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Bowling For Columbine Movie


Lotharr
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"

I am very happy and excited to tell you that this Friday, October 11, my new film, "Bowling for Columbine," will open in New York and Los Angeles.

It is, I promise, the last thing the Bushies want projected on the movie screens across America this week. The film is, first and foremost, a devastating indictment of the violence that is done in our name for profit and power -- and no one, in all the advance screenings I have attended, has left the theatre with anything short of rage. I truly believe this film has the potential to rock the nation and get people energized to do something.

"

Michael Moore

Yes yes liberal hack.....

But you can bet this will be an interesting movie....

Hey you! yeah, you! If can't create proper topic subjects, DO NOT CREATE TOPICS. This is the last time I'm changing a thread subject for the sake of clarity

[ 10-21-2002, 11:10 AM: Message edited by: Supreme Cmdr ]

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punch.gif

The guy who made this says it would be okay if people keep their guns, but they just need to have them registered.

As if registering the guns of legal gunowners would prevent crime from those who don't intend to register them.

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I don't think I can comment on this, seeing I have just spent 5 minutes re-reading the first line. I keep thinking "How can it be the ~this Friday the 11th~ if it's the 20th"

Hmmm mabey I should forgo the highlights hahahaha I think the dye is getting to me!

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Guest Grayfox

yep... we'll all just start calling him citzen kane... oh wait that name was already taken...

ya im going to go register my weapon tomorrow... then im going to go rob a bank with it, make off with about 2 mil, and rent me a villa down in mexico for 99 years (cant buy them).

ahhh 18 year old female mexican housemaids...

maybe the people left the theater with rage because they were expecting something better?

i wonder if he'll have any ruby ridge footage???

[ 10-21-2002, 01:57 AM: Message edited by: Grayfox ]

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quote:


Originally posted by Lotharr:

"

I am very happy and excited to tell you that this Friday, October 11, my new film, "Bowling for Columbine," will open in New York and Los Angeles.

It is, I promise, the last thing the Bushies want projected on the movie screens across America this week. The film is, first and foremost, a devastating indictment of the violence that is done in our name for profit and power -- and no one, in all the advance screenings I have attended, has left the theatre with anything short of rage. I truly believe this film has the potential to rock the nation and get people energized to do something.

"

Michael Moore

Yes yes liberal hack.....

But you can bet this will be an interesting movie....


FOR THE LAST F*CKING TIME!!! IF you ladies are going to keep lifting stuff off other sites, POST THE FRIGGING LINK and give credit to the source.

The NEXT FOOL who pulls this stunt is going to get banned from this site WITHOUT WARNING.

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heh, I found this excerpt from MSN quite interesting

quote:


But Moore isn't ultimately gunning for the NRA or the State Department. What he's doing is actually braver and more valuable. He's directly posing the question: Why is the gun-murder rate so much higher in the United States than in so many other (not-at-war) countries? Europeans have a history vastly more violent than ours. Japan has a higher appetite for bloody movies and video games. Canada has as many guns per capita. But the murder rates in those places are low. In the movie's most hilarious sequence, Moore walks up to a succession of Canadian homes and discovers the doors unlocked: No one is scared.

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  • 2 weeks later...

A+

MM shows why gun violence in America is cultural and connected to certain "truths" people buy into everyday in our country.....

I would ask before any classic liberal, pseudo objectivist, or Machiavelli parishioner share any profound insights..they go see the movie first.

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Any film by this panty wasted, yellow bellied liberal belongs in a trashpile, not on a movie screen.

The murder rate in the US is NOT the highest as he claims, the fact of the matter is that guns do far more good then harm. Over 2 1/2 million gunowners used those weapons in self defense in the year 2001. Less then a 1/4 of that number about 500,000 crimes were committed with guns, mostly, about 95% were comitted by people who legally cannot own or carry guns. Ex-felons, underage etc, and 100% of those crimes broke some if not a more of the gun laws already in place.

He started with a particular view and then did everything he could to prove it. Well, sorry charlie, it is neither scientific, nor correct.

Guns are tools, they don't pull their own triggers, they cannot control into whose hands they go into.

THe government has NO RIGHT to know whether I own guns or not, unless they need me and my guns to fight a war, via the militia. Otherwise, they can kiss off, I have the 5th and 2nd amendments of the constitution to protect me. Unless those 2 amendments have been repealed while I was not looking.

