Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘michael moore’

Janeane Garofalo has joined the cast of the West Wing.

Next, they’ll be hiring Michael Moore.

Michael Moore gets more cynical by the day:

When Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told the [Republican National Convention] delegates about “a disingenuous film maker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace,” they knew he was referring to the maker of “Fahrenheit 9-11.”

Asked about McCain’s remarks, Moore said, “I can’t believe they’re dumb enough to bring up the film and help its box office.”

But Mikey, I thought profit motive was a bad thing according to your ideology. Oh right, profits made by you are good. Profits made by any other rich white guys are bad. Oops, sorry, so hard to keep it all straight.

Damian Penny links to a post by James Lileks talking about how the theme of many Democrats these days is that terrorism is invented; George Bush is the only threat:

As Teddy Kennedy said in his convention speech: “The only thing we have to fear is four more years of George Bush.” It’s really quite simple, isn’t it? We live in a manufactured climate of fear ginned up by war-crazed neocon overlords. There is no threat. The only thing we have to fear is Bush, who sits as we speak in the Oval Office sucking the marrow from Whoopi’s shin-bones.

If so, I wonder why anyone agreed to the stringent security policies that characterize this year’s conventions. Why the bomb-sniffing dogs? Why the snipers? Why the metal detectors, the invasive inspection of bags? Is it all an elaborate defense against Bush crashing the party and setting off a bomb belt, shouting God is Great, y’all!

No, they’re fearful of something else.

Damned if I know what, though. Damned if I know.

Reading this reminded me of something, and I racked my brain until I realized what it was: the same thing happened in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

(Er, for those of you who haven’t read all five books yet, what are you waiting for? And, um, spoiler alert.)

The parallels are uncanny: the real world is fearful of Islamist terrorism. The wizarding world is fearful of Voldemort. In both cases, it’s easier — and more reassuring — to believe that a known, relatively benign quantity is inventing the threat for some self-serving purpose. It sets our mind at ease to assume that, without Bush, the problems will disappear. Just as it set the minds of the wizards at ease to believe that Harry Potter and Dumbledore were inventing the story of Voldemort’s return in order to serve their own ends. To face the other possibility — that they were telling the truth — was too frightening for people to contemplate.

Dumbledore — the wise, great Hogwart’s headmaster — is certainly no comparison to George W. Bush. But the theory is the same. There’s something real behind the politics, the hype, or the threat. But much of the Western world is in denial.

In Harry Potter’s world, he and Dumbeldore had to suffer for a better part of a year before the truth of Voldemort’s return was made obvious to even those people who most wanted to deny it. In reality, one would assume that September 11th was evidence enough of the reality of the threat of terror — but the real world doesn’t even take that as proof. With idiots like Michael Moore calling 9/11 “fiction”, and the conspirazoid-freaks talking about how Israel, or Bush, or a Zionist cabal, or some combination thereof, were really behind the attacks… it’s easier to blame and attack what you don’t fear, than to face what you do, I suppose.

Just one more way in which Harry Potter’s world mirrors our own. And, in both cases, we’re stuck waiting for the next installment to see how it ends.

Update: Seems I’m not the only Canadian with Harry Potter on the brain these days.

Update #2: Jonathan had similar reflections last year when he first read Order of the Phoenix. He’s pegged the book as pro-war, and is bemused by the fact that it was penned by a self-described leftist. Go figure.

Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother liked “Farenheit 9/11″ – though even he thinks that Moore is full of shit:

“It’s a moving film,” Yeslam Binladin, a Geneva-based tycoon and one of the al-Qaida leader’s 54 siblings, said in an interview with the French magazine VSD.

“I even laughed at times,” said Binladin, adding, “but a lot less when he states errors or inaccuracies about my family, knowing perfectly well that he’s deceiving the public.”

I hope it heartens Michael Moore to count the Bin Laden clan among his fanbase. I wonder if he’ll take their criticisms of his habit of playing loose with the truth seriously. Probably not.

Tim Blair has the latest evidence of idiotarian-extraordinaire Michael Moore’s twisted view of the world:

In his 2003 book “Dude, Where’s My Country,” Moore expresses sympathy with the Palestinians who danced in the streets to celebrate the fall of the World Trade Center: after all, America supports Israel, which kills innocent Palestinian children. Then, he makes a statement so mind-boggling that when I saw it on an anti-Moore website, I thought it might be distorted. It was not:

“Of course many Israeli children have died too, at the hands of the Palestinians. You would think that would make every Israeli want to wipe out the Arab world, but the average Israeli does not have that response. Why? Because in their hearts, they know they are wrong, and they know they would be doing just what the Palestinians are doing if the sandal were on the other foot.”

