states with land borders contiguous to Canada had an average homicide rate of 2.2 per 100,000 persons, far less than the rest of the US and not much above Canada's 1.8 rate. North Dakota, with a population density almost identical to that of Canada (3.5/sq. km.), had a homicide rate of 1.1, lower than that of Canada. Its Canadian neighbor, Manitoba, had a rate of 2.96. Quebec (1.89 rate) borders on Vermont (1.1) New York (5.0) and New Hampshire (1.4). Canadian data.

Fact: New York is of course a special case; most of its homicides occur in the urbanized southeast part of the State. If we look at the four New York counties which border on Canada (Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence and Jefferson), we find that in 2001 three counties had no homicides at all, and Jefferson County had one. Two of the counties also reported not a single theft that year.

Fact: If Bowling wanted to find areas where doors can be left unlocked, it did not need to go to Canada. Two of those four NY counties also reported not a single theft. 85% of U.S. counties reported no (as in zero) youth homicides in 1997; in any given year, about a third of them will report no homicides at all. In large expanses of the US, generally characterized by low population density, homicide is almost unknown.

If we want to be more specific and compare urban areas near the border, rather than states and provinces:

Canadian city homicide rates: Toronto 1; Montreal 3; Winnipeg 3; Windsor 4 (source)

US city homicide rates: Madison WI 1.4; Minneapolis 2.6; Bismarck ND 0 (not a typo, zero); Boise 2; Duluth 2 Portland ME 1.2 (source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2001)

7. Miscellaneous. Even the Canadian government is getting into the act. In one scene, Bowling shows Moore casually buying ammunition at an Ontario Walmart. He asks us to "look at what I, a foreign citizen, was able to do at a local Canadian Wal-Mart." He enters the store and buys several boxes of ammunition without a question being raised. "That's right. I could buy as much ammunition as I wanted, in Canada."

Canadian officials have pointed out that the buy is either staged or illegal: Canadian law requires all ammunition buyers to present proper identification. (The law, in effect since 1998, requires non-Canadians to present picture ID and a gun importation permit).

While we're at it: Bowling shows footage of a B-52 on display at the Air Force Academy, while Moore solemnly pronounces that the plaque under it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972." Strangely, Moore does not show the plaque.

Actually, the plaque reads that "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." This is pretty mild compared to the rest of Bowling, granted. But it illustrates that the viewer can't even trust Bowling to honestly read the inscription on a plaque.

8. Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making (although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.

After making out Canada to be a haven of peace and safety, Moore asks why. He proclaim that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership," somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges, gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun toting, gun crazy country!" (As I note above, he even goes so far as to exaggerate the ease with which you can buy ammunition there).

In the end he concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and gun nuts, and attributes the different to the fact that the Canadian mass media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American media is.

So Bowling is actually not against guns, gun ownership, or even gun nuts. Outlaw television, not guns! Bowling is against, and as I point out, fraudulently against, Charlton Heston, and against the NRA. This is a bit anomalous, since Moore ultimately concludes that they are telling the truth, but nevermind.

Bowling's thrust here is thus a bit peculiar. Its total contribution on the gun issue is not an argument about guns, but a personal -- indeed a personal, vicious, and falsified -- attack on Heston and the NRA as a group. That's about it. Which may explain why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued a press release congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination... without saying anything specific about his gun-related matters, instead referring repeatedly to NRA and Heston. Press release.

Conclusion


Moore's own assessment of Bowling is to the point: "It's funny, poignant and interesting, your perfect Saturday night out." That might of course be said of good comedic fiction.

For a documentary, though, one expects more. For example, truth.

The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity. One might hope that a documentary would be fair and objective, but nothing rules out a rousing polemic now and then.

The point is far more fundamental: Bowling for Columbine is dishonest. It is fraudulent. It fixes upon a theme, and advances it, whenever necessary, by deception. It even uses the audio/video editor to assemble a Heston speech that Heston did not give, and to turn sympathetic phrases into arrogant ones. You can't even trust the narrator to read you a plaque or show you a speech, for Pete's sake.

The bottom line: can a film be called a documentary when the viewer cannot trust an iota of it, not only the narration, but the video? I suppose film critics could debate that one for a long time, and some might prefer entertainment and effect to fact and truth. But the Academy Award rules here are specific. Rule 11 lays out "Special Rules for the Documentary Award." And it begins with the definition: "A documentary film is defined as a non-fiction motion picture . . . ." It goes on to say that a documentary doesn't always have to show the "actual occurrence": it can employ re-enactment, etc., "as long as the emphasis is on factual content and not on fiction."

So when awards night rolls around, we will see whether the Academy follows its own core rule, or decides to ignore it so long as the film is one attacking one Charlton Heston, and the NRA.

David T. Hardy [who has for the last year been working on his own, honest, second amendment documentary]

[email protected]

[chamo]

Yes, I think this shows the American attitude to those against war. Patriotic bullshit.

