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TimG
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
17:14:43
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 Subject: Michael Moore
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Would some one please stop this friggin moron from making movies.
Kind of a long post but worth the read.
News: Website calls for revoking Moore's Oscar, gives email links to Academy
BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
Documentary or Fiction?
-David T. Hardy-
Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" won the Oscar for best documentary. Unfortunately, it is not a documentary, by the Academy's own definition.
The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which receives but a fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry." They are protected by Academy rules limiting the documentary competition to nonfiction.
Bowling is fiction. It makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore leads the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which were not sentences he uttered. Bowling uses deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.
A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be entertaining. But it is not a documentary. One need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary is a non-fictional movie.
The point is not that Bowling is biased. No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive.
1. Lockheed-Martin and Nuclear Missiles. Bowling contains a sequence filmed at a Lockheed-Martin manufacturing facility near Columbine. Moore intones that the missiles with their "Pentagon payloads" are trucked through the town "in the middle of the night while the children are asleep." Moore asks whether knowledge that weapons of "mass destruction" were being built nearby might have motivated the Columbine shooters.
After Bowling was released someone checked and found that the Lockheed-Martin plant does not build weapons-type missiles; it makes rockets for launching satellites.
Moore's website has his response:
"[T]he Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space. Some of them are weather satellites, some are telecommunications satellites, and some are top secret Pentagon projects (like the ones that are launched as spy satellites and others which are used to direct the launching of the nuclear missiles should the USA ever decide to use them). "
Nice try, Mike.
(1) that some are spy satellites which might be "used to direct the launching" (i.e., because they spot nukes being launched at the United States) is hardly what Moore was suggesting. Quote:
"So you don't think our kids say to themselves, 'Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'"
(2) One of that plant's major projects was the ultimate in beating swords into plowshares: taking the Titan missiles which originally had carried nuclear warheads, and converting them to launch communications satellites and space exploration units.
2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. A major theme in Bowling is that NRA is callous toward slayings. In order to make this theme fit the facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.
A. Columbine Shooting/Denver NRA Meeting. Bowling portrays this with the following sequence:
Weeping children outside Columbine;
Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket and proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'";
Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"
Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!"
The portrayal is one of an arrogant protest in response to the deaths -- or, as one reviewer put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy." The portrayal is in fact false.
Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine, but an annual meeting (see links below), whose place and date had been fixed years in advance.
Fact: At Denver, the NRA canceled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' meeting; that could not be cancelled because corporate law required that it be held. [No way to change location, since you have to give advance notice of that to the members, and there were upwards of 4,000,000 members.]
Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not given at Denver after Columbine. It was given a year later in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was his gesture of gratitude upon his being given a handmade musket, at that annual meeting.
Fact: When Bowling continues on to the speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to change its theme.
Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and a few other things. Carrying it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK HERE for the comparison, with links to the original transcript.
Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely, and spliced them together. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a still or video footage for a few seconds.
First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech given a year later in North Carolina.
Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration. This is vital. He can't go directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie, and the background draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments.
Moore's second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd) deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its meeting:
"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that."
Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!" as if in defiance.
Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence, and another at its end! Heston really said (with reference his own WWII vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."
Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting to footage of protestors and a photo of the Mayor before going back and showing Heston.
Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing trick to cover the doctoring, switching to a pan shot of the audience as Heston's (edited) voice continues.
What Heston said there was:
"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine.
Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.
So, we have the same right as all other citizens to be here. To help shoulder the grief and share our sorrow and to offer our respectful, reassured voice to the national discourse that has erupted around this tragedy."
B. Mt. Morris shooting/ Flint rally. Bowling continues by juxtaposing another Heston speech with a school shooting of Kayla Rolland at Mt. Morris, MI, just north of Flint. Moore makes the claim that "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally."
Fact: Heston's speech was given at a "get out the vote" rally in Flint, which was held when elections rolled by some eight months after the shooting ( Feb. 29 vs Oct. 17, 2000).
Fact: Bush and Gore were then both in the Flint area, trying to gather votes. Moore himself had been hosting rallies for Green Party candidate Nader in Flint a few weeks before.
Moore creates the impression that one event was right after the other so smoothly that I didn't spot his technique. It was picked up by Richard Rockley, who sent me an email.
Moore works by depriving you of context and guiding your mind to fill the vacuum -- with completely false ideas. It is brilliantly, if unethically, done,. Let's deconstruct his method.
The entire sequence takes barely 40 seconds. Images are flying by so rapidly that you cannot really think about them, you just form impressions.
Shot of Moore comforting Kayla's school principal after she discusses Kayla's murder. As they turn away, we hear Heston's voice: "From my cold, dead hands." [Moore is again attibuting it to a speech where it was not uttered.]
When Heston becomes visible, he's telling a group that freedom needs you now, more than ever, to come to its defense. Your impression: Heston is responding to something urgent, presumably the controversy caused by her death. And he's speaking about it like a fool.
Moore: "Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Charlton Heston showed up in Flint, to have a big pro-gun rally."
Moore continues on to say that before he came to Flint, Heston had been interviewed by the Georgetown Hoya about Kayla's death... Why would this be important?
Image of Hoya (a student paper) appears on screen, with highlighting on words of reporter mentioning Kayla Rolland's name, and highlighting on Heston's name (only his name, not his reply) as he answers. Image is on screen only a few seconds.
Ah, you think you spot the relevance: he obviously was alerted to the case, and that's why be came.
And, Moore continues, the case was discussed on Heston's "own NRA" webpage... Again, your mind seeks relevance....
