NP Michael Moore

[jbor]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/09/1089000339554.html?oneclick=true

One doesn't need to be a Bush-supporter to recognise Moore for what he is, a
self-serving propagandist and hypocrite, and the article finds its marks
very strongly in my opinion, which is why I posted the link to it. The
supporting evidence exposing the film's deceits is readily available on the
Internet (Keith, I believe,  has posted a link).

I thought this quote particularly apt, as it circumscribes the rhetoric and
mind-set of both the Bush Administration *and* the extreme anti-Bush lobby
as embodied in Moore and many of his fellow-travellers:
 
> [...]
> His hectoring tone, too, is a reflection of the times. No sooner had Marxism
> collapsed as an organising force or a credible moral universe than other
> orthodoxies filled the void left by the end of the Cold War. Religious
> fundamentalism has flourished, and the leading chronicler of this change,
> Professor Philip Jenkins, found that the clear winners have been the most
> uncompromising, most conservative and most combative groups with "a strongly
> apocalyptic mind-set".
> 
> Sounds like Michael Moore. His scorched-earth rhetoric, selective moral
> absolutism, hatred of opponents, and innate conservatism - he uses the
> nostalgic rhetoric of old-line socialism (preached but not practised) - are
> markers of the fundamentalists and evangelists. Moore happens to be a
> secular fundamentalist.

It's apparent that Moore is something of a sacred cow around here, one whose
myth-making and hypocrisies are not open to discussion and evaluation and to
which we should remain cowed and compliant. The double standards are
palpable. The pro-Moore argument seems to be based on the assumption that
propaganda and deceit are OK so long as it's "our" propaganda and deceit
(which smells way too much like the pro-Bush argument for my liking), and
that getting rid of a tyrant like Bush is a brave and noble aim but that
getting rid of tyrants like Saddam or the Taliban leaders has been the crime
of the century. That lives lost in the overthrow of Saddam and the
subsequent restoration of Iraq are worth four and five times more than Shia,
Kurdish, Christian and Mandaean lives lost under Saddam's dictatorship; that
while democracy and freedom are the inalienable birthrights of all
Westerners, Iraqis and Afghanis are not entitled to the same systems of
natural and social justice just because of the accident of their birth and
their skin colour. And, just imagine what would have happened to someone
like Moore or the woman in the movie theatre under Saddam ...

best