[Chiak47]

I have had my minutes worth of faith for the leftist entertainers.I still refuse to purchase anything that come from hollyWEIRD

MWWWaAHH
http://www.gunsnet.net/forums/images/smilies/anti-old.gif

[LOIC]

Michael Moore is a great man.
He is one of the few americans who are not a coward who follow blindly his government.
He says what he thinks even if a majority of people disagree with him.
I have a lot of respect for this guy.

[chamo]

What's more he can continue even after being booed and loud music played to try and stop him. He has balls.

[Pete]

He was exercising his fundamental freedom was he not? Yet the corprate controllers tried to cut him off. Tell me who is in the wrong...

[Tkinter1]

"He was exercising his fundamental freedom was he not? Yet the corprate controllers tried to cut him off. Tell me who is in the wrong..."

It's also the 'corporate controllers' right to cut things of their show that they don't want. But, They barley cut him off. They start playing that music when you go over-time.... They interupted a few other people that I saw as well(that weren't anti-war).
Most networks have like a six second delay where they can bleep anything out they don't want. If they have it they obviously didn't feel the need to use it.

I heard some people cheering him too, lol.

"Yes, I think this shows the American attitude to those against war. Patriotic bullshit."

Only in America right??? You wouldn't see that anywhere else.....damn cappie's.

(Edited by Tkinter1 at 8:28 pm on Mar. 24, 2003)

[Xvall]

Chiak47:

at the oscars for speaking against the PRESIDENT!!!

OMG! Holy shit! I am so sorry! God forbid we speak against out illegally elected, gung-ho, C average in Yale President! What the fuck was I thinking? Next time we do that remind me to turn myself in for treason.

Liberty Lover:

Yeah, I would say the time is ripe for another one of those.

Yes 'Libery Lover'. It is wonderful to see how you advocate your support for the democratic process by purging any movie maker who dares to criticize our glourious christian society.

[canikickit]

"Another blacklist"....sickening. It's funny how you criticise past instances of communist censorship, yet encourage US censorship.

[Anonymous]

Quote: from Chiak47 on 3:14 pm on Mar. 24, 2003
http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE

Documentary or Fiction?

The first misconception to correct about Michael Moore's The Big One is that it is a documentary. It's not _ Moore doesn't make those. As was proven after the release of Moore's debut, Roger & Me, the director uses real people, places, and circumstances, then stages events (see Harlan Jacobson's piece in the November/ December 1989 Film Comment for more details). 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.

James Berardinelli

The Michael Moore production Bowling for Columbine just won the Oscar for best documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary.

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. 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 11 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. But words are cheap. Let's look at the evidence.

1. Lockheed-Martin and Nuclear Missiles. Bowling for Columbine contains a sequence filmed at the Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility, near Columbine. Moore interviews a PR fellow, shows missiles being built, and then asks whether knowledge that weapons of mass destruction were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters in committing their own mass slaying. After all, if their father worked on the missiles, "What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?" Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep."

Soon after Bowling was released someone checked out the claim, and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.

Moore's website has his response:

"Well, first of all, the Lockheed PR people would disagree with your use of the term, "missile." They now call their Titan and Atlas missiles on which nuclear warheads were once (and still are but in less numbers) attached, "rockets." That's because the Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "

Nice try, Mike.

(1) Yes, some Titans and Atlases (54 of them) were used as ICBM launchers -- they were deactivated 25 years ago, long before the Columbine killers were born;

(2) the fact that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting in the movie... it's hard to envision a killer making a moral equation between mass murder and a recon satellite, right?

(3) In fact, one of that plant's major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: the Denver plant was in charge of taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and coverting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units instead.

C'mon Mike, You got caught. As we will see below, the event is all too illustrative of Moore's approach. In producing a supposed "documentary," Moore simply changes facts when they don't suit his theme. The viewer cannot count on what he sees, or is told, having any relation to facts. Whenever Moore desires, facts will be manufactured in the editing booth.

2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. The dominant theme in Bowling (and certainly the theme that has attracted most reviewers) is that NRA is callous toward slayings. The theme begins early in the film, and forms its ending, as Moore confronts Heston, asserting that he keeps going to the scene of tragedies to hold defiant rallies.

In order to make this theme fit the facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.

Bowling portrays this with the following sequence:

Weeping children outside Columbine, explaining how near they had come to death and how their friends had just been murdered before their eyes;

Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket over his head and happily proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'" to a cheering NRA crowd.

Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore in voiceover intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"

Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington West, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here."

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.


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 rally 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.

Bowling's thrust 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. Here are some samples of reviewer's writings: "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."

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.

That may win an award at Cannes. It may make some serious money. But it is a disgrace to the documentary creator's art.

3. Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.


Fact: The Klan wasn't founded in 1871, but in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that it technically became an "illegal" terrorist organization with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to suspend habeas corpus and to use troops to suppress the Klan.


Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus in South Carolina, sending troops into that and other states; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.

Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."

Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.

Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to oppose Klan terror.

Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded in New York by two former Union officers, its first president was an Army of the Potomac commander, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.

Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen.

Fact: The tradition continues. Moore does his best to suggest Heston is a racist. Heston picked discriminatory restaurants and from 1963 (i.e., when the civil rights movement was still struggling for support) worked with, and admired, Martin Luther King, and helped King break Hollywood's color barrier (the fact that there was a barrier illustrates how far Heston was in advance of the rest of the celebrity-types.) Here's Heston's comments at the 2001 Congress on Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner (also attended by NRA's Executive Vice President, and presided over by NRA director, and CORE President, Roy Innes).



4. Shooting at Buell Elementary School in Michigan. Bowling depicts the juvenile shooter as a sympathetic youngster who just found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school. "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl."


Fact: The little boy was the class bully, already suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a knife. (Sources for all data are given at the end of this section).


Fact: The uncle's house was the neighborhood crack-house. The uncle (together with the shooter's father, then serving a prison term for theft and cocaine possession, and his aunt and maternal grandmother) earned their living off drug dealing. The gun was stolen by one of the uncle's customers and purchased in exchange for drugs.

Bowling further depicts the shooter's mother as a victim of welfare reform, which forced her to work two jobs at low pay, to be evicted from her house, and to place the shooter in his uncle's house. "In order to get food stamps and health care for her children, Tamarla had to work as part of the State of Michigan's welfare-to-work program." "Although Tamarla worked up to 70 hours per week at the two jobs in the mall, she did not earn enough to pay her rent."


Fact: The shooter's mother had been promoted, and was making $7.85/hour, or about $1250 per month from that job, and an unknown amount from the other, plus food stamps and health benefits.


Fact: The rent for the house from which they were evicted was $300 a month.


Fact: Under the Michigan welfare reform, the family qualified for free child care and rent subsidies.

Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

5. The Taliban and American Aid. After discussing military assistance to various countries, Bowling asserts that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001, and then shows aircraft hitting the twin towers to illustrate the result.


Fact: The aid in question was humanitarian assistance, given through UN and nongovernmental organizations, to relieve famine in Afghanistan.

6. Canadian Comparisons. Bowling compares the US to Canada, depicting the latter as an Eden of nonviolence and low homicide rates (despite having a plentiful supply of firearms). Only a cynic would suggest this might be linked to the film's Canadian funding.


Fact: Canada is hardly comparable to the far more urbanized United States. Violence rates correlate strongly to population density. Canada has about 3.3 persons per square kilometer; the U.S. about 29.1. Canada has only four cities with population over a million.

Fact: In 2001 (the most recent year for which FBI data are available State by State) the nine American states with land borders contiguous to Canada had an average homicide rate of 2.2 per 100,000 persons, far less than the rest of the US and not much above Canada's 1.8 rate. North Dakota, with a population density almost identical to that of Canada (3.5/sq. km.), had a homicide rate of 1.1, lower than that of Canada. Its Canadian neighbor, Manitoba, had a rate of 2.96. Quebec (1.89 rate) borders on Vermont (1.1) New York (5.0) and New Hampshire (1.4). Canadian data.

Fact: New York is of course a special case; most of its homicides occur in the urbanized southeast part of the State. If we look at the four New York counties which border on Canada (Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence and Jefferson), we find that in 2001 three counties had no homicides at all, and Jefferson County had one. Two of the counties also reported not a single theft that year.

Fact: If Bowling wanted to find areas where doors can be left unlocked, it did not need to go to Canada. Two of those four NY counties also reported not a single theft. 85% of U.S. counties reported no (as in zero) youth homicides in 1997; in any given year, about a third of them will report no homicides at all. In large expanses of the US, generally characterized by low population density, homicide is almost unknown.

If we want to be more specific and compare urban areas near the border, rather than states and provinces:

Canadian city homicide rates: Toronto 1; Montreal 3; Winnipeg 3; Windsor 4 (source)

US city homicide rates: Madison WI 1.4; Minneapolis 2.6; Bismarck ND 0 (not a typo, zero); Boise 2; Duluth 2 Portland ME 1.2 (source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2001)

7. Miscellaneous. Even the Canadian government is getting into the act. In one scene, Bowling shows Moore casually buying ammunition at an Ontario Walmart. He asks us to "look at what I, a foreign citizen, was able to do at a local Canadian Wal-Mart." He enters the store and buys several boxes of ammunition without a question being raised. "That's right. I could buy as much ammunition as I wanted, in Canada."

Canadian officials have pointed out that the buy is either staged or illegal: Canadian law requires all ammunition buyers to present proper identification. (The law, in effect since 1998, requires non-Canadians to present picture ID and a gun importation permit).