Tim thinks that Moore would like Israel better if all Israelis vowed to kill Arabs. Damian Penny agrees:

In the past, I’ve written that the left would have much more sympathy for the Israelis if they used the same tactics regularly used against them – suicide bombing and non-stop agitating in favor of genocide against the Palestinians. Lo and behold, here comes Michael Moore, seriously making essentially the same point in Dude, Where’s my Country.

I continue to find it baffling that so many otherwise-intelligent people are sucked in by this nitwit.

Michael Moore would do well to remember the old axiom: What goes around comes around:

Twin Cities filmmaker Mike Wilson’s upcoming “Michael Moore Hates America” details his unsuccessful attempts to interview Moore, the director who won an Oscar two years ago for “Bowling for Columbine.” Moore’s earlier film, “Roger and Me,” detailed his own failed attempts to interview General Motors honcho Roger Smith.

(Via Meryl).

CP slobbers over Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, a “documentary” (and I use that term loosely) that seeks to blame the Bush family for September 11th:

As promised, Michael Moore lit a powder keg Monday at the Cannes Film Festival: His incendiary Fahrenheit 9/11 riled and disturbed audiences with a relentless critique of the Bush administration in the post-Sept. 11 world.

If Moore can get the movie into U.S. theatres this summer as planned, the title Fahrenheit 9/11 could become a rallying cry in the fall election for voters hoping to see Democratic challenger John Kerry defeat President George W. Bush.

The article goes on to basically worship Moore and buy all of his lies hook line and sinker, including the whopper about Disney blocking its distribution. It also pays little heed to Moore’s critics:

Yet Moore – the provocateur behind the Academy Award-winning Bowling for Columbine, which dissected American gun culture – packages his anti-Bush message in a way that provokes both laughs and gasps.

[ . . . ]

Even those skeptical of Moore, who has drawn criticism that he skews the truth to fit his arguments, were impressed.

“I have a problematic relationship with some of Michael Moore’s work,” said James Rocchi, film critic for DVD rental company Netflix, saying he found Moore too smug and stunt-driven in the past. “There’s no such job as a standup journalist.”

Yet in Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore presents powerful segments about losses on both sides of the Iraq war and the grief of American and Iraqi families, Rocchi said.

“This film is at its best when it is most direct and speaks from the heart, when it shows lives torn apart,” Rocchi said.

Oh, spare me.

In a not-so-shocking twist, turns out Michael Moore made up the whole thing as a publicity stunt (via Damian Penny):

Dissecting the current dust-up, it seems clear that Disney never intended to distribute Moore’s film. Maybe the Mousketeers are cowards, but at least they are consistent. And Moore is whining now only to hype the pre-Cannes buzz. Sources report that Miramax never planned to release the Moore film, that it was always slated to come out through Lions Gate.

Let’s see, what’s the appropriate reaction here? Ah yes: Liar, liar!

Incidentally, it’s a lie that seems to have caught on. This morning on the radio, Terry DiMonte was decrying “censorship” and saying that he hoped it cost Dubya the election. Moore himself is planning to speak in Toronto today (probably in front of a crowd lapping up his anti-Americanisms like poetry). And I guess it’s not all that shocking that he would try to sell the film on a publicity wave of controversy. But when the lies come from a so-called “documentarian”, it sure says something about his credibility.

Update: Why does it not surprise me in the least that Janet Bagnall has been sucked in?

Disney’s Miramax Films is refusing to distrubute Michael Moore’s new movie:

Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which criticizes President Bush’s handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and connects the Bush family with Osama bin Laden’s, won’t be released through Miramax Films on orders from parent company Disney.

Disney chief executive Michael Eisner said Wednesday the company “did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we’re such a nonpartisan company and our guests, that participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides.”

Unfortunately, some other company probably will distribute the film, ensuring that it will see the light of day and not end up on the bottom of a trash heap where it clearly belongs. But, true to character, idiotarian-extraordinaire Moore never misses an opportunity to see a conspiracy theory:

Moore believes The Walt Disney Co. is worried the documentary would endanger tax breaks the company receives from Florida, where Bush’s brother Jeb is governor and where Disney World is located.

“What tax break?” Florida Gov. Jeb Bush responded. “We don’t give tax breaks, that I’m aware of, to Disney,” Bush said. “I appreciate the fact that Disney creates thousands and thousands of jobs in our state.”

I see… so our next Moore treat will be a film about how Mickey Mouse is really responsible for all war and conflict. Gotcha.

Michael Moore on the Simpsons? How could they!