From The New York times:

All Hail Moore
By DAVID BROOKS

In years past, American liberals have had to settle for intellectual and moral leadership from the likes of John Dewey, Reinhold Niebuhr and Martin Luther King Jr. But now, a grander beacon has appeared on the mountaintop, and from sea to shining sea, tens of thousands have joined in the adulation.

So it is worth taking a moment to study the metaphysics of Michael Moore. For Moore is not only a filmmaker; he is a man of ideas, and his work is based on an actual worldview.

Like Hemingway, Moore does his boldest thinking while abroad. For example, it was during an interview with the British paper The Mirror that Moore unfurled what is perhaps the central insight of his oeuvre, that Americans are kind of crappy.

"They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

It transpires that Europeans are quite excited to hear this supple description of the American mind. And Moore has been kind enough to crisscross the continent, speaking to packed lecture halls, explicating the general vapidity and crassness of his countrymen. "That's why we're smiling all the time," he told a rapturous throng in Munich. "You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

Naturally, the people from the continent that brought us Descartes, Kant and Goethe are fascinated by these insights. Moore's books have sold faster there than at home. No American intellectual is taken so seriously in Europe, save perhaps the great Chomsky.

Before a delighted Cambridge crowd, Moore reflected on the tragedy of human existence: "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: "It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton."

In the days after Sept. 11, while others were disoriented, Moore was able to see clearly: "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants."

This leads to Michael Moore's global plan of action. "Don't be like us," he told a crowd in Berlin. "You've got to stand up, right? You've got to be brave."

In an open letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: "Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, Moore helped citizens of that country understand why the United States went to war in Iraq: "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

But venality doesn't come up when he writes about those who are killing Americans in Iraq: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not `insurgents' or `terrorists' or `The Enemy.' They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow — and they will win." Until then, few social observers had made the connection between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Paul Revere.

So we have our Sartre. And the liberal grandees Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorenson, Tom Harkin and Barbara Boxer flock to his openings. In Washington, a Senate vote was delayed because so many Democrats wanted to see his movie.

The standards of socially acceptable liberal opinion have shifted. We're a long way from John Dewey.

Fahrenheit 9/11 Impressions

Saw Fahrenheit 9/11 this afternoon, and was somewhat surprised at the size of the crowd. The 7:10 showing had sold out, and a friend of mine said that while he was waiting to buy his ticket for the 3:45 show it sold out also. The makeup of the audience was about what I expected: it looked kind of like the Friday night crowd at Whole Foods Market.

First, I'd say that the film makes a liar out of Quentin Tarantino, who said the movie received the Palme d'Or for artistic merit, and not political content. The movie is competently made, as all of Moore's films are, but it represented no more of an artistic accomplishment than say. Spellbound,The Stone Reader, or Capturing the Friedmans and Hoop Crazy. I imagine Cannes recognizing Moore was a lot like Dirk Diggler getting his award in Boogie Nights.

My impression is that Moore's movie isn't going to have much effect beyond a large box office the first couple of weeks. It's preaching to the converted.There's no reason to bore anyone with a point by point fisking of the movie here. Either you'll agree with Moore or you won't. If you're familiar with the arguments he makes and disagree with him, the allegations are no more convincing on the screen than in print. If you're unfamiliar with his arguments, I think that after awhile the recitation of his convoluted allegations and conspiracies would seem like the mutterings of a crazy uncle.

I don't know how anyone could see this movie and how Moore exploits interviews and footage of military men and women and their families and draw an equivalency between what he does and imaginative art inspired by 9/11-whether it's Springsteen, Steve Earle, or Dean Koontz. Moore's lingering shots of the grief of the woman who
lost her son in the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter border on the prurient.

Moore is as deceptive in his representation of the Democratic Party as he is with the things he chooses to include and leave out about Bush. Of all the Democrats, the best he could come up with for the bulk of his quotations were Jim McDermott and John Conyers. Even if he couldn't get people to sit for him, you'd think he could do better than those two by trolling through news feeds.

The reading of the Patriot Act from the Ice Cream truck, the going after the congressmen to get them to enlist their kids, the behind the scenes footage of people looking ridiculous are predictable and unimaginative. Ultimately, I think Moore harms his own cause with the sophomoric stunts and his silliness, and undercuts what are supposed to be his serious arguments. As someone who would like to see Moore influence as few people as possible, it's hard for me to have hoped for better.

