"Fahrenheit 9/11" to Open June 25th in 1,000 Theaters

Most of the profits from F9/11 to go to charaties:


'Fahrenheit' may be boon for charities

Newspaper report says 60 percent of the profits from Michael Moore's hit film will go to charities.
July 2, 2004: 7:10 AM EDT


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Charities could be among the biggest winners from the box-office success of the anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," according to a published report.


The Wall Street Journal reported that about 60 percent of the net profit ultimately generated by the film could go to charities yet to be identified by Walt Disney Co. (DIS: Research, Estimates)


LINK:

http://money.cnn.com/2004/07/02/news/newsmakers/fahrenheit_charities/index.htm

I finally made it to the theatre this afternoon to see F 911. In some ways it was what I expected and surprised me in other ways. The movie alternated between the humorous and the deeply moving. The saddest part of the movie was when Moore visited with Lila Lipscomb, the mother of a Marine who was killed. Especially when she read the last letter outloud that she received from him. The movie had more gore in it then I had anticipated.

The scene when, after learning the second tower had been hit, Bush just sat there and decided to read along with the children for an agonizing seven minutes while our country was being attacked. That was downright scary. The 'what am I thinking right now' going through Bush's head as he sat there reading was pretty funny I have to admit. The scene when MM was asking members of Congress to sign their sons and daughters up to go to Iraq and fight the war was a masterpeice. It shows those guys to be the hypocrites they really are. War is for the underclass...not the elite sons and daughters of the wealthy and powerful.

At the theatre I was in, MM was preaching to the choir. The audience clapped several times and at the end there was thunderous applause. No Bush supporters in my audience today.

Before seeing the film I really thought OBL would be 'captured' sometime in late Sept or early Oct. But after seeing the film, I don't believe OBL will be 'captured' at all. Bush doesn't need or want OBL captured. If he needs help winning the election, I think he will get help from his connections in Florida and elsewhere if need be just as he had in the 2000 election.

I came out of the film more committed to doing all I can to see to it that GW Bush is defeated in November. Kudos to MM for a job well done.

The Bush supporters that perhaps snuck into the movie were likely under the seats.

July 4th letter from Michael Moore re success of F9/11
July 4th, 2004
Friends,

Where do I begin? This past week has knocked me for a loop. "Fahrenheit 9/11," the #1 movie in the country, the largest grossing documentary ever. My head is spinning. Didn't we just lose our distributor 8 weeks ago? Did Karl Rove really fail to stop this? Is Bush packing?

Each day this week I was given a new piece of information from the press that covers Hollywood, and I barely had time to recover from the last tidbit before the next one smacked me upside the head:

** More people saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" in one weekend than all the people who saw "Bowling for Columbine" in 9 months.

** "Fahrenheit 9/11" broke "Rocky III's" record for the biggest box office opening weekend ever for any film that opened in less than a thousand theaters.

** "Fahrenheit 9/11" beat the opening weekend of "Return of the Jedi."

** "Fahrenheit 9/11" instantly went to #2 on the all-time list for largest per-theater average ever for a film that opened in wide-release.

How can I ever thank all of you who went to see it? These records are mind-blowing. They have sent shock waves through Hollywood - and, more importantly, through the White House.

But it didn't just stop there. The response to the movie then went into the Twilight Zone. Surfing through the dial I landed on the Fox broadcasting network which was airing the NASCAR race live last Sunday to an audience of millions of Americans -- and suddenly the announcers were talking about how NASCAR champ Dale Earnhardt, Jr. took his crew to see "Fahrenheit 9/11" the night before. FOX sportscaster Chris Myers delivered Earnhardt's review straight out of his mouth and into the heartland of America: "He said hey, it'll be a good bonding experience no matter what your political belief. It's a good thing as an American to go see." Whoa! NASCAR fans - you can't go deeper into George Bush territory than that! White House moving vans - START YOUR ENGINES!

Then there was Roger Friedman from the Fox News Channel giving our film an absolutely glowing review, calling it "a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail." Richard Goldstein of the Village Voice surmised that Bush is already considered a goner so Rupert Murdoch might be starting to curry favor with the new administration. I don't know about that, but I've never heard a decent word toward me from Fox. So, after I was revived, I wondered if a love note to me from Sean Hannity was next.

