My Double Feature Night

Tonight while shopping at Wal-Mart for my daughter’s Halloween costume (she decided she wanted to be a princess) I picked up a copy of Farenhype 9/11, the rebuttal to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. I saw the DVD and thought to myself that I should pick it up and watch both it and Moore’s movie back to back tonight. I hadn’t seen the Michael Moore version since my girlfriend’s parents gave it to me with the message that I should watch it and “learn the truth.”
To be honest with you I didn’t really want to watch it. Frankly, Michael Moore makes me sick and the idea of sitting through two hours of his smarmy half-truths just wasn’t appealing to me. But I did want to see Farenhype and it just wouldn’t be fair to watch one and not the other. So I watched both, starting with Moore’s film first.
I was actually quite surprised with Moore’s effort. He really is a master at his craft. The film was entertaining, the footage was well done, the music selection was really first-rate and the editing was superb. So superb, in fact, that Moore was able to make the pre-war conditions in Iraq seem like something out of the Saturday Evening Post.
I can see why his films are so popular. People watching them, who don’t really know better, are going to be snowed under by this monstrous piece of propaganda. It really is that good. I’ve heard people speak of the persuasive powers of propaganda but I never really believed it until I saw it first hand. The average American is going to see this film and come out thinking that America is run by an evil cartel of oil executives looking to use America’s soldiers as a way to run up profits. In fact, I’m fully aware that I will probably get a cadre of comments to this post claiming that America is run by just such men and women. Its a credit to the talent of Moore and his compatriots that these people fell that way.

I especially liked the sequence in the film about the Carlyle Group. Watching that was like reading one of those conspiracy theory websites where the people claim that the world is really run by some shady board of powerful policy makers and that no country is truly sovereign. If I didn’t know any better I’d say that Moore was basing some of his story about Carlyle on The Turner Diaries or The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion.
Its that crazy. Yet Moore’s skills as a documentary film maker make it all sound so plausible.
The part I really got upset about, however, was Moore’s interviews with people who were obviously in pain. He corralled a mother who’s son had recently died in Iraq and filmed her angered tirades against the politicians who sent her son to war. He interviewed soldiers expressing their frustrations while still in hospital beds recovering from their injuries. He included footage of soldiers still on the field of battle in the midst of war. He has film of Iraqi citizens whose homes had just been destroyed and loved ones had just been killed. I have a big problem with all that.
He catches these people at some of the most confusing times in their lives, asks them emotionally charged questions and then records their confused and desperate responses. Afterward, he probably edits out the bits that don’t support his political agenda. I’d really be interested in seeing the entire footage from some of those interviews.
Overall, I gotta give the guy credit. He is a first-rate propagandist. He set out on this project with the idea of making the war in Iraq seem hopeless and the Bush administration seem depraved and indifferent and he has used his considerable skills to accomplish it. But that’s all this film is. Propaganda. There’s no rebuttal to the points Michael Moore makes. He tells one side of the story and tells it well while hanging the other side out to dry. That is not, my my humble opinion, a documentary.
So, in the interest of getting the other side of the story, I watched Farenhype 9/11. First of all I would like to express my displeasure in seeing Ann Coulter involved in this project. Her heart is in the right place, but she is a screeching harpie who is at times every bit Moore’s equal when it comes to expelling great stinking clouds of political rhetoric. Her prescence in this film does more harm than good.
Other than that, there are some scenes in that documentary that take Moore’s credibility and throw it out the window. Here are some specific instances.

1. In Fahrenhite Moore talks about the Taliban visiting Texas while Bush is governor. The footage implies that there was some sort of collusion between the Taliban and Bush when that isn’t even remotely true. Bush had nothing to do with the Taliban’s visit. The visit itself was authorized by the Clinton administration which clearly does not have to ask the permission of the governor of Texas to allow a visiting diplomat access to that state.
2. Moore shows footage of Bush talking to a crowd which he describes as the “haves and have mores” and goes on to call his political “base.” What Moore doesn’t tell us is that the function Bush is speaking at is a charity benefiting hospitals in the New York area and that the function was also attended by Al Gore who Bush was running against at the time. The tradition at this function is for the candidates to get on stage and make fun of themselves, which Bush was clearly doing.
3. The opening scenes of Fahrenheit are of the President in a classroom on September 11th. Moore criticizes Bush for not taking action right away, but Farenhype offers a broader assessment of that day including an interview with the teacher who was with the President at the moment he learned of 9/11. It is clear that the President reacted with poise and wisdom on that day and that a lot of the myths surrounding that day in the classroom (such as Bush reading from an upside-down book) clearly aren’t true.
4. Probably one of the most poignant moments of Farenhype is a wounded soldier who was in Fahrenhite displaying his visceral displeasure at being associated with Michael Moore and his political beliefs. This man feels that his privacy was invaded. Really, I can’t blame him for his anger. Michael Moore stands for everything this man is against yet Moore used footage of him to attain his political objectives.
5. In Fahrenhite Moore makes the claim that the coast of Oregon has been left unprotected because Bush’s budget cuts left little funding for state patrol officers. He proves this point with an interview taken from a Oregon state patrol officer. Farenhype has a follow-up interview with the same individual who states that he wasn’t aware that his statement was going to appear in a Michael Moore documentary. He also states that the Oregon state patrol is not funded by the federal government and has nothing to do with patrolling Oregon’s coast. In fact, the responsibility for Oregon’s coastal protection falls to the U.S. Coast Guard.

I could go on, but really, you should just watch both films. My recommendation is that you obtain them both and watch them back-to-back. Whatever your political beliefs, it behooves you to get both sides of the story.