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. . . MOORE (MICHAEL) see "EVIL" for related links Michael Moore has released the cinematic equivalent of a French kiss to all who hate America. He is the leading exponent of HATRIOTISM. "HATE-RIOTISM" describes the new breeze blowing through the American media. It is now "cool" and "relevant" to mock everything for which our soldiers are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Criticizing democracy and America has long been in vogue in continental Europe, from those who look with disdain at American "naivetι," while still lamenting the Islamic onslaught. Now imported to our shores, hatriotism is the simplest way to get the growing contingent of professional protestors who populate television audiences to cheer. Mock America. Mock our involvement in Iraq. Mock President Bush. . .and get rousing applause. The only problem is. . .America has freed my kinsmen. I am a Persian Turkish immigrant raised as a Sunni Muslim, and in the interest of full disclosure, I must state that I left Islam in 1982, and became an American citizen. Yet as I survey the current cultural landscape, I cannot help but be less than enthused when Michael Moore states that his film is a call to true patriotism. The present conflict is not a war against Islam, and neither is it a "war for oil." In the previous six military endeavors, American troops sided with Muslims who were under attack, and there are much less extreme methods of garnering oil. This is a war of ideologies, and with Fahrenheit 911, Moore clearly shows his. [...] The central fact of the current controversy is the conflict between Islamic theocracy and American democracy. Islam has not now nor has it ever allowed religious freedom or freedom of expression. The best the Islamic republics can offer is "religious toleration." Based on the "Pact of Umar," religious toleration allows non-Muslims to enter Islamic republics, but they must pay a tax (jizyat). They can practice their faiths, but they cannot convert anyone from Islam. To do so means deportation or worse. Further, Islamic prophecy foretells of worldwide conversion to Sharia law under Islam, and thus, those who are fighting against us are "holy warriors." In this instance, I would say our president is half-right. He says we are not at war with Islam. I agree. However, a significant portion of Islam is in fact at war with us. And Michael Moore is blind to it all. [...] There is one final irony. There is a film producer who has worked for years, chasing down Michael Moore in an effort to interview him. The young man, named Michael Wilson, is making a documentary titled Michael Moore Hates America. So far, Moore has dodged him at every turn. Anyone who knows cinema recognizes that this is the exact tactic Moore took in his film Roger and Me, as he chased an automobile executive for an interview. Do you see the paradox? Because Michael Moore is now in the mainstream of hatriotism, and now the young conservatives are the radicals, Moore has become his own worst nightmare. Michael Moore has become that which he mocked. He has become an aloof elite. --Dr. Ergun Mehmet Caner "Moore's 'hate-riotism'" [24 June 2004] - 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. --Christopher Hitchens (1949 ) British journalist, author, and literary critic. "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore" [21 June 2004] - - More thoughts about the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" : On the whole, it [Fahrenheit 9/11] is not accurate. --PBS journalist Gwen Ifill Anybody who gets their information from Michael Moore is as dumb as somebody who gets their history from Oliver Stone. --film critic Leonard Martin (who gave the film a 'do see' recommendation, but cautioned that Moore's work should be viewed as "propaganda," not as "documentary.") 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. --Christopher Hitchens (1949 ) British journalist, author, and literary critic. "Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore" [21 June 2004] The danger of living in a world where you can't hear from Michael Moore is very slim. [...] But speaking here in my capacity as a polished, sophisticated European as well, it seems to me the laugh here is on the polished, sophisticated Europeans. They think Americans are fat, vulgar, greedy, stupid, ambitious and ignorant and so on. And they've taken as their own, as their representative American someone who actually embodies all of those qualities. --Christopher Hitchens (1949 ) British journalist, author, and literary critic. On "Scarborough Country" MSNBC [18 May 2004] - - Moore knew he would have to deal with the actual 9/11 attacks somehow; so after the long, boring intro explaining how Bush stole the 2000 election ..., we see the footage of the 9/11 atrocities. Well, actually no we don't. Moore cuts to a black screen, and plays only the sounds of the attacks, before an extended montage of drifting ashes and papers, artfully floating through the air while mournful music plays. ...why would someone who clearly understands the power of images choose not to show the most powerful images of our time? Because Moore knew that if he showed those images, which have been mostly absent from media for almost 3 years, he ran the risk of awakening the anger and feelings of intense danger we all experienced that day. And that was a risk he could not run because it could very well spoil the tone of the rest of the film, and expose him for the smirking, unserious buffoon he is. After the blank screen 9/11 section of the film, he