How about Letterman's Top Ten List: "Top Ten George W. Bush Complaints About "Fahrenheit 9/11":

10. That actor who played the President was totally unconvincing

9. It oversimplified the way I stole the election

8. Too many of them fancy college-boy words

7. If Michael Moore had waited a few months, he could have included the part where I get him deported

6. Didn't have one of them hilarious monkeys who smoke cigarettes and gives people the finger

5. Of all Michael Moore's accusations, only 97% are true

4. Not sure - - I passed out after a piece of popcorn lodged in my windpipe

3. Where the hell was Spider-man?

2. Couldn't hear most of the movie over Cheney's foul mouth

1. I thought this was supposed to be about dodgeball

But it was the reactions and reports we received from theaters around the country that really sent me over the edge. One theatre manager after another phoned in to say that the movie was getting standing ovations as the credits rolled - in places like Greensboro, NC and Oklahoma City -- and that they were having a hard time clearing the theater afterwards because people were either too stunned or they wanted to sit and talk to their neighbors about what they had just seen. In Trumbull, CT, one woman got up on her seat after the movie and shouted "Let's go have a meeting!" A man in San Francisco took his shoe off and threw it at the screen when Bush appeared at the end. Ladies' church groups in Tulsa were going to see it, and weeping afterwards.

It was this last group that gave lie to all the yakking pundits who, before the movie opened, declared that only the hard-core "choir" would go to see "Fahrenheit 9/11." They couldn't have been more wrong. Theaters in the Deep South and the Midwest set house records for any film they'd ever shown. Yes, it even sold out in Peoria. And Lubbock, Texas. And Anchorage, Alaska!

Newspaper after newspaper wrote stories in tones of breathless disbelief about people who called themselves "Independents" and "Republicans" walking out of the movie theater shaken and in tears, proclaiming that they could not, in good conscience, vote for George W. Bush. The New York Times wrote of a conservative Republican woman in her 20s in Pensacola, Florida who cried through the film, and told the reporter: "It really makes me question what I feel about the president... it makes me question his motives…"

Newsday reported on a self-described "ardent Bush/Cheney supporter" who went to see the film on Long Island, and his quiet reaction afterwards. He said, "It's really given me pause to think about what's really going on. There was just too much - too much to discount." The man then bought three more tickets for another showing of the film.

The Los Angeles Times found a mother who had "supported [Bush] fiercely" at a theater in Des Peres, Missouri: "Emerging from Michael Moore's ?'Fahrenheit 9/11,' her eyes wet, Leslie Hanser said she at last understood…. ?'My emotions are just....' She trailed off, waving her hands to show confusion. ?'I feel like we haven't seen the whole truth before.'"

All of this had to be the absolute worst news for the White House to wake up to on Monday morning. I guess they were in such a stupor, they "gave" Iraq back to, um, Iraq two days early!

News editors told us that they were being "bombarded" with e-mails and calls from the White House (read: Karl Rove), trying to spin their way out of this mess by attacking it and attacking me. Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett had told the White House press corps that the movie was "outrageously false" -- even though he said he hadn't seen the movie. He later told CNN that "This is a film that doesn't require us to actually view it to know that it's filled with factual inaccuracies." At least they're consistent. They never needed to see a single weapon of mass destruction before sending our kids off to die.

Many news shows were more than eager to buy the White House spin. After all, that is a big part of what "Fahrenheit" is about -- how the lazy, compliant media bought all the lies from the Bush administration about the need to invade Iraq. They took the Kool-Aid offered by the White House and rarely, if ever, did our media ask the hard questions that needed to be asked before the war started.

Because the movie "outs" the mainstream media for their failures and their complicity with the Bush administration -- who can ever forget their incessant, embarrassing cheerleading as the troops went off to war, as though it was all just a game -- the media was not about to let me get away with anything now resembling a cultural phenomenon. On show after show, they went after me with the kind of viciousness you would have hoped they had had for those who were lying about the necessity for invading a sovereign nation that was no threat to us. I don't blame our well-paid celebrity journalists -- they look like a bunch of ass-kissing dopes in my movie, and I guess I'd be pretty mad at me, too. After all, once the NASCAR fans see "Fahrenheit 9/11," will they ever believe a single thing they see on ABC/NBC/CBS news again?