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Guest Grayfox

well i did waste a few bucks and went and seen this "movie"... ill use that term loosely.

i dont know what magazine this fool got his facts from, but maybe he should subscribe to a different one...

next time ill take 7$ and wipe my a$$ with it and i would probably get better use out of my cash... sheesh

quote:

I have the 5th and 2nd amendments of the constitution to protect me. Unless those 2 amendments have been repealed while I was not looking.


better watch out jag the liberals might want that to happen...

hmm maybe a different type of punishment should be in order for certain crimes. maybe that would lower the crime rate???

ill use the classic example and go with some middle eastern countries punishment rules. someone breaks a law there and more than likely theyll lose a limb... or worse. if the perp survives its almost garaunteed he wont do it again, and if hes stupid enough to, then he'll get permanately removed from the gene pool. im surprised the bleeding heart didnt cover that... or maybe he did and i just fell asleep thru it...

also look at taiwan and some other SE asian countries that cane their offenders. i dont know about anyone else but if i got the shit beat out of me with a cane for doing something illegal, and that was the minimum punishment they meted out, i would definitely think twice about breaking another law. not like this panty waist crap we call a judical system we have here.

look at the japanese. they are a warrior culture. why dont you see alot of crime over there??? cause the police arent afraid of laying an ass whipping on you. do it here and its police brutality and it all gets blown into a big racial thing...

but did he cover that??? i dont remember i was too busy catching a nap.

[ 11-03-2002, 01:10 AM: Message edited by: Grayfox ]

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quote:

So you went and watched the movie?


You couldn't pay me to go see this waste of film.

The day I pay some liberal hack with his socialist agenda, to see his movie is the day that I have nothing better to do with my time.

I have LOTS of better things to do with my time.

Go to the range comes to mind, cleaning my weapons come to mind.

Reading the national enquirer comes to mind as well, at least some of the stories would be true.

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Here are the other reasons I will not see this waste of film.

quote:

Jackass, The Documentary

| Oct. 31. 2002 | Matt Labash

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, journalists are human too. We are not merely hecklers in the human comedy, the suckerfish of tragedy. We have thoughts and feelings. We experience pain and insecurity. We suffer disappointment and sorrow. Sometimes, we just need to be held.

Of all these human emotions, the most acutely-felt is often regret. For though we make it look effortless--often because we don't exert any effort--it can be a tough racket: being forced to capture in a few-thousand word snapshot all the nuances of people's lives, being frustrated when you don't quite nail them. Take me, for instance. Four years ago, I wrote a piece on documentary-filmmaker Michael Moore. Entitled "One-Trick Phony," it was what is known in the trade as a "kneecap job." Even by my own often uncharitable standards, it was a nasty piece of work.

Taking on the self-styled populist avenger, the bra-strap-snapper of corporate America, I went after Moore with a pick-axe. I said his career had been "one, long tiresome impression of a harlequin Reuther brother whistling the song of the working man," while all he really did was ambush mid-level proles in company lobbies. I called him a "Ritz-Carlton revolutionary" and a "high-cholesterol Cassandra" who dressed like "an unemployed lumberjack." After displaying initial comic genius with his General Motors-bashing "Roger & Me"--his critically acclaimed, if factually-compromised first film--Moore had, I suggested, become "a preachy bore . . . whose work has become so sanctimoniously unamusing it could make Cesar Chavez pull for management." Then I quit playing Mr. Nice Guy.

While most Moore critics stop at ridiculing him, since he is, both figuratively and literally, a fat target, I talked to his co-workers, acquaintances, and former employees, nearly all of whom made my editorial pronouncements look like a good-natured game of Slapjack. They called him "paranoid," "mercurial," "demanding," and a "fork-tongued manipulator." Though Moore's entire shtick is predicated on fighting the jackboot of corporate oppression, they detailed everything from his temper tantrums to his threatening to fire an assistant who sent a yellow cab instead of a limo to fetch him at the airport. They compared working conditions under Moore to "a sweatshop," "indentured servitude," and "a concentration camp." One of his former producers said it was like "working for Idi Amin--without the laughs." Another staffer simply said, "My parents want him dead."

But that was then, and now, it is four years later. With the mellowing brought on by age, I realize that we are all God's children, doing the best we can, struggling to get by. And so today, outside the heat of battle, in the cool light of day, as I watch Moore's latest documentary, "Bowling For Columbine," I can't help but be haunted by one mammoth regret: that my piece wasn't nearly mean enough.

For some time now, cultural observers have noticed that being a sparkling left-wing satirist is not a vocation in danger of overpopulation. Now that Mort Sahl is dead (or is he still alive?), you might count Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower, which is hard to do if you've actually read them. The Nation's Katha Pollitt is a sparkling self-parodist, though not much of a satirist. So the field has pretty much been abandoned to Michael Moore, and more's the pity, since it is hard to imagine the likes of Twain or Swift comparing themselves to Mother Teresa (as Moore has done), while still expecting to be taken seriously as funnymen.