Great quote here from Kathryn Lopez on The Corner at National Review

Al Gore is doing one of his (monthly?) anti-Bush speeches right now. Striking how completely out of his mind he's gone--but it’s amazing how disingenuous the Left is: Mainstream Dems either really believe this nonsense--like that which Michael Moore feeds, and when Gore flies off the handle, or when Ted Kennedy says we’re just like Saddam--or they really care nothing about the world of ideas, and the idea that words have meaning. They're content raising money off anti-Bush rants, even when they exceed the outlandish. More honest men would distance themselves and be adult about policy debates, rather than resort to juvenile dramatics.

AFI 100 Years 100 Songs

The Honorees Are ...

# SONG MOVIE YEAR
1 Over the Rainbow WIZARD OF OZ, THE 1939
2 As Time Goes By CASABLANCA 1942
3 Singin' in the Rain SINGIN' IN THE RAIN 1952
4 Moon River BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S 1961
5 White Christmas HOLIDAY INN 1942
6 Mrs. Robinson GRADUATE, THE 1967
7 When You Wish Upon A Star PINOCCHIO 1940
8 Way We Were, The THE WAY WE WERE 1973
9 Stayin' Alive SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER 1977
10 Sound of Music, The SOUND OF MUSIC, THE 1965
11 Man That Got Away, The STAR IS BORN, A 1954
12 Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend GENTLEMEN PREFER
BLONDES 1953
13 People FUNNY GIRL 1968
14 My Heart Will Go On TITANIC 1997
15 Cheek to Cheek TOP HAT 1935
16 Evergreen (Love Theme from A
Star is Born) STAR IS BORN, A 1976
17 I Could Have Danced All Night MY FAIR LADY 1964
18 Cabaret CABARET 1972
19 Some Day My Prince Will Come SNOW WHITE AND THE
SEVEN DWARFS 1937
20 Somewhere WEST SIDE STORY 1961
21 Jailhouse Rock JAILHOUSE ROCK 1957
22 Everybody's Talkin' MIDNIGHT COWBOY 1969
23 Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head BUTCH CASSIDY AND
THE SUNDANCE KID 1969
24 Ol' Man River SHOW BOAT 1936
25 High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me,
Oh My Darlin) HIGH NOON 1952
26 Trolley Song, The MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS 1944
27 Unchained Melody GHOST 1990
28 Some Enchanted Evening SOUTH PACIFIC 1958
29 Born To Be Wild EASY RIDER 1969
30 Stormy Weather STORMY WEATHER 1943
31 Theme from New York, New York NEW YORK, NEW YORK 1977
32 I Got Rhythm AMERICAN IN PARIS, AN 1951
33 Aquarius HAIR 1979
34 Let's Call the Whole Thing Off SHALL WE DANCE 1937
35 America WEST SIDE STORY 1961
36 Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious MARY POPPINS 1964
37 Swinging on a Star GOING MY WAY 1944
38 Theme from Shaft SHAFT 1971
39 Days of Wine and Roses DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES 1963
40 Fight the Power DO THE RIGHT THING 1989
41 New York, New York ON THE TOWN 1949
42 Luck Be A Lady GUYS AND DOLLS 1955
43 Way You Look Tonight, The SWING TIME 1936
44 Wind Beneath My Wings BEACHES 1988
45 That's Entertainment BAND WAGON, THE 1953
46 Don't Rain On My Parade FUNNY GIRL 1968
47 Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah SONG OF THE SOUTH 1947
48 Whatever Will Be, Will Be MAN WHO KNEW
(Que Sera, Sera) TOO MUCH, THE 1956
49 Make 'Em Laugh SINGIN' IN THE RAIN 1952
50 Rock Around the Clock BLACKBOARD JUNGLE 1955
51 Fame FAME 1980
52 Summertime PORGY AND BESS 1959
53 Goldfinger GOLDFINGER 1964
54 Shall We Dance KING AND I, THE 1956
55 Flashdance ... What a Feeling FLASHDANCE 1983
56 Thank Heaven for Little Girls GIGI 1958
57 Windmills of Your Mind, The THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR,
THE 1968
58 Gonna Fly Now ROCKY 1976
59 Tonight WEST SIDE STORY 1961
60 It Had to Be You WHEN HARRY MET SALLY 1989
61 Get Happy SUMMER STOCK 1950
62 Beauty and the Beast BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 1991
63 Thanks for the Memory BIG BROADCAST OF
1938, THE 1938
64 My Favorite Things SOUND OF MUSIC, THE 1965
65 I Will Always Love You BODYGUARD, THE 1992
66 Suicide is Painless M*A*S*H 1970
67 Nobody Does it Better SPY WHO LOVED ME, THE 1977
68 Streets of Philadelphia PHILADELPHIA 1993
69 On the Good Ship Lollipop BRIGHT EYES 1934
70 Summer Nights GREASE 1978
71 Yankee Doodle Boy, The YANKEE DOODLE DANDY 1942
72 Good Morning SINGIN' IN THE RAIN 1952
73 Isn't it Romantic? LOVE ME TONIGHT 1932
74 Rainbow Connection MUPPET MOVIE, THE 1979
75 Up Where We Belong OFFICER AND A
GENTLEMAN, AN 1982
76 Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS 1944
77 Shadow of Your Smile, The SANDPIPER, THE 1965
78 9 To 5 9 TO 5 1980
79 Arthur's Theme
(Best That You Can Do) ARTHUR 1981
80 Springtime for Hitler PRODUCERS, THE 1968
81 I'm Easy NASHVILLE 1975
82 Ding Dong the Witch is Dead WIZARD OF OZ, THE 1939
83 Rose, The ROSE, THE 1979
84 Put the Blame on Mame GILDA 1946
85 Come What May MOULIN ROUGE! 2001
86 (I've Had) The Time of My Life DIRTY DANCING 1987
87 Buttons and Bows PALEFACE, THE 1948
88 Do Re Mi SOUND OF MUSIC, THE 1965
89 Puttin' on the Ritz YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN 1974
90 Seems Like Old Times ANNIE HALL 1977
91 Let the River Run WORKING GIRL 1988
92 Long Ago and Far Away COVER GIRL 1944
93 Lose Yourself 8 MILE 2002
94 Ain't Too Proud to Beg BIG CHILL, THE 1983
95 (We're Off on the) Road to Morocco ROAD TO MOROCCO 1942
96 Footloose FOOTLOOSE 1984
97 42nd Street 42nd STREET 1933
98 All That Jazz CHICAGO 2002
99 Hakuna Matata LION KING, THE 1994
100 Old Time Rock and Roll RISKY BUSINESS 1983