In the next week or so, I will recount my adventures through the media this past month (I will also be posting a full FAQ on my website soon so that you can have all the necessary backup and evidence from the film when you find yourself in heated debate with your conservative brother-in-law!). For now, please know the following: Every single fact I state in "Fahrenheit 9/11" is the absolute and irrefutable truth. This movie is perhaps the most thoroughly researched and vetted documentary of our time. No fewer than a dozen people, including three teams of lawyers and the venerable one-time fact-checkers from The New Yorker went through this movie with a fine-tooth comb so that we can make this guarantee to you. Do not let anyone say this or that isn't true. If they say that, they are lying. Let them know that the OPINIONS in the film are mine, and anyone certainly has a right to disagree with them. And the questions I pose in the movie, based on these irrefutable facts, are also mine. And I have a right to ask them. And I will continue to ask them until they are answered.

In closing, let me say that the most heartening response to the film has come from our soldiers and their families. Theaters in military towns across the country reported packed houses. Our troops know the truth. They have seen it first-hand. And many of them could not believe that here was a movie that was TRULY on their side -- the side of bringing them home alive and never sending them into harms way again unless it's the absolute last resort. Please take a moment to read this wonderful story from the daily paper in Fayetteville, NC, where Fort Bragg is located.

May the farce be with you, but not for long,

Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com/
[email protected]

P.S. You can read letters from people around the country recounting their own experiences at the theater, and their reactions to the film by going here. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/breakingnews/index.php?id=55

P.P.S. Also, I'm going to start blogging! Tonight! Come on over and check it out. http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/diary/index.php

I'm waiting for the Bush clock to fall and break.

Lowdown on facts behind the allegations in Fahrenheit 9/11
Posted on Fri, Jul. 02, 2004
A lowdown on the facts behind the allegations in `Fahrenheit 9/11'
By Sumana Chatterjee and David Goldstein
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been called many things: incendiary, thought-provoking, satirical, propaganda.

But is it true?

That's a question millions of viewers are asking as the film enters its second week of distribution. This weekend, the number of screens showing the film doubled, from 868 to 1,725. More than 6 million people had seen the film by Wednesday, and millions more will watch it in the next few days.

Political commentators already have weighed in. Detractors of President Bush have praised the film for its scathing view of the way he's handled the war on terrorism. Supporters of the president say Moore has used the facts selectively to distort the record.

A close viewing of the film and a review of the record provide a more nuanced picture. Many of the details Moore uses to slam Bush are true. Others are partially true and open to interpretation. Some are clearly false.

This is a guide to some of the film's key points.
----------------------------

Bush's leadership on Sept. 11, 2001

In one of the film's most controversial sequences, Moore shows the president at an elementary school in Florida on Sept. 11. Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and Bush is sitting in front of second-grade students reading "My Pet Goat." His chief of staff, Andrew Card, comes in about 9:05 a.m. and whispers in his ear. Card was telling Bush, we later learned, "America is under attack."

The president appears frozen. The movie slows the frames, which exaggerates each movement. Bush remains in the classroom for seven minutes before leaving to talk to his staff about the attacks. Moore suggests the president's possible thoughts during those minutes: Should I have vacationed less and worked more? Should I have listened to anti-terrorism experts warning of an al-Qaida attack?

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and the government's response interviewed Bush. The commission staff said in an interim report that the president "felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."

The report says nothing about what Bush's staff did while he was in the classroom, but notes that "as far as we know no one was in contact with the Pentagon." The president's motorcade left the school at 9:35 a.m., and Bush talked with Vice President Dick Cheney for the first time at 9:45 a.m.

According to the interim report, the government's response to what had happened at the World Trade Center and to two other hijackings was in disarray during the period that Bush was at the school. Two F-15 fighter planes had taken off at 8:53 a.m., but their pilots didn't have clear orders on what to do or where to go and were in a holding pattern off Long Island, N.Y.

Sometime between 9:21 and 9:25 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration realized that a third plane, American Airlines Flight 77, had been hijacked. That plane would strike the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., the commission reported.

A few minutes later, air traffic controllers heard screaming aboard United Airlines 93 and determined that it also had been hijacked. It was headed to Washington and gaining speed.

