Michael Moore, on his Big Fat Oscar Night

Flatted 5th, I did a Google search with "Bowling for Columbine" + "distortions" and got a ton of stuff. Some were more conservative/ right-wing type places, which I discounted. This one is by a self-described "pro-gun control liberal who believes that Moore should be held to a basic standard of accuracy, regardless of his ideology." Some samples:

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I have found a different distortion in Moore's reporting - he included deaths caused by legal intervention in the American statistics, but did not include them in the Canadian statistics.

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And "Bowling for Columbine" justifies all our skepticism. Even on minor points, unessential to the thesis, the movie is misleading. Moore claims that Lockheed Martin's plant in Littleton makes weapons of mass destruction, when it actually produces rockets to launch satellites.16 He says that the United States gave $245 million to the Taliban in 2000 and 2001, when that money really went to non-governmental organizations and the UN to run aid programs in Afghanistan.17 He alters video of the infamous "Willie Horton" ad without informing his viewers.18

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The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in "Bowling for Columbine" should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination.3

- The New York Times

http://www.galun.com/misc/seasonal/2002/12/17-Moore.html

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Thanks, Sozobe! That is why I call Moore the Rush Limbaugh of the left--he too deals in distortions, lies, and half-truths.

If you want a leftist intellectual you can respect, try Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal. They think and research before they write and speak.

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With Michael Moore, there's always a lot of razzle-dazzle and not enough substance. It's not that he is right about many of his beliefs and attitudes, it's that he uses typical propaganda rhetoric to make his point. Ditto on Chomsky and Vidal -- Vidal's short book "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" aims right at the heart of the matter and that's not fake blood spurting out.

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Tomayto or Tomahto = The core of Bowling for Columbine is the gun culture in America, the greed of the gun lobby, a virus of fear perpetuated by all of the media; These points were made clearly and exact in the movie. Even after all the other truth is stripped away, this is left. MM made a great factual documentary that won the academy award.

Sozobe, I hope you go and see the movie for yourself and not rely on anonymous quotes for your reality.

Chomsky and Vidal? When was the last time they left their oak paneled smoke rooms and mingled with the common folk?

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Vidal put out another paperback book recently called DREAMING WAR which is even better. I highly recommend it.

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Flatted 5th, your idol Michael Moore just so happens to live in a $2 million dollar Manhattan apartment. I bet he rubs shoulders with a lot of the common people there--elevator operators, doormen, delivery boys.

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Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal both have genius IQs and have been astute political commentators for over four decades. They are not publicity-seeking blowhards and liars like Michael Moore. They have nothing to prove, unlike Moore.

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Flatted 5th, what I've said throughout is that I like his message and the "ultimate truth" he gets across, but I am uncomfortable with the fact that he fudges details on the way. Do you deny that any details were fudged?

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Certainly the film is "highly colored" fact but I didn't find any outright lying. That is clever in itself. Does the end justify the means? Can there be a debate countering the effect of the film?
Of course, but I haven't seen anything in retort by the right wing, gun loving crowd that even tackles the basic premise. The nitpicking won't supplant the level of mentality it takes to collect firearms -- a dubious hobby at best. Gun abuses are the symptom and just one of the symptoms.

I would add Michael Kingsley to the list of smart, get-to-the-point liberals.

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Lightwizard, I assume you mean Michael Kinsley?

Yes, there is outright lying in COLUMBINE as you will see if you read the citations from the NYT Sozobe so helpfully provided. Does that invalidate Moore's basic point? Maybe not for you, but it does for me. If the Left is no better in its tactics than the Right, then it loses all claim to moral superiority. The movie had its good points, but overall it was radically flawed and I am sure the Academy was acting out of liberal piety by giving it the Oscar. It is NOT a fine or distinguished example of documentary art.

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Compared to a great documentarian like Marcel Ophuls or even the people who made HOOP DREAMS a few years back, Moore isn't even in the same line of work. He is a propagandist--a bully boy of the Left.

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Michael Kinsley

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Not even a thank-you for the heads-up, Lightwizard?