cuts almost immediately to scenes from talk shows, with bumbling people trying to sell anti-terrorism gadgets, and interviews several anti-Bush talking heads about the "climate of fear" that the Bush administration imposed on the country. Moore is a canny filmmaker. He realized that if he segued immediately to this snarky, derisive viewpoint after showing people jumping to their deaths from the top of the World Trade Center, some of the Moore Koolaid drinkers might feel twinges of conscience; they might remember what it felt like to see the largest buildings in New York City collapse, crushing and ripping apart the bodies of thousands of their fellow Americans. Some of them might even start to come out from under Moore's cinematic spell, if such an ugly reality were allowed to intrude. They might get mad. And some of them would be mad at him. So Moore, cowardly to the bottom of his hateful little shriveled soul, cut to a black screen. --Charles Johnson, "The Cowardice of Michael Moore" [1 July 2004] - "Fifty-six Deceits in Fahrenheit 911" By Dave Kopel There are many articles which have pointed out the distortions, falsehoods, and lies in the film Fahrenheit 911. This report compiles the Fahrenheit 911 deceits which have been identified by a wide variety of reviewers. In addition, I identify some inaccuracies which have not been addressed by other writers. Fahrenheit mocks President Bush for continuing to read a story to a classroom of elementary school children after he was told about the September 11 attacks. What Moore did not tell you: Gwendolyn Tose- Rigell, the principal of Emma E. Booker Elementary School, praised Bush's action: "I don't think anyone could have handled it better. What would it have served if he had jumped out of his chair and ran out of the room?" She said the video doesn't convey all that was going on in the classroom, but Bush's presence had a calming effect and "helped us get through a very difficult day." "Sarasota principal defends Bush from 'Fahrenheit 9/11' portrayal" Associated Press [24 June 2004] - - The Guardian of London reported today organizations related to the Middle East-based terrorist network have offered to help promote the film in the United Arab Emirates. [...] The terror-war supporting organization Move America Forward released a statement today saying the news about Hezbollah proves a contention it made about terrorist endorsement of Moore's award- winning documentary. Earlier this week, Move America Forward Vice Chair Melanie Morgan declared: "It would be more appropriate to have this propaganda shown at al-Qaida training camps rather than American movie theaters." The organization released an "apology" for Morgan's statement today, saying she didn't go far enough with her criticism. "I regret that we limited our comments solely to the terrorist organization al- Qaida and failed to mention that other terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, would also rally behind this film," said the group's chairman, Howard Kaloogian. --"'Fahrenheit 9/11' gets thumbs-up from Hezbollah" [17 June 2004]  ;void(0)) NEW YORK TIMES . . see "JOURNALISM" for related links - Lately, when I tell people I work for a newspaper, I've detected the subtle signs of disapproval the dirty looks; the snide remarks; the severed animal heads in my bed. How did we get into this situation? Without pointing the finger of blame at any one institution, I would say it is entirely the fault of The New York Times. --Dave Barry (1947 ) American humorist. "Right or wrong, we're journalists" - - In the comprehensiveness of its coverage, accuracy of its reporting, the precision of language, spelling, grammar, the Times was the best. No paper came close. Its reporters, writers and editors were a constant presence at Columbia, conducting classes, lecturing us on how to report, write, edit, criticize, editorialize. We were a farm club for the Times, though only a few of us ever made its roster. Among our faculty, it was considered the acme of success in our profession to write for the Times. Even copy editors on the "rim" of the copy desk were legends. Though we were all in a master's program and some had edited college papers, won national awards or worked professionally, it was still an honor to be invited to serve as a copy boy at the Times. Thus the sordid story of Times' star Jayson Blair is very big. For that story exposed a total collapse of standards at the Times and revealed the corruption of a once-great institution, which has prostituted itself to the commands of "diversity." [...] Over 42 months, the Times had had to publish 50 "corrections" of Jayson Blair's stories. A year ago, metropolitan editor Jonathan Landman sent an e-mail to all newsroom administrators. "We have to stop Jayson from writing for the Times. Right now." Yet nothing was done, and soon Blair was being granted plum assignments once given only to the most experienced of reporters. Who hired Jayson Blair? Who promoted him? Who protected him? And why? Like the purloined letter, the answer is right in front of us. Jayson Blair is black. The New York Times worships at the altar of "diversity." So, Times editors cut him all the slack he needed. And Jayson Blair knew how to snooker "progressives." Had Jayson Blair been a white graduate of Bob Jones, he would not have lasted past his second correction. Indeed, he would never have been hired. But he was, because Jayson Blair was exactly the right color for the New York Times' guilty conscience. The Jayson Blair scandal at the New York Times is a case of the chickens of affirmative