What happened next is still contested. The Sept. 11 panel reviewed tapes and flight and radar data, and conducted hundreds of interviews. It found that while Bush read the children's book, air traffic controllers wondered if the military had been asked to intercept the plane and who had the authority to shoot down planes. By the time the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field at 10:03 a.m., no one at the FAA had asked the military's help to stop the aircraft, according to the panel.

Though the president emphasized to the commission that he authorized the military to shoot down the hijacked planes, there's no record of that conversation. Cheney said the president authorized the shoot orders in a brief conversation shortly after 10 a.m., not in time to intercept the planes headed to Washington.

The commission's interim report reaches no conclusion about the president's actions.
------------------------------

Saudi flights after Sept. 11 attacks

Moore says the administration allowed 142 Saudi Arabian nationals, including about two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, to leave the United States after Sept. 11 without proper questioning by law enforcement agencies. In the film, Craig Unger, author of the book "House of Bush, House of Saud," tells Moore that none of the Saudis underwent serious scrutiny.

"So a little interview, check the passport, what else?" Moore asks.

"Nothing," Unger replies.

The Sept. 11 commission's interim report said law enforcement interviewed 30 of the 142 Saudis, including 22 of the 26 people on the flight that took most of the bin Laden relatives out of the country. The report said none was of interest to the investigation.

It says Saudi Arabia asked for help to get its nationals out of the United States. Because 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, the Saudi government was worried about reprisals.

The commission says it doesn't know whom in the administration the Saudi government contacted, but that the request eventually reached Richard Clarke, who was the White House counterterrorism chief at the time. Clarke told the commission he refused to approve the request, suggesting that it be sent to the FBI so the agency could vet the Saudis for any terrorism connections. He said the FBI approved the flights.

However, an FBI spokeswoman denied to The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, that it had "anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights." She said the bureau interviewed some passengers, but none was "of investigative interest."

Despite some media reports, the movie doesn't allege that the Saudis were allowed to leave while U.S. airspace was still closed.
--------------------------------

Connections among the Bushes, the Saudis and the bin Ladens

The movie paints a sinister connection between Bush and the bin Laden family. It implies that James Bath, a friend from the president's days in the Texas Air National Guard, might have funneled bin Laden money to an unsuccessful Bush oil-drilling firm called Arbusto Energy.

The accusation is a stretch, said Bill Allison, the managing editor for the Center for Public Integrity, an independent watchdog group based in Washington.

"We looked into bin Laden money going into Arbusto, and we never found anything to back that up," Allison said.

The center's investigations into Bush's years in Texas found that Bath managed the assets in Houston of Salem bin Laden, Osama's oldest brother. Bath also invested $50,000 in Arbusto in 1977 and 1978. There's no evidence that the money came from the Saudis, Allison said.

Moore further hints that a relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families was forged through their common involvement in the Carlyle Group, a Washington-based private equity firm heavily invested in the defense industry.

President Bush's father, the first President Bush, served as a senior adviser and board member to the Carlyle Group. James A. Baker III, secretary of state in the first Bush administration, has been a partner. The current President Bush was a board member of a Carlyle subsidiary in the 1990s, but withdrew in 1994 when he became governor of Texas.

The bin Laden family, whose wealth comes primarily from its Middle East construction company, invested in the Carlyle Group in 1994, then withdrew in late October 2001, after the terrorist attacks.

The bin Laden family's investment in Carlyle has been reported as $2 million, a small fraction of the billions that the group manages.

Most bin Laden family members reportedly severed ties to Osama years ago.
----------------------------

The war on terrorism

Moore says the administration used the threat of terrorism to make Americans willing to give up some civil liberties, but that Attorney General John Ashcroft "turned a blind eye and deaf ear" to fighting terrorism before Sept. 11.

While the administration disagrees with that assessment, former FBI director Louis Freeh told the Sept. 11 commission that fighting terrorism "was not a national priority." From 2000 to 2002, "we asked for 1,895 people - more agents, linguists and analysts. We got a total of 76" during that time, Freeh said.

The commission is expected to issue harsh criticisms of Ashcroft's anti-terrorism efforts before the attacks.

Moore criticizes Congress for quickly passing a sweeping anti-terrorism bill known as the USA Patriot Act, without reading it. The law gave broad powers to federal law enforcement to eavesdrop on individuals, detain and deport immigrants, and coordinate with intelligence agencies.