Image of a webpage for America's First Freedom (a website for NRA, not for Heston) with text "48 hours after Kayla Rolland was prounced dead" highlighted and zoomed in on.
Your impression: Heston did something 48 hours after she died. Why else would "his" webpage note this event, whatever it is? What would Heston's action have been? It must have been to go to Flint and hold the rally.
Scene cuts to protestors, including a woman with a Million Moms March t-shirt, who asks how Heston could come here, she's shocked and appalled, "it's like he's rubbing our face in it." (This speaker and the protest may be faked, but let's assume for the moment they're real.). This caps your impression. She's shocked by Heston coming there, 48 hours after the death. He'd hardly be rubbing faces in it if he came there much later, on a purpose unrelated to the death.
The viewer thinks he or she understands ....
One reviewer: Heston "held another NRA rally in Flint, Michigan, just 48 hours after a 6 year old shot and killed a classmate in that same town."
Another:"What was Heston thinking going to into Colorado and Michigan immediately after the massacres of innocent children?"
Let's look at the facts behind the presentation:
Heston's speech, with its sense of urgency, freedom needs you now more than ever before. As noted above, it's actually an election rally, held weeks before the closest election in American history.
Moore: "Just as at Columbine, Heston showed up in Flint to have a large pro-gun rally." As noted above, it was an election rally actually held eight months later.
Georgetown Hoya interview, with highlighting on reporter mentioning Kayla and on Heston's name where he responds.
What is not highlighted, and impossible to read except by repeating the scene, is that the reporter asks about Kayla and about the Columbine shooters, and Heston replies only as to the Columbine shooters. There is no indication that he recognized Kayla Rolland's case. It flashes past in the movie: click here to see it frozen.
"His NRA webpage" with highlighted reference to "48 hours after Kayla Robinson is pronounced dead." Here's where it gets interesting. Moore zooms in on that phrase so quickly that it blots out the rest of the sentence, and then takes the image off screen before you can read anything else.
(It's clearer in the movie). The page is long gone, but I finally found an archived version and also a June 2000 usenet posting usenet posting. Guess what the page really said happened? Not a Heston trip to Flint, but: "48-hours after Kayla Rolland is pronounced dead, Bill Clinton is on The Today Show telling a sympathetic Katie Couric, "Maybe this tragic death will help."" Nothing to do with Heston. Incidentally, if you have the DVD version and the right player, you can freeze frame this sequence and see it yourself. Then go back and freeze frame the rally, and you'll make out various Bush election posters and tags.
Yep, Moore had a reason for zooming in on the 48 hours. The zooming starts instantly, and moves sideways to block out the rest of the sentence before even the quickest viewer could read it.
If this is artistic talent, it's not the type that merits an Oscar.
C. Heston Interview. Having created the desired impression, Moore follows with his Heston interview. Heston's memory of the Flint event is foggy (he says it was an early morning event, and that they then went on to the next rally; in fact the rally was at 6 - 7:30 PM. and the last event of the day.). Heston's lack of recall is not surprising; it was one rally in a nine-stop tour of three States in three days.
Moore, who had plenty of time to prepare, continues the impression he has created, asking Heston misleading questions such as: "After that happened you came to Flint to hold a big rally and, you know, I just, did you feel it was being at all insensitive to the fact that this community had just gone through this tragedy?" Moore continues, "you think you'd like to apologize to the people in Flint for coming and doing that at that time?"
Moore knows the real sequence, and knows that Heston does not. Moore takes full advantage.
As noted above, Moore's deception works on reviewers. In fact, when Heston says he did not know about Kayla's shooting when he went to Flint, viewers see Heston as an inept liar:
"Then, he [Heston] and his ilk held ANOTHER gun-rally shortly after another child/gun tragedy in Flint, MI where a 6-year old child shot and killed a 6-year old classmate (Heston claims in the final interview of the film that he didn't know this had just happened when he appeared)." [Click here for original]
Bowling persuaded these viewers by deceiving them. Moore's creative skills are used to convince the viewer that things happened which did not and that a truthful man is a liar when he denies them.
A further question: is the end of the Heston interview faked?
3. Animated sequence equating NRA with KKK. In an animated history send-up, with the narrator talking rapidly, Bowling equates the NRA with the Klan, suggesting NRA was founded in 1871, "the same year that the Klan became an illegal terrorist organization." Bowling goes on to depict Klansmen becoming the NRA and an NRA character helping to light a burning cross.
This sequence is intended to create the impression either that NRA and the Klan were parallel groups or that when the Klan was outlawed its members formed the NRA.
Both impressions are not merely false, but directly opposed to the real facts.
Fact: The NRA was founded in 1871 -- by act of the New York Legislature, at request of former Union officers. The Klan was founded in 1866, and quickly became a terrorist organization. One might claim that while it was an organization and a terrorist one, it technically became an "illegal" such with passage of the federal Ku Klux Klan Act and Enforcement Act in 1871. These criminalized interference with civil rights, and empowered the President to use troops to suppress the Klan.
Fact: The Klan Act and Enforcement Act were signed into law by President Ulysess S. Grant. Grant used their provisions vigorously, suspending habeas corpus and deploying troops; under his leadership over 5,000 arrests were made and the Klan was dealt a serious (if all too short-lived) blow.
Fact: Grant's vigor in disrupting the Klan earned him unpopularity among many whites, but Frederick Douglass praised him, and an associate of Douglass wrote that African-Americans "will ever cherish a grateful remembrance of his name, fame and great services."