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I appreciate Michael Moore and the way he puts things under a spotlight. It has on more than one occasion, caused me to do some of my own 'research' and re-consider some of my previous opinions. I think that's always a good thing.

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Beth, if you take the trouble to read this entire discussion, you will see that Moore is guilty of lies and distortions....he is not somebody I trust to give me accurate information about what is happening in America or the world.

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It gets a little silly when his film is nit picked to death. All documentaries are strewn with inaccuracies, yet the essence of any docu film always shines through or it wouldn't be a documentary.

It's the Michael Moore personality that causes all the sniping.

Moore is more of an entertainer than anything else at this point in his career. He is at times, a very funny person. He enjoys giving interviews and getting his name in the main- stream media, which even now is few and far between. He is just as serious as any other docu film maker when it comes to his work, but his pop culture personality separates and isolates him.

Liberals don't like his over- the- top -listen -to -me-now routine. He does not kiss anybody's arse and that includes liberals. He does not play the game and does not want to join any clubs, and this pisses people off.

The best part of this movie are the millions of people who watched it, and got something from it.

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I guess I view his work as comic satire more than as documentary - it is interesting to see some of his fudged figures - but I knew - just from the way the Australian figures were presented - that there were liable to be inaccuracies - (he commented on NUMBERS of homicides rather than RATES - our homicide rate is way below that of the US, but it looked lower than it is because most people do not know just how small our population is).

His work is more at the Brobdingnagian than Lilliputian end of satire - but very effective, nonetheless, I believe.

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A friend of mine said this on another board, and it really encapsulates my view:

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My personal reaction to stories about this kind of 'activism' is one of anger and contempt. When I see it coming from people with political opinions contrary to mine, (Club of Rome, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky) it gives me a welcome excuse to never take their claims seriously anymore. When it comes from people I like (Michael Moore, the Cato institute, etc.) it embarrasses me because it gives other people a good reason not to take my views seriously.

Making people think is always, always good. I just worry about a certain baby-with-bathwater reaction when those distortions are brought to light; "well, if he lied about A, B, and C, he probably lied about X, Y and Z too." If he could possibly reconcile his attitude and rhetorical skills with sticking to the truth and nothing but, I would be his most fervent fan.

As it is, I totally support his right to say what he is saying, and hope that more people are driven to do their own research and think for themselves than to just ignore the entire message when they find the distortions.

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My take is that certain subjects, like gun violence in America, are just too serious for 'comic satire" and too meaningful for any distortions to creep in. We wouldn't accept a right-winger who distorted his view of a subject so blatantly, so why should we accept Michael Moore just because his heart is in the right place? Also, I don't think he is a good enough documentarian to get away with making the kind of mistakes that he makes in COLUMBINE. It is a crude and slapdash movie. And that's a shame, because the subject of gun violence is certainly one of the most important subjects around--and Moore barely scratched its surface.

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larry richette wrote:

I don't like Michael Moore

It seems larry richette that your preconceived notion of Moore affected any chance of being objective while watching Bowling for Columbine. If Marcel Ophals had made the exact same movie, would you have the same opinion?

larry richette wrote:

My take is that certain subjects, like gun violence in America, are just too serious for 'comic satire" and too meaningful for any distortions to creep in.

Moore's documentary style was perfect for this subject. If this movie was made in a dry, statistic laden way, nobody would have seen it.

larry richette wrote:

We wouldn't accept a right-winger who distorted his view of a subject so blatantly...

Distorted blatant views? That's a bit more serious than fudging the details. For example: If Moore states that Lockheed was making bombs in Columbine Colorado, when they actually were making satellites; it's still for the military, and those satellites are probably being used right now in Iraq. Lockheed is military is Lockheed. A bit more fudge than blatant IMO.

larry richette wrote:

... the subject of gun violence is certainly one of the most important subjects around--and Moore barely scratched its surface.

If Moore "barely scratched the surface" what did he miss?

larry richette wrote:

Moore is guilty of lies and distortions.

What exactly are the "lies and distortions" that you assert?

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Michael Moore, on his Big Fat Oscar Night

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