While it's impossible to know whether lawmakers read the bill, it's true that Congress short-circuited the usual legislative process and passed it in less than a week.
-----------------------------------

Bush and veterans

Moore charges that the Bush administration has cut veterans benefits. In 2003, the administration proposed to increase health-care spending for the Veterans Affairs Department over the previous year. Veterans' groups argued that it wasn't enough, particularly at a time when soldiers were in combat and would need health care when they were discharged. Congress wanted to add more money to the budget, but the administration opposed a higher increase.

The administration did cut services to higher-income veterans whose disabilities weren't connected to military service. It also proposed charging veterans higher co-pays for prescription drugs.
---------------------------

Bush's vacations before Sept. 11

Citing The Washington Post, Moore says Bush spent 42 percent of his first eight months as president on vacation. The Post calculated the numbers in early August 2001 as Bush embarked on a month-long "working vacation" at his Texas ranch, according to administration officials at the time.

The president's supporters say Moore failed to note that Bush met with advisers and other officials and was briefed on issues.

Mark Knoller, a veteran CBS Radio White House correspondent and unofficial chronicler of presidential trips, said in an interview that his own numbers from the first eight months of 2001 show that Bush spent all or part of 50 days at his Texas ranch; all or part of 40 days at Camp David, the presidential retreat in rural Maryland; and all or part of four days at his family's vacation home in Kennebunkport, Maine.

That works out to nearly 39 percent of his first eight months in the White House.
--------------------------------

Afghan president's oil connection

Moore suggests that one of the first official acts of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who took office after the United States toppled the hard-line Islamic Taliban regime following the Sept. 11 attacks because it was sheltering bin Laden, was to help seal a deal for the California-based oil conglomerate Unocal to build an oil pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean. It alleges that Karzai had been a Unocal consultant.

A Unocal spokesman denies it. "Karzai was never, in any capacity, an employee, consultant or a consultant of a consultant," Barry Lane said. He said Unocal also never had a plan to build a Caspian Sea pipeline.

What's true in the movie is that Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, was a Unocal consultant in the mid-1990s, Lane said.

Sometimes Moore offers appetizes without the entree and is making some suppositions. They don't go nearly as far as "JFK" which also caused contoversy as a docudrama. The film displays scepticism with all the pat answers the administration and many journalists have set forth since 9/11 and I believe that is healthy controversy. We are getting more filtered and sanitized news after the media went into a frenzy with fallatio and a president's penus. The media want to tittilate their audience with trivia and end up deliverying less than noble rhetorical journalism. Is it worse on FOX? I would think so -- their idea of fair and balanced is to have one token liberal present commentary. Crossfire on CNN is still the most fair and balanced political show on cable. Bill Maher has a reasonably good mix but when Ann Coulter is on she looks and sounds like Bill just did her.

Anyway, differences in percentages are no more than the error factor in a poll. There are always many different statisticaly results from many sources. Sometimes Moore picks the median, sometimes he picks out the one that makes the most of his case. It's a fun game but it doesn't change the total impact of his film one iota. committed the same negative he accuses Moore of. You can't pick one scene or one narrative out of the film as they are parts of a whole and don't add up until the end. I continue to read this foolishness and the cheap shots at Moore's weight (Pavarotti is also fat as well as Peter Jackson, the directors of the best fantasy film ever made, LOTR), and the rightwing pundits are not all svelte and attractive. Are there cheap shots in the film? You betcha, but they are funny as hell. Are there physical references? Only if one considers that Bush is presented as himself and you be the judge. Bush comes off as pathetically funny.

BTW, I've seen analysis of how much vacation time Bush has had and it's much higher. Was Moore talking of the total vacation time in the Presidency or that one particular year? He could have taken the 39% and the analysis of that eight months as 48% and selected the average figure.

The point is how can a leader lead away from the Capitol? Is he really trying to be a uniter when he isolates himself from the so-called Washington insiders?

Moore on Isikoff's musings:

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latestnews/f911facts/index_poll.php

The film's distributor has doubled the screens for the next week.

The figure cited by Moore was based on the amount of vacation time taken by Bush between his inauguration and Sept. 11, 2001.