Fact: After Grant left the White House, the NRA elected him as its eighth president.
Fact: After Grant's term, the NRA elected General Philip Sheridan, who had removed the governors of Texas and Lousiana for failure to suppress the KKK.
Fact: The affinity of NRA for enemies of the Klan is hardly surprising. The NRA was founded by former Union officers, and eight of its first ten presidents were Union veterans.
Fact: During the 1950s and 1960s, groups of blacks organized as NRA chapters in order to obtain surplus military rifles to fight off Klansmen.
.4. Shooting at Buell Elementary School in Michigan. Bowling depicts the juvenile shooter who killed Kayla Rolland as a sympathetic youngster, from a struggling family, who just found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school. "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl."
Fact: The little boy was the class thug, already suspended from school for stabbing another kid with a pencil, and had fought with Kayla the day before. Since the incident, he has stabbed another child with a knife.
Fact: The uncle's house was the family business -- the neighborhood crack-house. The gun was stolen and was purchased by the uncle in exchange for drugs.The shooter's father was already serving a prison term for theft and drug offenses. A few weeks later police busted the shooter's grandmother and aunt for narcotics sales. After police hauled the family away, the neighbors applauded the officers. This was not a nice but misunderstood family.
Links:1., 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
5. The Taliban and American Aid. In discussing military assistance to various countries, Bowling asserts that the U.S. gave $245 million in aid to the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001.
Fact: The aid in question was humanitarian assistance, given through UN and nongovernmental organizations, to relieve famine in Afghanistan. [Various numbers are given for the amount of the aid, and some say several million went for clearing landmines.]
6. International Comparisons. To pound home its point, Bowling flashes a dramatic count of gun homicides in various countries: Canada 165, Germany 381, Australia 65, Japan 39, US 11,127. Now that's raw numbers, not rates -- Here's why he doesn't talk rates.
Verifying the figures was difficult, since Moore does not give a year for them. A lot of Moore's numbers didn't check out for any period I could find. As a last effort at checking, I did a Google search for each number and the word "gun" or words "gun homicides" Many traced -- only back to webpages repeating Bowling's figures. Moore is the only one using these numbers.
Germany: Bowling says 381: 1995 figures put homicides at 1,476, about four times what Bowling claims, and gun homicides at 168, about half what it claims: it's either far too high or far too low.
Australia: Bowling says 65. This is very close, albeit picking the year to get the data desired. Between 1980-1995, firearm homicides varied from 64-123, although never exactly 65. In 2000, it was 64, which was proudly proclaimed as the lowest number in the country's history.
US: Bowling says 11,127. FBI figures put it a lot lower. They report gun homicides were 8,719 in 2001, 8,661 in 2000, 8,480 in 1999. (2001 UCR, p. 23). Here's the table:
[You can download the entire report, in .pdf format, by clicking here; look for pt. 2 at p.23.] To be utterly fair, this is a count of the 13,752 homicides for which police submitted supplemental data (including weapon used): the total homicide count was 15,980. But what weapon, if any, was used in the other homicide is unknown to us, and was unknown to Moore.
After an email tip, I finally found a way to compute precisely 11,127. Ignore the FBI, use Nat'l Center for Health Statistics figures. These are based on doctors' death certificates rather than police investigation.
Then -- to their gun homicide figures, add the figure for legally-justified homicides: self-defense and police use against criminals. Presto, you have exactly Moore's 11,127. I can see no other way for him to get it.
Since Moore appears to use police figures for the other countries, it's hardly a valid comparison. More to the point, it's misleading since it includes self-defense and police: when we talk of a gun homicide problem we hardly have in mind a woman defending against a rapist, or a cop taking out an armed robber.
Canada: Moore's number is correct for 1999, a low point, but he ignores some obvious differences.
Bias. I wanted to talk about fabrication, not about bias, but I've gotten emails asking why I didn't mention that Switzerland requires almost all adult males to have guns, but has a lower homicide rate than Great Britain, or that Japanese-Americans, with the same proximity to guns as other Americans, have homicide rates half that of Japan itself. Okay, they're mentioned, now back to our regularly scheduled program.
7. Miscellaneous. Even the Canadian government is jumping in. Bowling shows Moore casually buying ammunition at an Ontario Walmart. He asks us to "look at what I, a foreign citizen, was able to do at a local Canadian Wal-Mart." He buys several boxes of ammunition without a question being raised. "That's right. I could buy as much ammunition as I wanted, in Canada."
Canadian officials have pointed out that the buy is faked or illegal: Canadian law has since, 1998, required ammunition buyers to present proper identification. Since Jan. 1, 2001, it has required non-Canadians to present a firearms borrowing or importation license, too. (Bowling appears to have been filmed in mid and late 2001).
While we're at it: Bowling shows footage of a B-52 on display at the Air Force Academy, while Moore scornfully intones that the plaque under it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972."
The plaque actually reads that "Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of 'Diamond Lil' shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during 'Linebacker II' action on Christmas eve 1972." This is pretty mild compared to the rest of Bowling, but the viewer can't even trust Moore to honestly read a monument.
8. Race. Moore does not directly state that Heston is a racist--he is the master of creating the false impression --but reviewers come away saying "Heston looks like an idiot, and a racist one at that" Source. "BTW, one thing the Heston interview did clear up, that man is shockingly racist." Source.
The remarks stem from Heston's answer (after Moore keeps pressing for why the US has more violence than other countries) that it might be due to the US "having a more mixed ethnicity" than other nations, and "We had enough problems with civil rights in the beginning." A viewer who accepts Moore's theme that gun ownership is driven by racial fears might conclude that Heston is blaming blacks and the civil rights movement.
