Not Recommended at all. I remember when I was in college a friend of mine had a sound design class where his assignment was to take a president’s speech and edit it to make him say something different. So my friend got Richard Nixon to say “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old.” It was all rather hilarious, but makes the ominous illustration that editors can take actual footage and make it say the opposite of what actually happened. Look, no matter what political party you belong to, this movie is such dishonest filmmaking, only a Nazi could like it. Goebbels would be proud. This movie proves the truth that the camera DOES lie. Of course, cameras don’t lie, people lie – with cameras. But one thing is for sure, this movie is the ultimate demonstration that what you do NOT show is often more important than what you DO show. When Moore deals with 9/11, he shows a black screen, and we do not see the planes, hitting the Towers, we just hear sounds. A black screen that reminded me of Communist ministry of information blacking out important information to its citizens. So he does not show the planes hitting the towers, he does not show Daniel Pearl and the others being beheaded, he does not show the rape and torture films of Saddam, or the dragging of US soldiers through the streets, but he does show the US bombings (so only the US appears the aggressor – he does show Iraqis dragging two bodies, but they are so charred that we cannot see if they are American soldiers or Sunnis or Shi’ites). He shows the Bush administration getting make up for TV, as if they are all staged actors, but he does not show ALL the administrations from Kennedy up to Clinton, who also did THE SAME THING. He shows some idiot US soldiers saying self-damning things, but he does not show the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of good soldiers who don’t (thus giving the false impression that the military is a moronic monolith). He shows the soldier who lost both arms, as if to show the unjust suffering, but he does not show that SAME SOLDIER praising the US and supporting the war in Iraq, saying his sacrifice was tough, but worth it (You gotta see Michael Moore Hates America to see THAT interview), He shows select happy Iraq scenes before the invasion, but he does not show the torture chambers, rape chambers, gassed Kurdish villages, and police state violence on thousands of oppressed Iraqis before the invasion. He shows the obscure marginal sad Iraq scenes after the invasion, but he does not show the FAR MORE FREQUENT THOUSANDS of grateful Iraqis cheering America and thanking the soldiers for their liberation. He shows the US Orange and Red alerts after 9/11 as if it was ridiculous to believe that we were under actual danger of being attacked by Al Qaeda after 9/11 (imagine that absurd idea), yet then shows the complete lack of Oregonian police to guard the US shorelines, as if the US is irresponsible in not watching out for those sneaking terrorists who are going to drive their skiffs and fishing boats 3000 miles to invade our shores. Well, talk about flip flopping. Make up your mind, Michael, is the US a totalitarian regime using terrorist danger to control the people or is it an inefficient democratic beaucracy that is unaware of the continuing danger of terrorist threat? You can’t have it both ways. He shows a few bungling red tape bureaucratic snafus of the government in “infiltrating” useless peace groups and an old man’s life, but he does not show the hundreds of actual Al Qaeda and other terrorists that were rounded up by that same imperfect FBI, terrorists, some of who had been planning other attacks. And along with this same scam, he DOES NOT show how airports have been forced by racist special interest groups to body search little old ladies and congressman, in order to avoid “profiling” the actual description of the suspects: 99.999% Middle Eastern young males between the ages of 17 and 25. He shows ONLY Iraqi civilian casualties (as opposed to Iraqi soldiers), which were all unintended, as if this was the real intention or result of the bombing (how stupid do you think we are?), but he doesn’t tell you that the bombing shots he used were of legitimate military targets, NOT civilian targets. He shows only Britney Spears as the celebrity defending Bush, but doesn’t show the complete parade of idiot celebrities who were against Bush, like Christine Aquilera, Kim Basinger, Jessica Lange, the Dixie Chicks and FAR MORE other idiots than are for Bush. He makes fun of “non-countries” that joined the Coalition of the Willing, like Palau, Iceland, Romania, and Netherlands, but doesn’t seem to mention Poland, Britain, Italy, Turkey, the Czchec Republic, and others. What he doesn’t even seem to realize is his pompous arrogant devaluation of those countries he scoffs at as irrelevant. That would be like saying big fat white men’s opinions don’t count in politics. Ooops! Ah, poor Michael Moore is himself the big, fat stupid ugly American he despises. I guess you could say he suffers from self hatred or self-loathing. He shows dead and wounded US soldiers as if war casualties were somehow an argument against war? Imagine showing the millions of casualties of WWII as an argument that we should not have fought Hitler and Hirohito and let them take over the world. Yes, men must die to secure freedom. That’s how it works. It’s tragic, but reality. Now, you may make the argument that this war is not a just one, but to argue that war casualties make war unworth it is at the intelligence level of a kindergartner – maybe. He shows clips of Bush at goofy moments in response to other clips of serious news, as if this is Bush’s response to the news. Now, look, folks, even democrats who don’t like Bush should be ashamed of such bald-faced lying. It reminds me of the Nazi propaganda that would show the consummate Jew as a snarling greedy unkempt greasy animal, and then dissolve from a picture of a group of Jews to a group of rats. And I don’t use the word “lie” or “Nazi” lightly. When a man deliberately alters and changes so many elements in his editing in this way, it is the proof that he is DELIBERATELY and KNOWINGLY lying to promote his cause. Lie here doesn’t mean merely “false” it means deliberate LIE. Maybe Moore has a secret love affair with Nazism – okay, the truth is, he is in a ménage a trios with Stalinism and Nazism. I think Bush has done some STUPID things, but hate speech like that is not warranted. He shows the minority rebel attitudes against America by some Iraqis, as if this is the whole country’s reaction, but he doesn’t show you the majority larger hundreds of thousands of other Iraqis celebrating America’s overthrow of Saddam. He shows you the few US soldiers who disagree with the Iraq War, as if, hey, look, even the soldiers don’t agree with Bush. But he doesn’t show you that this is a fringe minority view (a mere one out of four) of soldiers, compared to the hundreds of thousands who support their president. He shows you the oil companies helping out in Iraq as if America wants to take over and control Iraqi oil. But he doesn’t show you that we never have taken over the oil at all, And he doesn’t show you that the countries that ACTUALLY DID make their choice for control of the oil in Iraq were France, China and Russia and the U.N. It’s not that America went to war for Iraq oil, it’s that France protested the war for Iraq oil. Et tu, Brutus? He shows only the boarded homes of Flint Michigan, as if it is a town of homeless people, but he doesn’t show you the entrepreneurs and hundreds of people making it along just fine in Flint, and all the newly built homes in that town. AND he doesn’t tell you that Flint IS NOT EVEN HIS HOME TOWN. Moore is actually from a nearby middle class suburb (But you can see all those facts in Michael Moore Hates America). Michael Moore is a fat cat capitalist in cahoots with the greedy corporations of Hollywood. He seems perfectly content in exploiting Al Jazeera propaganda footage of people complaining over bodies of dead children, but he doesn’t tell you Al Jazeera is known for taking footage of casualties from their own terrorist infighting and civil war and making it look like American responsibility. The list goes on and on. The lying is so thorough, that you can only classify his theory as The Big Lie. Boy, it’s one thing to be political, but quite another to be Nazi-like in one’s use of language. I suppose he also has a final solution for the Bush question. The only way to understand the depth of deception is to read the fantastic fact-documented article, “59 Deceits of Fahrenheit 9/11,” It addresses many of the biggest lies in the film, lie by lie with counter facts to show how he manipulated the truth. GO HERE: http://www.davekopel.com/Terror/Fiftysix-Deceits-in-Fahrenheit-911.htm