I realized that, Joe, and edited my post as I didn't remember that exactly. It was the first eight months and I have seen higher estimates and lower estimates based on how much time was taken for "briefings." I don't believe that 3% difference amounts to a hill of beans in portraying the President as out-of-touch. How can one learn on the job if they are only in their office 60% of the time?

TIME Cover: Michael Moore's War
TIME Cover: Michael Moore's War
?'I don't like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry,' Moore tells TIME

Army and Air Force Exchange Service, Which Books Films To Be Shown on Military Bases Around the World, Has Contacted Fahrenheit Distributor to Book the Film

Sunday, Jul. 04, 2004

New York -- "I don't like this film being reduced to Bush vs. Kerry," Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore tells TIME's Richard Corliss in this week's cover story. Moore tells TIME, "When Clinton was president I went after him. And if Kerry's president, on Day Two I'll be on him."

This election year, with stakes and tempers high, a potent non-fiction genre is emerging: the agit-doc, dealing with high-octane political issues, often in a confrontational tone, Corliss writes. Trailing on Moore's box office clout, they are surging into the mainstream. One agit-doc, The Hunting of the President, co-directed by Clinton pal Harry Thomason, was originally to go to 30 theaters; now its distributor has revved the number to 125, and has put the film's trailer on many screens showing Fahrenheit 9/11. The Army and Air Force Exchange Service, which books films to be shown on military bases around the world, has contacted Fahrenheit's distributor to book the film, TIME reports.

"We've underestimated the audience's desire to see (political) material," says Robert Greenwald, director of Uncovered: The War on Iraq, a sober and devastating critique of Bush foreign policy. "I don't think it's about hating the President. It's that politics has been brought home to the deepest part of ourselves. People now feel ?'Politics is Me'."

Today people get their news and, just as important, their attitudes from more rambunctious sources: from the polarized polemicists on talk radio and cable news channels, from comedians and webmasters. That's poli-tainment, and as practiced by Rush Limbaugh and a host of right-wing radio hosts, and by Matt Drudge on the internet, it hounded Bill Clinton's presidency while spicing and coarsening the standards of political discourse, Corliss writes.

Fahrenheit 9/11 may be the watershed event that demonstrates whether the empire of poli-tainment can have decisive influence on a presidential campaign, Corliss writes. If it does, we may come to look back on its hugely successful first week the way we now think of the televised presidential debate between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon, as a moment when we grasped for the first time the potential of a mass medium to affect American politics in new ways. In which case, expect the next generation of campaign strategists to precede every major election not only with the traditional TV ad buys but also with a scheme for the rollout of some thermonuclear book or movie or CD or even video game, all designed to tilt the political balance just in time, Corliss writes.

Andrew Sullivan asks: Is Michael Moore Actually Mel Gibson's Alter Ego? In a related essay, Sullivan writes, "There are times when the far right and the far left are so close in methodology as to be indistinguishable. And both movies are not just terrible as movies?-crude, boring, gratuitous; they are also deeply corrosive of the possibility of real debate and reason in our culture. They replace argument with feeling, reasoned persuasion with the rawest of group loyalties."

Story is online at: http://www.time.com/time/subscriber/cover/0,9171,1101040712-660916,00.html

LW, Those are fascinating stats on Bush's vacation time during his first year in office. When I started a new job, there was never a thought about taking vacation time, but to see how much I could accomplish. Nobody that I know of worked less than 50-60 hours every week during their first year on the job. We all know Bush is special in many ways, but they're all negative from my perspective.

I've gone as long as 18 months before taking a vacation if I believe the projects I was engaged in had to have my total attention. I would take an extra day off around three day holidays to at least get me away from the job but would have my vacation time accrue. My experience is that they will let you acrrue vacation time for two years, sometimes three. That Bush was briefed means nothing because I don't believe there is any way an accurate time count can be proven. He was on the people's payroll and although he wasn't punching a time clock, he should have acted like he was. That few seemed to be chagrined at this obvious lapse (anyone else would be fired from his job and there is no probation period for the Presidency) is astounding. Moore is really telling us, "How soon we forget."