action coming home to roost. [...] Raines and his co-editors have made the voice of the American establishment an object of mockery and ridicule in Middle America. Somewhere, today, Spiro Agnew is smiling. --Patrick Buchanan (1938 ) American journalist, author, and candidate for U.S. President. "The revenge of Spiro Agnew" [14 May 2003] - - It is interesting that editors of The New York Times take such a sanctimonious stance in discussing the Jayson Blair affair. The New York Times is known as a respectable newspaper only because the New York Times has said so. Actually The New York Times should not have had any credibility for the last 70 years. By the admission of its own executive editor in 1987 it had served as a mouthpiece for Joseph Stalin. According to a State Department memo declassified in 1987, Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty, stated to a State Department official that "in agreement with The New York Times and the Soviet authorities," his dispatches always "reflect(ed) the official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own." Duranty it should be remembered became famous for his misreporting of the Ukrainian famine. When Executive Editor Max Frankel was confronted with this memo by Dr. James Mace he did not deny its veracity. His response was that Dr. Mace's information "doesn't seem to qualify as news. It's really history, and belongs in history books." In June 1990 Karl E. Meyer wrote in the Times that Duranty's reporting was, "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." --John Dietrich, _The Morgenthau Plan: Soviet Influence on American Postwar Planning_ - - How to ward off atrophy and routine, you ask? Well, I can give you a small and perhaps ridiculous example. Every day, the _New York Times_ carries a motto in a box on its front page. "All the News That's Fit to Print," it says. It's been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine that most readers of the canonical sheet have long ceased to notice this bannered and flaunted symbol of its mental furniture. I myself check every day to make sure that the bright, smug, pompous, idiotic claim is still there. Then I check to make sure that it still irritates me. If I can still exclaim, under my breath, *why* do they insult me and *what* do they take me for and what *the hell* is it supposed to mean unless it's as obviously complacent and conceited and censorious as it seems to be, then I at least know that I still have a pulse. You may wish to choose a more rigorous mental workout but I credit this daily infusion of annoyance with extending my life span. --Christopher Hitchens (1949 ) British journalist, author, and literary critic. _Letters to a Young Contrarian_ [2001] - - Perception verses reality it's a point that needs to be made until the cows come home. Did you know that on Tuesday of this week Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, addressed a joint session of Congress? Did you know that not one word of that address, nor even any mention that the event even occurred, appeared in the following day's national edition of the New York Times? Aside from a photograph of President Bush and Mr. Karzai on its front page, and a caption mentioning that the two had a news conference in the Rose Garden, the June 16 [2004] edition of the New York Times contains not a single word about what Mr. Karzai said to Congress, to Bush or to the American people. Why the cover up? --Bob Kohn, "Gray Lady spikes Karzai story" [19 June 2004] - - It will be my earnest aim that the "New York Times" give the news, all the news, in concise and attractive form, in language that is permissible in good society, and give it early, if not earlier, than it can be learned through any other medium. To give the news impartially, without fear of favor, regardless of party, sect, or interest involved; to make the columns of the "New York Times" a forum for the consideration of all public questions of public importance, and, to that end, to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion. --Adolph S. Ochs (18581935) Publisher of The New York Times. Salutatory in the "New York Times" [18 August 1896]. If a newspaper prints a sex crime, it's smut, but when The New York Times prints it, it's a sociological study. --Quip attributed to Adolph S. Ochs (18581935) Publisher of The New York Times. All the news that's fit to print. --Adolph S. Ochs (18581935) Publisher of The New York Times. "N.Y. Times" [25 October 1896] - - A KIND WORD FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, more than a few, actually. I'm working on a law review article about the regulation of nanotechnology, and I've been going through the mainstream media coverage of the subject. The Times is way ahead of anyone else and I mean way ahead. Not only is the quality of its coverage excellent, but the sheer quantity outstrips everyone else by a mile. This is the sort of thing that makes the Times great. And I suspect that I speak for a lot of people in saying that if Howell Raines, et al., had focused on this kind of work, excellent reporting on a wide array of topics, taking advantage of the Times' superior size and scope, things would be a lot better. I hope that the new editors will keep that in mind. People don't criticize the Times because it isn't a national treasure. They or at least I criticize it because it _is_ one, and recent zone-flooding on Augusta National, etc., has squandered that status. --Glenn Reynolds, http://www.instapundit.com/archives/009967.php#009967 [9 June 2003] -- Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. --1921 