While we're at it: Bowling shows footage of a B-52 on display at the Air Force Academy, while Moore solemnly pronounces that the plaque under it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972." Strangely, Moore does not show the plaque.

Actually, the plaque reads that "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." This is pretty mild compared to the rest of Bowling, granted. But it illustrates that the viewer can't even trust Bowling to honestly read the inscription on a plaque.

8. Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making (although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.

After making out Canada to be a haven of peace and safety, Moore asks why. He proclaim that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership," somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges, gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun toting, gun crazy country!" (As I note above, he even goes so far as to exaggerate the ease with which you can buy ammunition there).

In the end he concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and gun nuts, and attributes the different to the fact that the Canadian mass media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American media is.

So Bowling is actually not against guns, gun ownership, or even gun nuts. Outlaw television, not guns! Bowling is against, and as I point out, fraudulently against, Charlton Heston, and against the NRA. This is a bit anomalous, since Moore ultimately concludes that they are telling the truth, but nevermind.

Bowling's thrust here is thus a bit peculiar. Its total contribution on the gun issue is not an argument about guns, but a personal -- indeed a personal, vicious, and falsified -- attack on Heston and the NRA as a group. That's about it. Which may explain why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued a press release congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination... without saying anything specific about his gun-related matters, instead referring repeatedly to NRA and Heston. Press release.

Conclusion


Moore's own assessment of Bowling is to the point: "It's funny, poignant and interesting, your perfect Saturday night out." That might of course be said of good comedic fiction.

For a documentary, though, one expects more. For example, truth.

The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity. One might hope that a documentary would be fair and objective, but nothing rules out a rousing polemic now and then.

The point is far more fundamental: Bowling for Columbine is dishonest. It is fraudulent. It fixes upon a theme, and advances it, whenever necessary, by deception. It even uses the audio/video editor to assemble a Heston speech that Heston did not give, and to turn sympathetic phrases into arrogant ones. You can't even trust the narrator to read you a plaque or show you a speech, for Pete's sake.

The bottom line: can a film be called a documentary when the viewer cannot trust an iota of it, not only the narration, but the video? I suppose film critics could debate that one for a long time, and some might prefer entertainment and effect to fact and truth. But the Academy Award rules here are specific. Rule 11 lays out "Special Rules for the Documentary Award." And it begins with the definition: "A documentary film is defined as a non-fiction motion picture . . . ." It goes on to say that a documentary doesn't always have to show the "actual occurrence": it can employ re-enactment, etc., "as long as the emphasis is on factual content and not on fiction."

So when awards night rolls around, we will see whether the Academy follows its own core rule, or decides to ignore it so long as the film is one attacking one Charlton Heston, and the NRA.

David T. Hardy [who has for the last year been working on his own, honest, second amendment documentary]

[email protected]



No one wants to address this?

[Chiak47]

Dark Capitalist
They are avoiding it like a dirty un-bathed commie.
Instead they post fake letters that they didnt write and get mad when I dont debate them.

[Chiak47]

BTW Mike Moore(lies) wants to take our firearms away.Why is this?

[Hampton]

dirty un-bathed commie

Where did this sterotype come from?

[Chiak47]

lakeshore Dr.
I watched them with my own eyes during the WTO protests.
Dirty bunch really.Probably had aids or crabs of the armpits at the very least.

[canikickit]

No one wants to address this?

No. Was it really neccessary to quote the whole thing. Come on, man.

Chiak, I tihnk you should quit your foolish slanders. It's pissing me and others off. Why do you want to be an asshole? Do you not get enough attention in real life?

[Chiak47]

you again.
I am trying to shock and awe internet stayle as I stated before.
Are you offended?Thin Skin huh?

[RedCeltic]

Chiak47: Would you please stop posting that disgusting graphic?

Thank you.

[Chiak47]

I'm sorry nancy boys.I did not mean to show you a bloody cartoon.

I see your point though.
For the children and all.LMAO

[Xvall]

Quote: from Chiak47 on 12:12 am on Mar. 25, 2003
lakeshore Dr.
I watched them with my own eyes during the WTO protests.
Dirty bunch really.Probably had aids or crabs of the armpits at the very least.


I shower (and condition my hair) every day, thank you.

[Chiak47]

http://www.gunsnet.net/forums/images/smilies/Nothing_funny_to_add.gif

[RedCeltic]

Question: Are you here to debate or to insult people? Because so far all I see from you is insults and stupid inhumane cartoons. You seem to have such a repect for human life.

[Chiak47]

Human Life-Bah-too the gulags you go.

[Hampton]

I like the part when you equate being dirty with having AIDS. Nice

[Chiak47]

caught that huh.Damn I cant get shit passed you guys/gals.

[Mazdak]

Iraq has invaded Turkey!!!! They just repelled the turkish army. LOL!

[Chiak47]

I read on another forum that Iraq just used Chem weapons.Interesting if true.