But if you look at some history missing from Bowling, you get exactly the opposite picture. Heston is talking, not about race, but about racism. In the early 1960s, the civil rights movement was fighting for acceptance. Civil rights workers were being murdered. The Kennedy Administration, trying to hold together a Democratic coalition that ranged from liberals to fire-eater segregationists such as George Wallace and Lester Maddox, found the issue too hot to touch, and offered little support.
Heston got involved. He picketed discriminating restaurants. He worked with Martin Luther King, and helped King break Hollywood's color barrier (yes, there was one.). He led the actors' component of King's 1963 march in Washington, which set the stage for the key civil rights legislation in 1964.
Here's Heston's comments at the 2001 Congress on Racial Equality Martin Luther King dinner (presided over by NRA director, and CORE President, Roy Innes). More on Heston.
Most of the viewers were born long after the events Heston is recalling. To them, the civil rights struggle consists of Martin Luther King speaking, people singing "We Shall Overcome," and everyone coming to their senses. Heston remembers what it was really like.
If Heston fails to explain this in Bowling, we've got to note that Moore (despite his claim that he left the interview almost unedited) cut a lot of the interview out. Watch closely and you'll see a clock on the wall near Moore's head. When it's first seen, the time is about 5:47. When Heston finally walks out, it reads about 6:10. That's 23 minutes. I clocked the Heston interview in Bowling at 5 1/4 minutes. About three-quarters of what Heston did say was trimmed out. [Why the clock indicates six o'clock, when Moore is specific that he showed up for the interview at 8:30 AM, will have to await another investigation!]
9. Fear. Bowling probably has a good point when it suggests that the media feeds off fear in a search for the fast buck. Bowling cites some examples: the razor blades in Halloween apples scare, the flesh-eating bacteria scare, etc. The examples are taken straight from Barry Glassner's excellent book on the subject, "The Culture of Fear," and Moore interviews Glassner on-camera for the point.
Then Moore does exactly what he condemns in the media.
Given the prominence of schoolyard killings as a theme in Bowling for Columbine, Moore must have asked Glassner about that subject. Whatever Glassner said is, however, left on the cutting-room floor. That's because Glassner lists schoolyard shootings as one of the mythical fears. He points out that "More than three times as many people are killed by lightning as by violence at schools."
10. Guns (supposedly the point of the film). A point worth making (although not strictly on theme here): Bowling's theme is, rather curiously, not opposed to firearms ownership.
After making out Canada to be a haven of nonviolence, Moore asks why. He proclaims that Canada has "a tremendous amount of gun ownership," somewhat under one gun per household. He visits Canadian shooting ranges, gun stores, and in the end proclaims "Canada is a gun loving, gun toting, gun crazy country!"
Or as he put it elsewhere, "then I learned that Canada has 7 million guns but they don't kill each other like we do. I thought, gosh, that's uncomfortably close to the NRA position: Guns don't kill people, people kill people."
Bowling concludes that Canada isn't peaceful because it lacks guns and gun nuts -- it has lots of those -- but because the Canadian mass media isn't into constant hyping of fear and loathing, and the American media is. (One problem).
Which leaves us to wonder why the Brady Campaign/Million Moms issued a press release. congratulating Moore on his Oscar nomination.
Or does Bowling have a hidden punch line, and in the end the joke is on them?
One possible explanation: did Bowling begin as one movie, and end up as another?
Conclusion
The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or lacking in objectivity. The point is far more fundamental: Bowling for Columbine is dishonest. It is fraudulent. To trash Heston, it even uses the audio/video editor to assemble a Heston speech that Heston did not give, and sequences images and carefully highlighted text to spin the viewer's mind to a wrong conclusion. If there is art in this movie, it is a dishonest art. Moore does not inform his readers: he plays them like a violin.
A further thought, on a topic far broader (no pun intended) than Moore. Moore's film is unquestionably popular. He's attracted an almost-cult following. And judging from the emails I've received, plenty of his followers don't care a bit about whether they were misled. Can broader lessons be learned from this?
Suppose for a moment that Moore's behavior can be explained as a product of Narcisstic Personality Disorder, that he fits the clinical symptoms to a T, that indeed Bowling is a grand acting out of this character disorder. Does its popularity suggest something of far greater concern than one more narcissist in Hollywood? Click here for some thoughts on that score.
David T. Hardy [an amateur who has for the last year been working on a serious bill of rights documentary], to include the Second Amendment.
dthardy at mindspring.com ["at" instead of "@" used to confuse those blasted spam robots]
P.S.: I don't have Moore's $4 million budget (and just got a $233 bill from my ISP for exceeding download limits -- this page has had 469,969 hits in four months), but if you could see the way to contribute ten or twenty dollars to this research, and to preparing a real documentary, please click below.
A few additions:
Revoke Moore's Oscar, a webpage
Links to other Moore & Bowling sites.
Some criticisms not given on this page.
Did Moore appropriate large portions from a webpage?
Equal time: emails critical of this page.
A brief reply to two responses I've received:
Objectivity: (sample email): "Your entire article is retarded. We're talking about making FILM. ALL film is subjective. Have you not even taken an entry level course in film before?"
Response: The point is not that Bowling is non-objective, or biased. The point is that it is intentionally deceptive.
Nothing is real: The camera changes everything, etc., so in video there can be no truth or falsity. Sample: "tv and movies, newspapers or even documentaries *are* constructions, not "the truth" ("truth" is subjective personal opinion/experience, which would be impossible to commit to videotape or celluloid)."