Nader's "Watermelon" Running Mate

It's hard to believe people like this still exist in the United States. One hopes they'll peel enough of the DU contingent from Kerry to help Bush.

The dynamics of the Green convention in Milwaukee -- a left-wing labor town that proudly hosted the national convention of the Communist Party USA three years ago-- changed dramatically on Monday with Ralph Nader’s selection of his running mate, Peter Miguel Camejo.
 
Camejo co-founded the California Green Party in 1991. As its gubernatorial candidate in 2002 he carried 5 percent of the vote statewide. As a Green candidate in the California recall of Democratic Governor Gray Davis in 2003 Camejo won more than three percent of all votes in the special election that made Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger California’s new governor. He carries serious cache, clout and appeal inside the Green Party.
 
Camejo was born in New York City on New Year’s Eve, 1939. He holds dual citizenship in the United States and Venezuela. After his parents divorced, Peter spent summers in the South American oil-rich nation with his father Daniel, a wealthy land and resort developer. His capitalist father named his son after Pedro Camejo, a general who fought at the side of 19th Century liberator and Venezuelan national hero Simon Bolivar. His father also sparked what Camejo calls a lifelong commitment to the poor by answering his 16-year-old son Peter’s question about the existence of God by gesturing to the shanties of Venezuelan workers and replying: “Pedrito, if God existed, would He allow this?”
 
By the late 1960s Peter Camejo was a leader of the Young Socialist Alliance, giving speeches now gathered into a rare 40-page book entitled How to Make a Revolution. As a rule-breaking student radical, he was expelled from the University of California Berkeley two quarters shy of completing a degree in history, but not before then-Governor Ronald Reagan included him in a list of the “Ten Most Dangerous” people in California.
 