Andrew Sullivan is an enigma and someone I'd certainly never date. It's that stigma of all critics but film critics inparticular. When they criticize it's either obvious to everyone or it is picking on something that is beyond their understanding. Only another filmmaker can understand. That he would chastize Moore along with Gibson for making over-the-top movies gave me a big laugh. There's an inordinate and illogical fear of worrying about other people being influenced one way or another by a film. The fear manisfests itself into gnashing and a lot of hair-splitting to disguise one's own denial.

MM
Could we ever, in our wildest dreams, imagine Michael Moore on the cover of TIME Magazine?

Moore must be laughing all the way to the bank and to the voting booth.

BBB

Moore deserves the critical and financial success and we will see a lot of sour grapes in response.

Moore's Public Service
July 2, 2004 New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Moore's Public Service
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Since it opened, "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been a hit in both blue and red America, even at theaters close to military bases. Last Saturday, Dale Earnhardt Jr. took his Nascar crew to see it. The film's appeal to working-class Americans, who are the true victims of George Bush's policies, should give pause to its critics, especially the nervous liberals rushing to disassociate themselves from Michael Moore.

There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States?

And for all its flaws, "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job.

For example, audiences are shocked by the now-famous seven minutes, when George Bush knew the nation was under attack but continued reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of children. Nobody had told them that the tales of Mr. Bush's decisiveness and bravery on that day were pure fiction.

Or consider the Bush family's ties to the Saudis. The film suggests that Mr. Bush and his good friend Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the ambassador known to the family as Bandar Bush, have tried to cover up the extent of Saudi involvement in terrorism. This may or may not be true. But what shocks people, I think, is the fact that nobody told them about this side of Mr. Bush's life.

Mr. Bush's carefully constructed persona is that of an all-American regular guy ?- not like his suspiciously cosmopolitan opponent, with his patrician air. The news media have cheerfully gone along with the pretense. How many stories have you seen contrasting John Kerry's upper-crusty vacation on Nantucket with Mr. Bush's down-home time at the ranch?

But the reality, revealed by Mr. Moore, is that Mr. Bush has always lived in a bubble of privilege. And his family, far from consisting of regular folks with deep roots in the heartland, is deeply enmeshed, financially and personally, with foreign elites ?- with the Saudis in particular.

Mr. Moore's greatest strength is a real empathy with working-class Americans that most journalists lack. Having stripped away Mr. Bush's common-man mask, he uses his film to make the case, in a way statistics never could, that Mr. Bush's policies favor a narrow elite at the expense of less fortunate Americans ?- sometimes, indeed, at the cost of their lives.

In a nation where the affluent rarely serve in the military, Mr. Moore follows Marine recruiters as they trawl the malls of depressed communities, where enlistment is the only way for young men and women to escape poverty. He shows corporate executives at a lavish conference on Iraq, nibbling on canapés and exulting over the profit opportunities, then shows the terrible price paid by the soldiers creating those opportunities.

The movie's moral core is a harrowing portrait of a grieving mother who encouraged her children to join the military because it was the only way they could pay for their education, and who lost her son in a war whose justification she no longer understands.

Viewers may come away from Mr. Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true. For example, the film talks a lot about Unocal's plans for a pipeline across Afghanistan, which I doubt had much impact on the course of the Afghan war. Someday, when the crisis of American democracy is over, I'll probably find myself berating Mr. Moore, who supported Ralph Nader in 2000, for his simplistic antiglobalization views.

But not now. "Fahrenheit 9/11" is a tendentious, flawed movie, but it tells essential truths about leaders who exploited a national tragedy for political gain, and the ordinary Americans who paid the price.

I agree -- it is a flawed documentary masterpiece and is now set at 56M (17M estimate box office over the weekend). It could easily not only be the first documentary in history to make that much money but it could top 100M or more internationally.

On the job vacations…George W. is obviously a guy who is uncomfortable in interior office surroundings for extended periods of time and probably doesn’t function well without regularly seeing the earth’s horizon line. If there is one thing MM’s film “F911” has disclosed, Bush is not really comfortable serving as president.

Those now-famous seven minutes in the Florida classroom on 9/11 gave us insight to a man freezing in a moment of crises. Some people are good in moments of crisis with their brain’s clicking away at possible solutions and then acting. Others go in to torpor just trying to absorb what happened. It’s not a crime to be in toper, it’s just not a good trait to have if you are president of a country.