Less Would Have Been Moore
There’s an episode of the Simpsons where the children are removed from Marge and Homer’s house and placed into foster care with the Flanders. They are cut off from talking to their parents by phone, so Bart and Lisa use the Flanders boys’ printing press to do a mock-up of a newspaper telling their parents that they miss them. Bart prints the sweet message to mom and dad on the back of a previous article he had already written about Todd’s lack of hygeine.
“Todd Smells? Ugghh, I already knew that,” whines Homer as he reads the wrong side of Bart’s fake newspaper.
I had a similar feeling yesterday after watching ‘Farenheit 9/11′:
“Bush Blows? Ugghh, I already knew that.”
But there was no other side to the movie for me to slip to… maybe I should have asked that it be played backwards…perhaps to discover that Paul really is dead, after all.
Maybe I just wasn’t the target audience. Madonna liked the movie for getting her dander up and showing the emotional toll of war in a mother’s face. Karol’s younger brother said it is making him question what he’s heard from his Bush lovin’ sis (I don’t mean that in a gay way…not that there’s anything wrong with that): “He said I have some explaining to do,” she told me on Friday night.
But my dander was already up, I know first-hand the emotional toll a child in war causes a mother because my aunt suffered a massive heart attack early this year one day after my cousin’s stay in Iraq was suddenly lenghthened past his year. And I definitely knew that Karol has some serious explaining to do — so Moore’s movie fell flat with me.
Hitchens was right about the movie’s treatment of the foreign-policy aspect of the “War on Terror:”
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore’s direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush’s removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn’t even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore’s view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending.
The twenty minutes spent interviewing experts and showing clips of old Dragnet movies about how we should have detained those members of bin Laden’s family because they were Saudis — bordered, if not crossed the line right over into it — on the xenophobic. “I wouldn’t have lost any sleep if the bin Ladens were inconvienced.” That is not the American way — calling in favors and getting preferential treatment — now that comes a tad closer.
I wish he had delved into his innuendos and found some there, there. What is George H. W. Bush telling people on these trips abroad as a member of the Carlyle Group? Moore says he has George W.’s national guard records — well? What’s in ‘em? Why was he suspended from flying?
What happened to that Corporal who said he would go to jail rather than go back to Iraq? Are there others like him? (Yes, of course, there are) Well, let’s go interview them.
Show me more of the wounded soldiers than there missing limbs. What’s their story? Why did they sign up? Was it worth it for them? Did Bush succeed in cutting their combat pay?
Instead of a quick panoroma of the Bush administration starting on election day 2000, which in a two-hour format necessarily means short segments on a whole range of topics, he should have picked one thing and turned a critical eye to it. Election malfeasance. Iraq. 9/11. Afghanistan. Big Business. Bush’s vacation policy.
One thing and then hammer it.
Compare the length of the average American vacation. Followed an Iraqi family from pre-attack to hand over. Investigate voter registration rules.
Basically, tell me something I don’t know.
On the whole, the movie felt, alternatively like a trailer for a really groundbreaking documentary for deceptive tactics of military recruiters or the ruin of Baghdad to a lengthy episode of the Daily Show with Jon Stewart– but not as funny.
The movie is great for anyone who hasn’t really been paying attention for the last four years. (Psst…Britney…I’m looking at you…) But if you’re looking for answers or action, forget it. Moore isn’t a journalist, I guess and maybe the movie is merely a blueprint for an enterprising reporter to follow the money or the blood or the oil to the X marks the spot where the skeletons are buried.
But until then I am left with more questions than answers, not the least of them — what was so artistic about this movie? At least Bowling for Columbine had funny little original cartoon drawings, there wasn’t anything in Farenheit that I couldn’t have seen or did see on Meet the Press on any given Sunday.
I also wonder what the parents of some of the soldiers shown in the film are thinking (especially that “burn, motherf-, burn” guy) Are any of those soldiers dead now…
I also wonder if the family of that dead soldier whose pay was docked for the five days of the month he didn’t work because he was dead — will get that money back now that it has been made public?
See? more and more questions. I mean, Moore and Moore.
Iocaste also has a great review.