New York Times editorial, about Bob Goddard's revolutionary rocket work -- Fit and Unfit to Print _The Wall Street Journal_ June 30, 2006 'Not everything is fit to print. There is to be regard for at least probable factual accuracy, for danger to innocent lives, for human decencies, and even, if cautiously, for nonpartisan considerations of the national interest." So wrote the great legal scholar, Alexander Bickel, about the duties of the press in his 1975 collection of essays "The Morality of Consent." We like to re-read Bickel to get our Constitutional bearings, and he's been especially useful since the New York Times decided last week to expose a major weapon in the U.S. arsenal against terror financing. President Bush, among others, has since assailed the press for revealing the program, and the Times has responded by wrapping itself in the First Amendment, the public's right to know and even The Wall Street Journal. We published a story on the same subject on the same day, and the Times has since claimed us as its ideological wingman. So allow us to explain what actually happened, putting this episode within the larger context of a newspaper's obligations during wartime. * * * We should make clear that the News and Editorial sections of the Journal are separate, with different editors. The Journal story on Treasury's antiterror methods was a product of the News department, and these columns had no say in the decision to publish. We have reported the story ourselves, however, and the facts are that the Times's decision was notably different from the Journal's. According to Tony Fratto, Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, he first contacted the Times some two months ago. He had heard Times reporters were asking questions about the highly classified program involving Swift, an international banking consortium that has cooperated with the U.S. to follow the money making its way to the likes of al Qaeda or Hezbollah. Mr. Fratto went on to ask the Times not to publish such a story on grounds that it would damage this useful terror-tracking method. Sometime later, Secretary John Snow invited Times Executive Editor Bill Keller to his Treasury office to deliver the same message. Later still, Mr. Fratto says, Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the leaders of the 9/11 Commission, made the same request of Mr. Keller. Democratic Congressman John Murtha and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte also urged the newspaper not to publish the story. The Times decided to publish anyway, letting Mr. Fratto know about its decision a week ago Wednesday. The Times agreed to delay publishing by a day to give Mr. Fratto a chance to bring the appropriate Treasury official home from overseas. Based on his own discussions with Times reporters and editors, Mr. Fratto says he believed "they had about 80% of the story, but they had about 30% of it wrong." So the Administration decided that, in the interest of telling a more complete and accurate story, they would declassify a series of talking points about the program. They discussed those with the Times the next day, June 22. Around the same time, Treasury contacted Journal reporter Glenn Simpson to offer him the same declassified information. Mr. Simpson has been working the terror finance beat for some time, including asking questions about the operations of Swift, and it is a common practice in Washington for government officials to disclose a story that is going to become public anyway to more than one reporter. Our guess is that Treasury also felt Mr. Simpson would write a straighter story than the Times, which was pushing a violation-of-privacy angle; on our reading of the two June 23 stories, he did. * * * We recount all this because more than a few commentators have tried to link the Journal and Times at the hip. On the left, the motive is to help shield the Times from political criticism. On the right, the goal is to tar everyone in the "mainstream media." But anyone who understands how publishing decisions are made knows that different newspapers make up their minds differently. Some argue that the Journal should have still declined to run the antiterror story. However, at no point did Treasury officials tell us not to publish the information. And while Journal editors knew the Times was about to publish the story, Treasury officials did not tell our editors they had urged the Times not to publish. What Journal editors did know is that they had senior government officials providing news they didn't mind seeing in print. If this was a "leak," it was entirely authorized. Would the Journal have published the story had we discovered it as the Times did, and had the Administration asked us not to? Speaking for the editorial columns, our answer is probably not. Mr. Keller's argument that the terrorists surely knew about the Swift monitoring is his own leap of faith. The terror financiers might have known the U.S. could track money from the U.S., but they might not have known the U.S. could follow the money from, say, Saudi Arabia. The first thing an al Qaeda financier would have done when the story broke is check if his bank was part of Swift. Just as dubious is the defense in a Times editorial this week that "The Swift story bears no resemblance to security breaches, like disclosure of troop locations, that would clearly compromise the immediate safety of specific individuals." In this asymmetric war against terrorists, intelligence and financial tracking are the equivalent of troop movements. They are America's main weapons. The