Michael Moore sued by Iraq war veteran

There are also many on the Left that despise Michael Moore, or at least think he's a bit of a crook. Count me among them, purely on the basis of Fahrenheit 9/11. He is sure someone who is either loved or loathed, and though there are of course few conservatives who love him, there's enough liberals who loathe him.

I thought Fahrenheit, however emotionally effective as sheer propaganda art, was intellectually a disgrace of dishonesty. And I thought the scenes with the soldiers in Iraq ("burn! burn! let the motherfuccers burn!") were especially disgraceful. My (American) then-gf burst out in tears and ran off, upset into incoherence, and it's not that war is not ugly, or that I dont want to know about it, but this was a set-up, Moore had tendentiously staged and montaged his images into maximum demonstrative ugliness. It was all about political effect, none about trying to get the facts straight, or the reality with its many contradictions out. Moore is all about shouting.

What made him look truly weaselly were his crocodile tears in other parts of the movie, where he was all indignant about the fate of the poor common folk snared into the army when the Senators' kids got off (an argument for which he apparently had to tweak the numbers a bit in the first place). How he interviewed this mother of a soldier with full sympathising "yes, of course's" - when he was damn well only gonna montage images of people just like her son to make 'em seem maxiumum evil/ugly if that served to make his point there.

Dont take my word now for it, though - just read back in this thread: Michael Moore, Hero or Rogue. Though you have to wade through a spate of the usual stuff, you'll find a greater range of opinions, in the end, than you generally prefer to pretend exists, setting up your straw men about the other side and its purported heroes.

Au1929 called Moore a "a self serving rogue". Thomas (I wouldnt call him a leftie, but you probably would) criticized Moore's "self-serving form of grovelling", and also wrote that "to be taken seriously in the political debate [..] is a standard Moore fails to meet". Craven noted that "evaluating" Fahrenheit 9/11 "for integrity makes me really sad", and that "he's pandering to the racist lowest common denominator". He concluded: "The ploys he uses in the film are an insult to intelligence and should be an affront to liberals who care about more than scoring cheap shots for their side," and added later that "Moore may have heart, but is [..] sorely lacking in the intellectual honesty department." c.i. did note he was "not a fan of Moore either". Even Blatham, who rather passionately defended the film, easily admitted that "There is innuendo and there are unsubstaniated suggestions". I quoted Gregg Easterbrook from the liberal New Republic magazine, writing that Fahrenheit is "classic propaganda". I also quoted Michael Isikoff in Newsweek writing that "Some of the main points in ?'Fahrenheit 9/11' really aren't very fair at all".

(Also, in another thread where we talked about F9/11, DTOM wrote that "overall, michael kinda went off the deep end a little way back". I said there that it was "as honest and scrupulous as a GWB speech").

Of course, in the F9/11 thread there was also plenty of stuff like Lola saying how the movie was going to be extremely important in the presidential elections, and we might well all come to have a great debt to owe to Michael Moore for it later ... that should look about as silly to anyone now as it did to me back then already. But opinion on Moore is definitely divided on this side of the board as well.

televison clips used without his permission?

If you are on television in a news segment you have NOTHING to say about the clips. NOTHING. The only one with a right to sue would be the copyright holder which is the station that filmed and aired the clips if they were used without permission.

For someone that spends a lot of time whining about how you have to show damages to sue you sure jumped on this band wagon fast MM.

This will be interesting.

Libel/slander are at issue. Not use of the footage.

If Moore misrepresented the soldiers statements, to me there seems to be a cause of action.

Using a clip of the person speaking doesn't constitute slander or libel, no matter how out of context it is.

Unless Moore said something specific about the person, which it doesn't seem like he did, it doesn't meet that standard.

interesting post, nimh. glad to know i'm not the only liberal/moderate not enamored of michael moore.

Either way I think $85 is taking the micky.

It does smack a bit hypercritical for someone who normally is all against these kinds of suits to be pushing this thread. But I guess they gotta have something to bring up.

I have to admit I was affected by the "Burn, burn..." and all the links between the Saudis and the Bush family gave me pause. However, I have since heard that a lot of the documentary has turned out to be false so I quit paying attention to it.

But like Parados said, if he just played a segment of the soldiers words and didn't add anything, I don't see how that could lead up to libel.

It will be interesting to follow - I'm not a Moore fan at, but just interested in the legal procedure .... and what how you American easily try to earn money :wink:

First this post . . .

Then one more . . .

There we go, now we are no longer on a page stretched to the point that people won't bother trying to read it.

Do yourself a favor, MM, learn how to imbed links so that you don't stretch the page like that. It's inconsiderate, and it makes it much more likely that people won't read it, quite apart from the fact that many people already suspect you of simply baiting your partisan opponents.

The page stretching issue particularly annoyed me because i wanted to read Habibi's post. He posts an awful lot of tripe, but then, he also posts a good many things worth reading--when he hits his mark, his comments are often telling and worth the effort to read. Therefore, i was obliged to move the scroll bar back and forth at the bottom of the page to read his post, thanks to MM's thoughlessness in putting the link in without embedding it in the text.

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Michael Moore is an opportunist who is making himself wealthy off of the misery of others. To that extent, he is no better than the Shrub. It would not disturb me in the least to see him successfully sued. In civil actions, the standards of evidence are not as stringent as in a criminal case, and the bar is set lower--the defendant does not need to prove guilt beyond a reasonable shadow of a doubt, and can in fact often succeed by convincing a judge or jury of the defamatory intent of the defendant. Not only that, but a clever attorney (if this joker has one) can frame the suit in such a manner that the plaintiff does not have to prove guilt, but rather, the defendant must prove his innocence. To that extent, it might become an interesting case. Mostly, though, Moore is as uninteresting as Rush Lamebrain or Bill O'Really . . .

Set,
I posted 2 paragraphs and a link,along with my comments.

I dont know how you think I "stretched the page".

I also apologize for not being as computer savvy as other people.