[Mazdak]

quickly, run to the hills. Just like the Iron Maiden song.

[RedCeltic]

Quote: from Chiak47 on 9:53 pm on Mar. 24, 2003
I read on another forum that Iraq just used Chem weapons.Interesting if true.


Is that your major source or news? Hearsay?

And I don't know what you mean by the "gulags" I'm an anarcho-Socialist, not a communist.

[Chiak47]

Holy uptight

[Anonymous]

I'm thinking sarin, although there is the possibility of VX being used.

[Hodgo]

The so-called "outburst" at the Oscars was one of the bravest things I've seen from anyone in the entertainment industry, and I fail to see how he can ruin a bogus, Hollywood awards show. He had the balls to get up and speak his mind, and even if you disagree with it, you should respect him for having the courage to say what he thinks. He must of known there was a strong chance he'd get booed offstage considering Bush's current popularity and the American publics current support for the war, but he said it anyway, obviously he believes what he's saying. That kind of thing can ruin ones career, look at what was happening to the Dixie Chicks before they took their comment back, they were getting crucified. You wont see Moore take it back or apologise though, as he actualy, yanno, believes in whats he's saying.

It had nothing to do with getting his face on TV, he won the fricken award, he would have gotten on TV anyway, and he would have been ALOT more popular had he kept his mouth shut and comformed to the current nationalist bile thats sweeping the countries making up the Coalition at this time. He didnt keep his mouth shut though, because he felt strongly enough about the issue to put his reputation and his career on the line for a chance to say what he thinks in front of the world. Thats courage as far as Im concerned. He didnt get "booed offstage" either, from what I saw it was a mixed reaction. Several other actors took the same stance as him, hell, the other nominees got onstage with him, but you dont hear people slamming them down because they're not as conveniant a scapegoat as Moore.

It seems as though Im gonna have to watch the movie again to be sure, unfortunately it still hasnt come out on DVD or VHS down here. Like I said at the start of the thread though, Michael Moores style of journalism is shit-stirring, he says stuff thats not entirely accurate and stuff thats a slight distortion of fact sometimes so as to provoke reactions and get people talking, so that people will watch and read his material and get information that, for the most part, is fairly accurate. From doing some reseach though, Ive come to the conclusion that this guys review was every bit as fictitious and one-sides as he claims Moore's documentary to be. Sometimes Moore twists facts around to suit his argument, I'll be the first to admitt that, but this makes him no different to any other journalist, directer, or political satirist. The thing that makes him different to most is the fact that he's got the balls to say what he thinks, rather than trying to be popular.

He did butcher what Heston was saying, which I think is sad, seing that he didnt really need to. I've seen our 60 Minutes do the same thing to Moore; put sentances together in random order to make it sound like he was saying things he was in fact not saying, so as to make him sound like a crazy yankee communist. Heston does a pretty good job of making a cock of himself anyway. Some of the stuff the guy said in his review was bullshit though, for instance, the audience were not meant to assume that Hestons "cold dead hands" speach was directed at the families of the Collumbine victims. Rather, Moore showed the families and then switched to Heston to give the audience an idea of Hestons pig-headed attitude towards disarmament, its as simple as that. A perceptive viewer should pick that up. Apart from that though, the rest of the stuff the guy said regarding Moores treatment of Heston was pretty true, and once again I thought it was a shame Moore had to vilify a guy that doesnt need to be vilified, since Hestons a complete idiot anyway. Check out some of the stuff that Moore didnt fabricate, for instance the part where Moore asks Heston why he keeps loaded guns in his house. Hestons response was something like "because the brave white men before me fought for my right to own guns", and Moore responded saying that he knew he had the right to, but he wanted to know why he had them. Again Heston gave no justification, he just replied "its my right". Moore had plenty of material of Heston making an idiot of himself anyway, so its a shame he resorted to some fabrication.

As for the mother of the kid who shot the little girl, I've heard stuff to support what Moore was saying, and I've heard stuff to support what this guy writing the review was saying. I dont know who's right, but Im not going to jump to conclusions. Keep in mind that when Moore tried to talk to the guy who owned the resteraunt where the mother worked, the guy pretty much slammed his door in Moores face. I doubt he had nothing to hide; nobody can give the argument "maybe he was worried he'd be vilified like Heston was" because the film hadnt been released yet, plus he was more than happy to give an interview until Moore asked about the kids mother. Then he became hostile, slammed the door and drove off.

Lockheed Martin do in fact make weapons, just not at the plant in Littleton. In Moores defense, Titan and Atlas rockets carry nuclear warheads, and they also make military spy sattelites which can be used to guide nukes. Obviously he was distorting the facts -as most political satirists do- but it wasnt exactly a flat-out lie either.