Times itself said as much in a typically hectoring September 24, 2001, editorial "Finances of Terror": "Much more is needed, including stricter regulations, the recruitment of specialized investigators and greater cooperation with foreign banking authorities." Isn't the latter precisely what the Swift operation is? Whether the Journal News department would agree with us in this or other cases, we can't say. We do know, however, that Journal editors have withheld stories at the government's request in the past, notably during the Gulf War when they learned that a European company that had sold defense equipment to Iraq was secretly helping the Pentagon. Readers have to decide for themselves, based on our day-to-day work, whether they think Journal editors are making the correct publishing judgments. * * * Which brings us back to the New York Times. We suspect that the Times has tried to use the Journal as its political heatshield precisely because it knows our editors have more credibility on these matters. As Alexander Bickel wrote, the relationship between government and the press in the free society is an inevitable and essential contest. The government needs a certain amount of secrecy to function, especially on national security, and the press in its watchdog role tries to discover what it can. The government can't expect total secrecy, Bickel writes, "but the game similarly calls on the press to consider the responsibilities that its position implies. Not everything is fit to print." The obligation of the press is to take the government seriously when it makes a request not to publish. Is the motive mainly political? How important are the national security concerns? And how do those concerns balance against the public's right to know? The problem with the Times is that millions of Americans no longer believe that its editors would make those calculations in anything close to good faith. We certainly don't. On issue after issue, it has become clear that the Times believes the U.S. is not really at war, and in any case the Bush Administration lacks the legitimacy to wage it. So, for example, it promulgates a double standard on "leaks," deploring them in the case of Valerie Plame and demanding a special counsel when the leaker was presumably someone in the White House and the journalist a conservative columnist. But then it hails as heroic and public-spirited the leak to the Times itself that revealed the National Security Agency's al Qaeda wiretaps. Mr. Keller's open letter explaining his decision to expose the Treasury program all but admits that he did so because he doesn't agree with, or believe, the Bush Administration. "Since September 11, 2001, our government has launched broad and secret anti-terror monitoring programs without seeking authorizing legislation and without fully briefing the Congress," he writes, and "some officials who have been involved in these programs have spoken to the Times about their discomfort over the legality of the government's actions and over the adequacy of oversight." Since the Treasury story broke, as it happens, no one but Congressman Ed Markey and a few cranks have even objected to the program, much less claimed illegality. Perhaps Mr. Keller has been listening to his boss, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., who in a recent commencement address apologized to the graduates because his generation "had seen the horrors and futility of war and smelled the stench of corruption in government. "Our children, we vowed, would never know that. So, well, sorry. It wasn't supposed to be this way," the publisher continued. "You weren't supposed to be graduating into an America fighting a misbegotten war in a foreign land. You weren't supposed to be graduating into a world where we are still fighting for fundamental human rights," and so on. Forgive us if we conclude that a newspaper led by someone who speaks this way to college seniors has as a major goal not winning the war on terror but obstructing it. * * * In all of this, Mr. Sulzberger and the Times are reminiscent of a publisher from an earlier era, Colonel Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune. In the 1930s and into World War II, the Tribune was implacable in its opposition to FDR and his conduct of the war. During the war itself, his newspaper also exposed secrets, including one story after the victory at Midway in 1942 that essentially disclosed that the U.S. had broken Japanese codes. The government considered, but decided against, prosecuting McCormick's paper under the Espionage Act of 1917. That was a wise decision, and not only because it would have drawn more attention to the Tribune "scoop." Once a government starts indicting reporters for publishing stories, there will be no drawing any lines against such prosecutions, and we will be well down the road to an Official Secrets Act that will let government dictate coverage. The current political clamor is nonetheless a warning to the press about the path the Times is walking. Already, its partisan demand for a special counsel in the Plame case has led to a reporter going to jail and to defeats in court over protecting sources. Now the politicians are talking about Espionage Act prosecutions. All of which is cause for the rest of us in the media to recognize, heeding Alexander Bickel, that sometimes all the news is not fit to print. end page | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | RADICAL THOUGHT | TERRORISM 1 | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | |
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