Response: This certainly has given me some insight into how some in the media view things! Can we agree upon one core premise: to deliberately deceive a viewer is wrong?
Talk basic ethics. Is that what you teach your kids? Truth and lies are ultimately the same, all that matters is whether you're good at it?
And don't give me the claim that filmmaking is somehow different, all filming departs from reality, so truth and lies exist for written media and not for film. All communication is symbolic; the use of verbal and written symbols to convey ideas. If anything, a documentary film purports to be less symbolic and more real: the viewer is shown things, and assumes he is himself seeing reality, rather than hearing a speaker's description, possibly unfair or deceptive, of it. If anything, this should imply a greater duty to avoid conscious deception than would apply to the written and spoken word.
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Kevster
Dodge Dakota
JOIN HERE
9/16/2003
17:26:54
| RE: Michael Moore
IP: Logged
Message:
Patriot/STS/Warlock,
Your post is far too long and boring----just more shlt from the King of Kopy and Paste.
Maybe we should take away your mothers PC because you obviously ripped off another persons work.
Besides the only people upset with Moores brilliant works are the cookoo bananas in the gun lobby who don't want a true depiction of the stinking savagery of modern America shown to the world.
Americans are stupid, dirty, blood thirsty savages and eveybody knows it. Get over it.
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TimG
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
17:37:40
| RE: Michael Moore
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Message:
Moores brilliant works ??? ROFLMAO!! You must be canadian.
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Michael Moore
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
19:20:52
| RE: Michael Moore
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Message:
He calls Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft the "real axis of evil." He blamed 9-11 attacks on too many White people and not enough Black men on the planes.
And in his Oscar Night diatribe, film-maker Michael Moore used his win of an Academy Award to rant against a "fictitious" President Bush, "fictitious election results," and the War on Iraq, which he claimed was for "fictitious reasons."
"We live in fictitious times," he said when picking up the award for best documentary for his anti-gun film "Bowling for Columbine."
And Michael Moore should know. Because everything from his "working-class Joe" persona to his so-called documentary, for which he won the award, is largely fictitious.
Michael Moore is the master of the truly fictitious.
His public persona is that of an anti-corporate crusader from working-class Flint, Michigan, who wears a constant uniform of slouchy jeans, a plaid shirt and a Detroit Tigers baseball cap. But the real Michael Moore rides in limos and lives in a swanky $1.2 million Manhattan apartment. Moore’s "blue collar bonhomie" is bunk.
According to Detroit Free Press film critic Terry Lawson, Moore’s first documentary, "Roger and Me" featured manipulated facts and the breaking of established documentary rules.
Then there’s his "documentary," "Bowling for Columbine."
Documentary might not be the best word for this manipulative piece of cinematic celluloid. "Fictitious," Moore’s current term of choice, would be more accurate.
That includes the title. Moore says he chose "Bowling for Columbine" because Columbine High mass murderers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attended a bowling class the morning of the massacre. Reality check: Jefferson County Sheriffs, who investigated the killings, say they skipped the class that day, and have the attendance sheets and blank bowling scoring sheets to prove it. Had Moore bothered to check the official report of the police investigation, he’d have known that. But why bother with the facts when you’re the fictitious Michael Moore?
Moore’s vehement anti-war ideology gets the best of his fact-checking capabilities. His film implies Harris and Klebold had violent tendencies because of "weapons of mass destruction" produced by a Lockheed Martin assembly plant in their hometown of Littleton. "Bowling" actually features footage of giant rocket assembly to make the point. But, according to Daniel Lyons in Forbes Magazine, Lockheed Martin’s Littleton plant makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites, not weapons.
And Moore’s anti-gun fervor also trumps the facts. He stages an event at North Country Bank and Trust in Michigan’s Traverse City, claiming that opening an account would entitle one to walk out of the bank with a gun in hand. The film shows him doing just that. But the key word is "staged." In reality, the bank does not provide guns for opening accounts, and you can’t walk in or out of the bank with one—unless you’re a security guard employed by the bank. The gun is one of several "giveaways" that can be chosen by customers in exchange for opening a CD account. In order to qualify for the gun, customers must open a 3-year CD with at least $5,000 and then must pass a background check for the gun, which can only be picked up at a licensed gun dealer.
Arguably, the worst fiction in Moore’s documentary is visited upon Hollywood Producer Dick Clark. Moore confronts Clark, trying to ask him question and accusing him of responsibility for the 2000 fatal shooting of 6-year-old Kayla Rowland of Mount Morris Township, Michigan, by her classmate, at Buell Elementary School.
Moore blames the shooting on Michigan’s work-to-welfare program, which he claims prevented the shooter’s mother, Tamarla Owens, from spending time with him. And he blames Clark, because Owens work-to-welfare job was at his "American Bandstand" restaurant at an area mall.
But Clark and the work-to-welfare program had nothing to do with it. Owens, who had three children with three different fathers and was once charged as a drug dealer, married a convicted drug dealer. Before the shooting. abandoned her son, turning him over to her brother, who lived in a flop house rife with stolen guns and ammunition, where drug deals went on at all hours. Michigan’s Family Independence Agency reported that she was a poor mother, and she later lost custody of all three children, two of them permanently.
Blaming the shooting of a classmate by Owen’s son on Dick Clark is nothing short of outrageous.
But that’s Michael Moore. A fictitious man living in a fictitious time. With a fictitious, Academy Award winning "documentary." As Brian Rohrbough, whose son Daniel died at Columbine, said, "This is just a guy trying to capitalize on the tragedy of others."