The part where Bowling states that America gave the Taliban $245 million in aid, and then at the end of the clip shows footage of aircraft hitting the Twin Towers, was not implying that the Taliban used the $245 million dollars to organize the attack. This was just highlighting a few of the regimes America have supported, the footage of the 9/11 attack was to show the Talibans gratitude for Americas help. By suggesting that Moore was saying the Taliban used their $245 million in aids to organize the 9/11 attacks, this guy has lied and twisted the truth more blatently than Moore ever did throughout the course of the movie.

The animated sequance cant be blamed on Moore, because he didnt make it. He paid the artist so that he could use it in the movie. Its like blaming him for the Chris Rock skit in the movie, you cant criticize Moore for it because it wasnt Moore.

I love the so-called "refutal" about Moore's reading a plaque next to the B-52 out "dishonestly". Moore didnt read out the plaque or quote the plaque, he said that it proudly states that on Christmas eve, the plane killed Vietnames people. Sure enough, the plaque states "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." In other words, the plaque proudly states the plane killed Vietnamese people. Moore might put it in a more cynical light, but he doesnt fabricate here, he just states what the plaque more or less says.

Finally, there's alot of stuff of substance in this movie. Like any political documentary, there's bullshit, and Im not gonna justify it because Moore didnt need to resort to it. Watch it with a critical mind, but theres stuff here thats well worth looking at, namely the part about how the media pointed the blame on Marilyn Manson and other conveniant scapegoats after the Collumbine tragedy, and the very enlightening interview with Manson that followed. The interviews with the teachers at the Michigan High School, with the former producer of COPS and with residents of Collumbine, Canada and Michigan are also well worth a look. Of course there's gonna be bullshit in there, and thats a shame, but for a two-to-three hour movie, the amount of bullshit in it is kept pretty minimal.

I cant wait to see this guys "honest" second ammendment movie, though. Given his apparent inability to honestly critique a "dishonest" movie, I look forward to seeing him make one of his own.

[Liberty Lover]

Quote: from Drake Dracoli on 9:28 pm on Mar. 24, 2003
Chiak47:

Liberty Lover:

Yeah, I would say the time is ripe for another one of those.

Yes 'Libery Lover'. It is wonderful to see how you advocate your support for the democratic process by purging any movie maker who dares to criticize our glourious christian society.


By gathering support for tyrants like Saddam, Moore and his buddies are threatening liberty around the world.

[synthesis]

By gathering support for tyrants like Saddam, Moore and his buddies are threatening liberty around the world.Wow. You're a bigger moron than I thought you were.

[Ghost Writer]

The so-called "outburst" at the Oscars was one of the bravest things I've seen from anyone in the entertainment industry

That's the funniest thing I have heard for about a week. Obviously, he is trying to promote himself, because his book is trailing Micheal Savage's on the NY Times Best Seller list. This was nothing more than a despicable attempt to spark controversy around one's self as a means of advertisement.

The more I think about that guy, the more I want to kick that fat-fuck in the head.

[Hodgo]

Quote: from Liberty Lover on 9:19 am on Mar. 25, 2003

Quote: from Drake Dracoli on 9:28 pm on Mar. 24, 2003
Chiak47:

Liberty Lover:

Yeah, I would say the time is ripe for another one of those.

Yes 'Libery Lover'. It is wonderful to see how you advocate your support for the democratic process by purging any movie maker who dares to criticize our glourious christian society.


By gathering support for tyrants like Saddam, Moore and his buddies are threatening liberty around the world.


Moore is threatening liberty by practising free speech? I fail to see how.

Now, the guy you've quoted on your signature, now there's a threat to liberty. Churchill was openly racist, he fully opposed granting independance to India and all other British colonies, most notably Ireland. The reason for this is because he felt non-English, especialy Africans and Indian uncivilised (a rediculous notion considering most of the Indian establishment, such as the Nehru, were educated at Oxford or Canbridge) and incapable of governing themselves without Britains "help" (equaly stupid considering African society flourished for thousands of years before the British invasion). He absolutely HATED Gandhi, in fact that one time they met Churchill refused to shake his hand, dismissing him as a "half naked Indian faqua" (faqua means begger). He had an arch-conservative view on everything, he was opposed to womens rights, workers unions, gay rights, the rights of Indians, Irish, Africans and other colonies to have their own government. The man trampled over anyone who wasnt white, rich and male.

He was the only politician in British history to order British troops to open fire on striking British workers.

He also used chemical weapons on Iraqis and Kurds before Saddam was even born. In 1919 after the fall of the Ottoman empire, the British stormed into what is now Iraq and claimed it as their own. The Iraqis and Kurds resisted the occupying British forces. Churchil, being the colonial secretary at the time, gave permission to the RAF to use poisen gas on resisting tribes. "I dont understand all this squamishness about gas", he stated, "I am strongly in favour of using poisen gas against uncivilised tribes".

With a name like "Liberty Lover", I find it ironic that you choose to quote a racist, agressive nationalist and a staunch opponent of liberty, just because he didnt happen to like socialism.