In 1976 Peter Camejo was the presidential candidate of the Trotskyite Socialist Workers Party, winning its highest-ever number of votes, 90,310 (that is, 0.11 percent of the vote nationwide). The wire service stories announcing Camejo as Ralph Nader’s running mate somehow omitted any mention of Camejo’s past as a Marxist and supporter of Leon Trotsky during his 25 years as a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
 
Camejo worked for a time for the U.S. Postal Service, then became a broker for Merrill Lynch and Prudential. In the late 1980s he launched Progressive Asset Management in Concord, California, to assist guilty liberals and leftists eager for through “socially conscious” and “progressive” investing. Today Camejo manages $1 billion in such investments, and with his annual $250,000+ income he and his wife recently moved from blue-collar Folsom near San Francisco to ritzy Walnut Creek.
 
But Camejo insists that he remains a “watermelon – Green on the outside, Red on the inside. I have the same views I’ve always had in my life….”
 
Peter Camejo, now 64, will have enormous appeal not only to Greens eager to abolish private property and capitalism but also to their comrades on the far-Left of the Democratic Party . . . who are also Red on the inside. (He has even learned how to say conservative-friendly things from his younger brother, a Republican.) His “Avocado Declaration” puts forth a powerful rationale for voting Green Party, not Democrat. And to add to Kerry’s nightmares about a Nader-Camejo ticket, Camejo also speaks perfect native Spanish and knows how to peel Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party.

Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.

By Christopher Hitchens

One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.

Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken's unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous "distraction" from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.

Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:

1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.

2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.

3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.

4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.

5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.

6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly "antiwar" film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore's triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that's another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic "key to all mythologies."

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his "Let's roll" and "dead or alive" remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn't wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR's collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore's film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.

But it won't because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, "a sovereign nation." (In fact, Iraq's "sovereignty" was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore's flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don't think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term "civilian casualty" had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn't now, either. I'll just say that the "insurgent" side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that's not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)

That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam's depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Munich and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose "operation" murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist "security" headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam's regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as "threatening," even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition's presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)

Thus, in spite of the film's loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable "warnings."

The same "let's have it both ways" opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been "fear" if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic "security" staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can't tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don't have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn't enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who's counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.

Circling back to where we began, why did Moore's evil Saudis not join "the Coalition of the Willing"? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other's pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq's recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film's "theory." Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.

I have already said that Moore's film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it's much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower's "military-industrial complex," and the use of "spin" in the presentation of our politicians. It's high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There's more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn't know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it's the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won't dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I'll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can "send" their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it's a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He'll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.

Indeed, Moore's affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting "Let's roll," rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only "overseas" or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.

Moore has announced that he won't even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He'll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.

However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that "fact-checking" is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let's redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let's see what you're made of.

Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It's only a movie. No biggie. It's no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It's kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out "the youth vote." Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.

Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …

And that's just from Orwell's Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.

If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.

Turn It On Again

In my driving around yesterday evening, on the trip that revealed the news of the Schoolkids Cary closing, I had the opportunity to use a free CD card at CD Warehouse. What was the selection? Shockingly (for most of the people who knew me in the 80s), the choice was Genesis: Turn It On Again-The Hits.

Lots of things sound better when you don't have them crammed down your throat every day, and the dulcet tones of Phil Collins voice are no exception. Kidding aside, there are beautiful ballads on this album that make it an great addition to anyone's pop collection, especially Hold On My Heart, Throwing It All Away, and the lovely Follow You, Follow Me. Even the mid and up-tempo stuff like Misunderstanding and Turn It On Again sounds pretty good after all this time. I'll quit now before I start sounding like Christian Bale in American Psycho.

Another music store is closing in the area. This time it's the Schoolkids in Cary, one of the better stores around, especially for used stuff. In the last six or seven years, the former Record Bar/Tracks/Blockbuster/Wherehouse/Turtles stores at Crabtree, North Hills, Cameron Village, Celebration at Six Forks, Chapel Hill Downtown, Chapel Hill Eastgate, Capital Boulevard Raleigh, Durham Northgate, Durham South Square have all closed. Ditto Schoolkids North Raleigh, Millenium Music Capital Boulevard, Schoolkids Durham, Millenium Durham. That's fourteen, and I know I'm missing some.

Who knows if it's got anything to do with downloading? Some of the slack has been picked up by the Barnes and Noble and Borders and Best Buy stores that have opened over the last few years. It's still sobering to see that many places listed that have disappeared, and the big box stores don't make up for the quirky individuality of the indy music stores that's missing along with their indy music offerings.