Moore’s latest best-selling book is "Stupid White Men. . . and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation," As they say, it takes one to know one. But the stupidest and sorriest are not Moore and those he writes about, but those who fall for his propaganda.
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Liar, Liar
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
20:02:07
| RE: Michael Moore
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The injustice here is not so much to the viewer, as to the independent producers of real documentaries. These struggle in a field which (despite its real value) receives but a tiny fraction of the recognition and financing of the "entertainment industry." The award of the documentary Oscar to a $4 million entertainment piece is unjust to the legitimate competitors, disheartening to makers of real documentaries, and sets a precedent which may encourage inspire others to take similar liberties with their future projects.
Bowling makes its points by deceiving and by misleading the viewer. Statements are made which are false. Moore invites the reader to draw inferences which he must have known were wrong. Indeed, even speeches shown on screen are heavily edited, so that sentences are assembled in the speaker's voice, but which he never uttered.
These occur with such frequency and seriousness as to rule out unintentional error. Any polite description would be inadequate, so let me be blunt. Bowling uses deliberate deception as its primary tool of persuasion and effect.
A film which does this may be a commercial success. It may be amusing, or it may be moving. But it is not a documentary. One need only consult Rule 12 of the rules for the Academy Award: a documentary must be non-fictional, and even re-enactments (much less doctoring of a speech) must stress fact and not fiction. To the Academy voters, some silly rules were not a bar to giving the award. The documentary category, the one refuge for works which educated and informed, is now no more than another sub-category of entertainment.
Serious charges require serious evidence. The point is not that Bowling is unfair, or that its conclusions are incorrect. No, the point is that Bowling is deliberately, seriously, and consistently deceptive. A viewer cannot count upon any aspect of it, even when the viewer believes he is seeing video of an event occurring or a person speaking.
THE LIES:
LIE: The Lockheed-Martin facility depicted in the film is presented as a manufacturer of weapons of mass destruction. (TRUTH: the facility produces rockets for launching satellites)
LIE: The NRA is callous to gun slayings. (TRUTH: the evidence distorted to reach this infactual end is expansive. The sequence in Bowling in which Charlton Heston gives a defiant pro-gun speech in Denver is edited to unbelievable distortion. The fiery "cold dead hands" statement was not even made in Denver, but a YEAR after the Denver (annual NRA members' meeting) in Charlotte, North Carolina. Compare Bowling's version of the Heston speech in Denver to REALITY
LIE: The impression is given in Bowling that the NRA and the KKK were (are?) parallel groups - or more likely, that when the Klan was outlawed, the NRA filled its shoes. (TRUTH: Charlton Heston is NOT a racist, as alleged in Bowling. Heston involved himself in the civil rights movement in the early 60's while the issue was still too hot for Hollywooders concerned about their careers. He also helped Martin Luther King break the Hollywood color barrier that existed at that time. After its founding in New York by two Union Officers, the NRA itself has a long and comprehensive history of aligning itself in diametrical opposition to racism and the KKK.)
LIE: Moore sympathizes with the "little boy" at Buell Elementary in Michigan who just found a gun in his uncle's house and took it to school to kill a girl. Moore says "No one knew why the little boy wanted to shoot the little girl". (TRUTH: The "little boy" was the class bully and was already suspended for stabbing another child with a pencil. Since that incident, the "little boy" also stabbed another kid with a knife. Also- the "uncle's house" was a neighborhood crack house. The uncle and the "little boy's" father were, at the time, serving time for theft and cocaine possession. His aunt earned her living from drug dealing. The gun was stolen by one of the uncle's customers and purchased by him in exchange for drugs.
LIE: Bowling makes note of $245 million that the U.S. gave to the Taliban government of Afghanistan in 2000 and 2001 and then proceeds to illustrate the alleged "result" by showing planes hitting the twin towers. (TRUTH: The $245 million in aid was given through the U.N. and non-governmental organizations to relieve the famine that existed in Afghanistan at that time.
LIE: Bowling showcases a dramatic comparison of gun homicide stats from various countries. (TRUTH: The numbers don't add up - click here)
LIE: In Bowling, Moore enters a WalMart in Ontario, Canada to purchase, with ease and without being identified, several boxes of ammunition. (TRUTH: Canadian officials have indicated that the purchase, as depicted in the movie, is either fake or illegal)
LIE: Moore shows footage of a B-52 on display at the Air Force Academy, and sadly announces that the plaque under it "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972." Interestingly enough, Moore's camera only lets you see the plaque from a distance sufficient enough to render the plaque impossible to read. (TRUTH: The inscription on the plaque is: "Dedicated to the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26 year history in the command. Aircraft 55,003, with over 15,000 flying hours, is one of two B-52's credited with a confirmed MIG kill during the Vietnam conflict. Flying out of Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield in southeast Thailand, the crew of "Diamond Lil" shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi during "Linebacker II" action on Christmas eve 1972.")
Nice tries Mike.
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Kevster not
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
21:48:21
| RE: Michael Moore
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I'm just a gay liberal lobiest that FEELS all of you cannot live your lives without my much superior guidance, just like a true Democratic world should be.
Note: the United States is a Republic, NOT a Democracy, until or unless the liberals figure this out we are all in danger.
I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
And to the Republic for which it stands.
Unfortunatly way to many of you have forgotten this simple 4 line little pledge that was drumed into yor heads for 12 or more years.