[Hampton]

Really? Did he go up there with a copy of his book and say buy it 9 times?

[truthaddict11]

funny, how these hawks scream treason whenever a person openly critized the government and ,god forbid, the president. But they praise someone who does support the war and the president. And the say they are protecting freedom. kinda of a double standard.

[Chiak47]

drugaddict20,000,000,
You people are trying to destroy the very foundation this country has worked hard to obtain and keep.
Fat sloppy moore(lies) is nothing but a spoiled brat who gets paid to make farce movies.

He has nothing to base his opinion off of.He is a moron.


Homo,
He claims Heston made that famous speech while holding his rifle in the air the day after columbine when in fact heston made it in NC a year later.
And who gives a fuck when Heston said it it's a moot point.
Heston is a gentle man who happens to love My freedom to bear arms.So STFU

[Hodgo]

Quote: from Chiak47 on 7:36 am on Mar. 26, 2003
drugaddict20,000,000,
You people are trying to destroy the very foundation this country has worked hard to obtain and keep.
Fat sloppy moore(lies) is nothing but a spoiled brat who gets paid to make farce movies.

He has nothing to base his opinion off of.He is a moron.


Homo,
He claims Heston made that famous speech while holding his rifle in the air the day after columbine when in fact heston made it in NC a year later.
And who gives a fuck when Heston said it it's a moot point.
Heston is a gentle man who happens to love My freedom to bear arms.So STFU

Firstly, dont tell him to shut the fuck up just for stating his opinion, as he's got every bit as much right to his opinion as you do to yours.

Secondly, Heston doesnt just love the freedom to bear arms, he also loves the freedom to keep loaded guns lying around in his house. Moore asked him this in the movie, and he comfirmed it. This was not "refuted" in the analysis you provided before (not that there were many real refutals in it, most of Moores editing was done to save time rather than to present a lie, he distorted some facts but so do all political satirists).

Moore asked why Heston chose to keep loaded guns around the house, and Heston replied that the "brave white men before him fought for his right to own guns" or something like that. Moore stated that he understood Heston had a right to own guns, but wanted to know why he would keep them loaded and lying around his home. Heston again responded that it was his right to, but didnt give any real reason.

The guys an utter fuckstick.

[Chiak47]

HOMO,
I keep a loaded MAK-90 next to me at the desk all the time.So?My dad kept guns around me when I was a kid and since I had the fear of god put into me I never ONCE touched them without him around.
Lack of parenting is what caused those pukes to blow away kids at columbine.NOT GUNS.NOT HESTON.

I keep mine loaded so I can blow some crackhead thats trying to rape my cat away...There I said it.Who the fuck needs a reason.The criminals have more rights than law-abiding gun owners.
You dope heads who robb from people that work hard are the ones that scare me.I will never register my guns or turn them in.
Pry mine fags.
My kids and my wife are more important to me than some asshole that wants my TV.So GODDAMN right I would BLOW someones FUCKIN brains out over them trying to steal my blender.

I hate thieves.My wife and I work real hard for the nice things we have.

Just last month someone broke into my car to take a STOCK RADIO.
WTF...
In AZ I was able to carry a piece but here in IL I cant.Democraps stepped on that right here in IL.
I want to move from this state so bad.It's a shit-hole.
That is all I have too say about that.
Thank you gun grabber,
They want me Disarmed

[Chiak47]

Ghost Writer,
I used to listen to Micheal Savage all the time in AZ.I read somewhere he has his own talk show now.Is that true?
I guess if I was not so tired I could look it up myself.
Best seller huh.
Good for him.

[Ghost Writer]

"So GODDAMN right I would BLOW someones FUCKIN brains out over them trying to steal my blender."

So would I.

And Micheal Savage has a nationally syndicated radio show out of San Fransisco, as well as a 1 hour spot on MSNBC on Saturdays. He deserves more admiration than this fat-f*ck Moore, because he truly believes what he says, where as Micheal Moore only says things to further his publicity. I have seen Savage lay it on the line many times, he puts the truth over his career. In fact, many gutter groups comprised of the gay-nazi alliance tried to get MSNBC to pull his show, even before it aired.

[Hodgo]

Yanno, I've actualy talked to some intelligent right-wingers and capitalists on other forums, most of whom would call you a fucking moron.

I never said you should disarm, I didnt say anything about that, you paranoid fuckstick. And until now I havnt resorted to personal insults, you did that.

I dont need to call you a fag to get my point across, you probably are, but I dont need to call you one because Im capable of arguing intelligently.

I dont even need to argue with you anymore, you've confirmed your stupidity by spewing bullshit and resorting to personal insults just because people disagree with you.

[truthaddict11]

I am trying to destroy the foundation this country? oh I am sure that is why Bush has completly DESTROYED the 4th Ammendment!

