Michael Moore's Shreds of Truth - A Look Back at Fahrenheit
By Gene Lalor
Posted On December 06, 2005
It’s easy to say Michael Moore is a twit. I, for one, think he’s a twit and far worse names could be applied to him–including liar, un-American, distortionist, manipulator, the list goes on and on. So, I held off watching Fahrenheit 9-11 because I didn’t want to put any more money into his bulging wallet, or food into his bulging stomach. I did try to cheat once when I paid to see another movie in a multiplex and tried to persuade my bride to sneak into Moore’s movie with me. She would have none of it. So, I bided my time and then put it in my queue on Netflix and recently watched it with her in the friendly confines of our living room.*
It was unsettling.
Ok, Moore does lie and distort and maliciously edits quite a bit in this “documentary,” which is as much a documentary as an Oliver Stone flick. He lies –and distorts, and edits in what fits and edits out what doesn’t fit his agenda – about the 2000 election, about George Bush’s 2001 inauguration, about Iraq, then, at the end, focuses on a single family – mainly on the proud mother of one of our troops in Iraq who starts out supporting Bush and the war but who turns against both after her son is killed there. She becomes a Cindy Sheehan, of sorts, before we had ever heard of Mrs. Sheehan, and Moore capitalizes on the understandable grief of this woman, to the detriment of perspective. He also deals with the Iraq war, of course, but doesn’t even mention Saddam Hussein or his atrocities and instead just shows the effects of war on the Iraqi people. But all that was to be expected of Mr. Moore, as was his misleading account of the Binladin family members who fled the country after 9-11 -- after being vetted and cleared to fly by none other than Richard Clarke, the counter-terrorism expert on the National Security Council. Moore omits that fact and has them fleeing to the strains of the old ditty, “We Gotta Get Outta This Place.” The subsequent scenes depicting evil campus military recruiters makes one wonder who he thinks will be around to fight for this nation.
Still, what was unsettling were the smidgens of truth that are incorporated in Fahrenheit’s two hours.
For example, we’ve all heard that George Bush was in Florida on the fateful morning of 9-11-01 and that he was visiting a grade school when he received the news of the first attack. Tragic accidents do occur and, no doubt, Bush assumed this had been an accident. But he stayed in that classroom, seated in that little chair, and did and said nothing about it. Now, John Kerry admits he was stupefied when he heard the news, but the president seemed more than stupefied when Andy Card whispered in his ear that a second tower had been hit and that we were clearly under attack. Bush continued reading My Pet Goat to the kids. He grimaced some but stayed seated and on Goat message for some fourteen minutes. I tried to put myself in his place. I’m no hero but I probably would have shot out of that little chair, launched an investigation on the spot and, probably by nightfall, I would have had Afghanistan and Usama vaporized. That’s one reason why I’m not President. Mr. Bush, however, was and he just sat there with that Bush-in-the-headlights look he has. Scary.
Moore delights in depicting Bush 43 as a simpleton, dredges up the old canard about Bush’s National Guard service and the false allegation that the Supreme Court chose him for President despite losing Florida – which every re-count, even one by CBS, disproves. But, buried in all his bilge and innuendo, is a modicum of some truth: the classroom freeze, the unseemly Bush family friendship and business dealings with the Saudi Royal Family, especially with Prince Bandar, and his family ties with the mysterious and wealthy investment company, the Carlyle Group, whose members include George H.W. Bush, James Baker, John Major and many other “elites,” and which is making billions from the Iraq war. Are they war profiteers? Well, it seems they make a slew of money from war, but profiteers? I don’t know.
What I do know is that Michael Moore, despite his sleaze and lies, and his technically-flawed film, raises some valid points. Say what you will, and I voted twice for the man, but George W. Bush did not act like a Commander in Chief after hearing the World Trade Center had been attacked by two aircraft. Indeed, he acted bewildered and almost in shock. Granted, he soon recovered but these were not auspicious or proud moments for Mr. Bush. Nor is our continuing good relations with a power that sponsored terrorism, where fifteen of the nineteen murderers aboard the planes that attacked us on September 11th held citizenship, and which even today wields inordinate control over the United States. That too is not auspicious for our nation. As for the Carlyle Group? Only time and history will tell whether they are an asset, or blood suckers of Bush 43's New World Order. Without giving Michael Moore any undue credit, since none of this was new in his film, I still have to say that something reeks in George Bush’s initial reaction, in Saudi Arabia, and in the Carlyle Group.
I did enjoy seeing Moore’s clip of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz unabashedly licking his comb before running it through his hair. The clip befits this Power-Behind-the-Iraq-War. Here we have a man who was a driving force behind the invasion of Iraq but at one point didn’t know how many casualties we were incurring and was rewarded by being appointed to the World Bank. Moore and Wolfowitz clearly had an agenda. Does President Bush?
Pundit Review has an interesting video on “What would happen if Michael Moore made Fahrenheit 1861.” It’s worth a look.
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