Simular references to a Republic, but NOT to a Democracy are mentioned in the Constitution. Therefore our founding fathers wanted a Republic not a Democracy.
Benjamin Franklin: We gave you a Republic,I just hope your are smart enough to keep it.
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kevster u
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
23:07:52
| RE: Michael Moore
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freakin moron. please post more sh@t about the guy caught wacking off at work. That was you BTW wasn't it? Get a girlfriend and a life buddy!
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The real STS
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
23:41:33
| RE: Michael Moore
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That was me. In fact I've been posting and answering my own crap posts for some time now.
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Warlock
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
23:42:42
| RE: Michael Moore
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I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America,
and to the Republic for which it stands,
one Nation under God, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all
except niggers and other minorities
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TimG
Dodge Dakota
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9/16/2003
23:43:36
| RE: Michael Moore
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REPUBLIC vs. DEMOCRACY
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
In the Pledge of Allegiance we all pledge allegiance to our Republic, not to a democracy. "Republic" is the proper description of our government, not "democracy." I invite you to join me in raising public awareness regarding that distinction.
The distinction between our Republic and a democracy is not an idle one. It has great legal significance.
The Constitution guarantees to every state a Republican form of government (Art. 4, Sec. 4). No state may join the United States unless it is a Republic. Our Republic is one dedicated to "liberty and justice for all." Minority individual rights are the priority. The people have natural rights instead of civil rights. The people are protected by the Bill of Rights from the majority. One vote in a jury can stop all of the majority from depriving any one of the people of his rights; this would not be so if the United States were a democracy. (see People's rights vs Citizens' rights)
In a pure democracy 51 beats 49[%]. In a democracy there is no such thing as a significant minority: there are no minority rights except civil rights (privileges) granted by a condescending majority. Only five of the U.S. Constitution's first ten amendments apply to Citizens of the United States. Simply stated, a democracy is a dictatorship of the majority. Socrates was executed by a democracy: though he harmed no one, the majority found him intolerable.
SOME DICTIONARY DEFINITIONS
Government. ....the government is but an agency of the state, distinguished as it must be in accurate thought from its scheme and machinery of government. ....In a colloquial sense, the United States or its representatives, considered as the prosecutor in a criminal action; as in the phrase, "the government objects to the witness." [Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p. 625]
Government; Republican government. One in which the powers of sovereignty are vested in the people and are exercised by the people, either directly, or through representatives chosen by the people, to whome those powers are specially delegated. In re Duncan, 139 U.S. 449, 11 S.Ct. 573, 35 L.Ed. 219; Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162, 22 L.Ed. 627. [Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, p. 626]
Democracy. That form of government in which the sovereign power resides in and is exercised by the whole body of free citizens directly or indirectly through a system of representation, as distinguished from a monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy. Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, pp. 388-389.
Note: Black's Law Dictionary, Fifth Edition, can be found in any law library and most law offices.
COMMENTS
Notice that in a Democracy, the sovereignty is in the whole body of the free citizens. The sovereignty is not divided to smaller units such as individual citizens. To solve a problem, only the whole body politic is authorized to act. Also, being citizens, individuals have duties and obligations to the government. The government's only obligations to the citizens are those legislatively pre-defined for it by the whole body politic.
In a Republic, the sovereignty resides in the people themselves, whether one or many. In a Republic, one may act on his own or through his representatives as he chooses to solve a problem. Further, the people have no obligation to the government; instead, the government being hired by the people, is obliged to its owner, the people.
The people own the government agencies. The government agencies own the citizens. In the United States we have a three-tiered cast system consisting of people ---> government agencies ---> and citizens.
The people did "ordain and establish this Constitution," not for themselves, but "for the United States of America." In delegating powers to the government agencies the people gave up none of their own. (See Preamble of U.S. Constitution). This adoption of this concept is why the U.S. has been called the "Great Experiment in self government." The People govern themselves, while their agents (government agencies) perform tasks listed in the Preamble for the benefit of the People. The experiment is to answer the question, "Can self-governing people coexist and prevail over government agencies that have no authority over the People?"
The citizens of the United States are totally subject to the laws of the United States (See 14th Amendment of U.S. Constitution). NOTE: U.S. citizenship did not exist until July 28, 1868.
Actually, the United States is a mixture of the two systems of government (Republican under Common Law, and democratic under statutory law). The People enjoy their God-given natural rights in the Republic. In a democracy, the Citizens enjoy only government granted privileges (also known as civil rights).
There was a great political division between two major philosophers, Hobbes and Locke. Hobbes was on the side of government. He believed that sovereignty was vested in the state. Locke was on the side of the People. He believed that the fountain of sovereignty was the People of the state. Statists prefer Hobbes. Populists choose Locke. In California, the Government Code sides with Locke. Sections 11120 and 54950 both say, "The people of this State do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies which serve them." The preambles of the U.S. and California Constitutions also affirm the choice of Locke by the People.
It is my hope that the U.S. will always remain a Republic, because I value individual freedom.
Thomas Jefferson said that liberty and ignorance cannot coexist.* Will you help to preserve minority rights by fulfilling the promise in the Pledge of Allegiance to support the Republic? Will you help by raising public awareness of the difference between the Republic and a democracy?
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LQ
Dodge Dakota
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9/26/2003
16:58:15
| RE: Michael Moore
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I don't know nothing about a free enterprize because or socialist govt took them all away.
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Fat Albert
Dodge Dakota
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9/26/2003
17:24:28
|  RE: Michael Moore
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That rant about the difference between a democracy and a republic was about the silliest thing I've ever heard. FYI: the US is both a democracy and a republic. The two terms are NOT mutually exclusive.