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/whatsnew/report.a...DgG&Content=153 (http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/whatsnew/report.asp?ObjID=nQdbIRkDgG&Content=153)

Also if you had actually SEEN B.F.C you would know it is NOT ABOUT GUN CONTROL!
You are nothing but a flamming asshole
(Edited by truthaddict11 at 9:36 am on Mar. 26, 2003)


(Edited by truthaddict11 at 9:38 am on Mar. 26, 2003)

[Chiak47]

Homo,
How does it feel to hold onto dead dreams?
Put a .223 in your temple and end it all.You have nothing to offer and you know it.It's not too late to move onto the next life and do something productive with your life.
You attack my freedoms and wonder why I get pissed.Well fuck you and your lies.BTW what is yanno?



Drugaddict,
Again you people put links to real biased sites.
Go smoke some more laced meth and think real hard about what your really trying to say to me.

Explain to me what bfc is about then?Sarah brady is 100% for bfc and whatever that ***** is for I'm against.
phoney gungrabbers-your all going to hell.

Thank you sheltered ones,
Purged in Chicago

[canikickit]

Charlton Heston made a total fool of himself in that film. He looked like a pathetic retard when he walked away from Moore at the end.

I had a good laugh at his expense, I'd gladly pry a gun from his cold dead hands.

[Chiak47]

Canyoujustdie,

I bet you would love to pry all the firearms out of our hands here in the USA.
Come get some.

Thank you,
Pumped

[canikickit]

Not really. Just assholes like Heston.

[Xvall]

I'm thinking sarin, although there is the possibility of VX being used.

Why is it that if we claim something like the CIA is using chemicals on certain people, or the pentagon is testing out a virus on citizens or something it is a crazy conspiracy theory, and at the same time it is perfectly ok for you guys to jump assume with aboslutely no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons? It's like all those SUPER HIGH alerts we got that the evil terrorists were gonna attack about ten times this month; and it never happened!

[truthaddict11]

Chiak, did you even visit that site?

[Hampton]

Again you people put links to real biased sites.

How is the center for constitutional rights biased?


Sarah brady is 100% for bfc and whatever that ***** is for I'm against. phoney gungrabbers-your all going to hell.

I'm glad that you just decide to be against something because someone else dosen't like it, that's not ignorance. ;)

[Anonymous]

Quote: from Drake Dracoli on 2:46 am on Mar. 27, 2003
I'm thinking sarin, although there is the possibility of VX being used.

Why is it that if we claim something like the CIA is using chemicals on certain people, or the pentagon is testing out a virus on citizens or something it is a crazy conspiracy theory, and at the same time it is perfectly ok for you guys to jump assume with aboslutely no evidence that Iraq used chemical weapons? It's like all those SUPER HIGH alerts we got that the evil terrorists were gonna attack about ten times this month; and it never happened!


Oh believe me, I have no doubt the CIA preformed mind control expirements on people and ran drugs to finance the Vietnam war. That's why I belive the CIA needs to reorganized and put under tighter control. They're too...rouge. What with directing French mafiamen in assassinating JFK.

BTW, if we hadn't raised the terror alert and there had been a terrorist attack, I can bet you guys would still be screaming at us.

[Xvall]

Well, that's interesting to hear. I suppose I should be happy that you dont' like a lot of what the CIA does. As far as the terror alert goes; you are probably right. If a terrorism attack happened we would probably start screaming. Probably not a very thoughtful response if we did something like that. Regardless, I think a lot of the alerts were used simply to try to give people the impression that they are doing as good of a job as they can. Most of the terror alerts were pretty speculative. I don't think that they have issued one under the impression that we were actually going to be attacked. Regardless; you present a good point. I never really heard about those mind control experiments, unless you are talking about propoganda or something.

[canikickit]

I think a lot of the alerts were used simply to try to give people the impression that they are doing as good of a job as they can.

Not to forget controlling people through fear. I remember coming up to February 15th (the day the world said "no") and I saw on the news that the alert had gone up. The gov't warned people to stay away from "public meetings" - quite blatant and transparent, don't you think.


(Edited by canikickit at 2:48 am on Mar. 27, 2003)

[Hodgo]

Quote: from Chiak47 on 7:06 pm on Mar. 26, 2003


Homo,
How does it feel to hold onto dead dreams?
Put a .223 in your temple and end it all.You have nothing to offer and you know it.It's not too late to move onto the next life and do something productive with your life.
You attack my freedoms and wonder why I get pissed.Well fuck you and your lies.BTW what is yanno?


What dead dreams am I holding onto? Which constitutional rights did I attack? When did I say you should disarm? Give me a quote where I actualy said you should disarm...... Oh wait, you CANT, can you?

If anyone should be blowing their heads off its you. You only have a problem with me for my political beliefs, I could care less about your beliefs, I have a problem with you for the fact that you cant tolerate people whos beliefs arent the same as yours.

"Yanno" is an abbreviated term for "you know".