And what does the pledge of allegiance have to do with the founding fathers?!?
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gAYdAKOTA
Dodge Dakota
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9/26/2003
19:52:08
| RE: Michael Moore
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THE ONLY GIRL THAT WILL SLEEP WITH MICHAEL MOORE
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TimG
Dodge Dakota
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9/26/2003
20:13:55
| RE: Michael Moore
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I didnt post that repudlic vs democracy thread. Musta been my evil twin.
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.
Dodge Dakota
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6/28/2004
16:41:05
| Michael Moore Fahrenheit 9/11
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What you will learn watching Fahrenheit 9/11
(Nothing but Michael Moore's Lies and Fabrications)
On Friday Michael Moore's new "documentary" Fahrenheit 9/11 opened nationwide in 868 theatres and is already on its way to being Mr. Moore's most successful movie to date.
This film is not a balanced look at the facts revolving around the events of September 11th and its aftermath. This was America according to Michael Moore. So if you have an inclination to visit your local theatre, please let me save you the fourteen dollars and give you a list of the "facts" presented in the movie.
Michael Moore Fact # 1: George W. Bush knew a guy, who knew a guy, who stood next to a guy on an elevator, who happened to be the husband of a girl whose cousin was dating this really, really fat man, who worked with a guy who was related to (hold your breath for this one) Osama BIN LADEN!!!!!!!!!!! At this point in the film Michael Moore interviews a few democrats who say Bush is a bad stupid man who has some curious links to the Bin Laden family, plays music that probably got rejected from Unsolved Mysteries, and shows Bush and his father shaking the hands of Saudi Arabians.
Michael Moore Fact # 2: Americans supported the war with Iraq because we are trained dogs. Now you have to really focus on this part of the film to absorb it all. We as Americans are manipulated by the media with the orange alerts, terrorist threats, and cavity searches that we just went along blindly with after 9/11. After all there is no real terrorist threat. The media created it because they are manipulated by the Bush Administration. Apparently, even though the president is a buffoon, he is capable of controlling the media, who are controlling you. So who's pulling the President's strings you ask? (I know that was my obvious question.) The President is under the authority of (hold your breath again) the Saudi Arabians, Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Enron, the Rich Republicans, his Daddy, and Osama BIN LADEN!!!!!!!!!!!!
Michael Moore Fact # 3: Until we went there and disrupted the peace Baghdad was the happiest place in the world. It looked like a scene out of Mary Poppins. There were kids flying kites, playing in playgrounds, teenagers shopping at the Gap - well, it was all happiness and puppies. That whole third world country thing was just propaganda. What about the whole Saddam Hussein oppressive dictatorship you ask? Horse Puckey! Everything was just dandy until we went there and destroyed the peace in Iraq.
Michael Moore Fact #4: Our soldiers are dumb rednecks who like to play rock music while they kill innocent civilians. However, they were in turn preyed upon by Nazi Military recruiters who force these poor minorities - mainly from Flint, Michigan - to join up. After being forced into the military, then being forced to actually go fight in a war, these poor innocents are misled by our Government's immorality and that's why they molest prisoners.
Now if you still can't resist the urge to waste your money, you can learn more interesting Michael Moore facts like: 1) there are no cops in Oregon, 2) black people's votes don't count in Florida, and 3) protestors are the only people who aren't blind sheep in this country. Oh, and at the end of the movie expect a standing ovation from a group of people who don't see the movie as a presentation of Michael Moore's skewed, pessimistic view of America - they just see it as Amerika.
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Dontre Willia
Dodge Dakota
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6/28/2004
16:58:20
| RE: Michael Moore
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I will defend to the death Mr. Moore's or anybody elses RIGHT, that is GUARANTEED in the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, to make a film on any topic they choose so long as it fits within the legal bounds of morality.
The real danger to this REPUBLIC are the NAZI's who want to silence all critics of the Bush/Haliburton administration.
Why is it so easy for some to take every word that comes out of that texican dwarf as gospel yet everybody else is a commie idiot? No wonder you redumblicans are viewed as sheep.
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CEO
Dodge Dakota
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6/28/2004
21:59:29
| RE: Michael Moore
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I like mike more. I sell hiz films and make tons o' cash that I use to buy up companies so I can fire the workforce and move it all to China where slant eyed asians will work for pennies.
Ha ha hha.......I will have the last laugh.
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Stampy
Dodge Dakota
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6/29/2004
00:21:01
| RE: Michael Moore
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Michael Moore is full of Sh*t. Ignorant people flock to see his lies and actually believe them. The only thing Moore cares about is making money and the attention he gets.
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Jeremy
Dodge Dakota
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6/29/2004
00:56:04
| RE: Michael Moore
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Please elaborate on what makes you THINK he is a peice of S**T.
And the dude who's name is . Your facts are way off based. It's obvious that is film is anti bush. Your claims are even more outlandish than his. I unlike most people went into this film expecting some stretched truths or out right lies like in his previous films. I was suprised to find that all of his claims can be backed up with some research. Sure he used some un documentary techniques to get his ideas across, but this movie is the greatest service anyone could do for this country at this time.
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.
Dodge Dakota
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6/29/2004
03:50:10
| RE: Michael Moore
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The last thing redumblicans want to do is think for themselves.
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F U C K more
Dodge Dakota
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6/29/2004
08:16:13
| RE: Michael Moore
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the dude is a fat,commie,ass banger from canada who would like nothing more than to tear down this nation,save your money,or support the scum,i dont care.
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