Not that the marketplace has passed a similar judgment. Moore's latest book, "Stupid White Men" (which isn't, as the title suggests, an autobiography), has become a New York Times number one best-seller. A collection of union-hall-pamphleteer conspiracies stitched together in the mouth-breathing verbiage of someone who's quite proud of their GED, the book is useful in that it collects all Moore's crackpot theories in one place. The media tells us lies. . . . the election was stolen. . . . George W. Bush is an alcoholic. . . . we need Jimmy Carter. . . . on and on it goes.

As for the yuks quotient, a typical line is "I think it was Thomas Aquinas who once observed, 'There's nothing like your own shit to make you realize how much you stink.'" Clever stuff. In a sidebar chart (it's the kind of book with sidebar charts) Moore offers "Mike's Fantasy List of Women Presidents" which includes Hillary Clinton ("only if I could get invited for sleepovers") and President Oprah ( "the fireside chats with Dr. Phil would save us all.") Yuck.

Considering that Moore, just days after September 11, wrote "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants"--it's small wonder that the New Republic has called Moore "Chomsky for children." But it is precisely his culture-of-violence rap, along with his knee-jerk anti-Americanism, that has seen Moore earn some of his best reviews since "Roger & Me."

Having already won several film-festival awards, "Bowling For Columbine" was such a hit at the Cannes film festival, that it won a 13-minute standing ovation, along with the 55th anniversary Jury Prize. While the French are renowned for lapping up sub-standard American entertainment products, they are less likely to celebrate screechy and preachy moralistic diatribes, of which "Bowling for Columbine" is almost nothing but. But since the film contains heaping spoonfuls of America-bad-everyone-else-good notions, they appear eager to make an exception. As Brandweek reported, since Moore's film also won the "Cannes Prix Educational National" award, voted on by hundreds of French teachers and students, it will now become part of their national curriculum, shown every year at schools in France.

In fairness to the French, Moore's version of America gives them plenty to hate. Besides being a slovenly repository of happy meals and Shamrock Shakes, the protagonist (Moore) is a whiny nitwit, at turns deathly earnest and smugly glib--and he's supposed to be the good guy.

The drama in a Moore film always comes from a cinematic version of the "Tonight Show"'s Jay-Walking segment--the running bit in which Jay Leno hits the streets and asks ordinary Americans to display their ignorance by asking them such stumpers as, "In what year did we fight the War of 1812?" Checking my stopwatch, I clock the film at 1 minute 20 seconds before Moore's first human sacrifice--a harmless bank teller in Michigan, who sports a sensible hairstyle and a North County Bank golf shirt. As part of a bank promotion, they are giving away free guns, after background checks, when a customer opens a new account.

After the teller asks if Moore's ever been ruled "mentally defective"--a fair question, considering the customer--Moore asks her, "Do you think it's a little bit dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" This is, of course, amusing in the way Moore's films periodically are--in the way cooking ants under a magnifying glass on a hot sidewalk tends to enthrall your average ten-year-old boy. Unfortunately, it is one of his last entertaining moments.

From there, we are off across America to prove we are a nation of militia-joining, bloodthirsty gun nuts, who use the rubric of the second amendment as a fig-leaf excuse to pump lead into each other for sport. The film's catchy, if non-sequitirish title, "Bowling for Columbine," is a reference to the ber gun-nut Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who happened to go bowling in an elective-class the morning of the massacre.

From the tofu farm of James Nichols, brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry, to Q&A's with disenfranchised juvies, sporting bad skin and worse dental work, Moore seems to unearth every anti-government extremist who dreams of black helicopters and blood in the streets, proving that we are a violent nation almost beyond salvation.

Moore himself has said his is not merely an anti-gun film, but a larger film about the culture of fear that fosters our gun culture. "The American media," he told Phil Donahue, "wants to pump you full of fear." He says the media overstate everything from child abductions to the recession, which is a curious statement, coming from the author of so many sky-is-falling manifestoes. Just take a paragraph, almost at random, from "Stupid White Men," and you come up with: "Investors lost millions in the stock market. Crime went up for the first time in a decade. Job losses skyrocketed. American icons like Montgomery Ward and TWA vanished. Suddenly we were 2.5 million barrels short of oil--every day! Israelis started killing Palestinians again, and Palestinians returned the favor. By mid-2001, thirty-seven countries were at war around the world. China became our new enemy--again. . . . In short, all of a sudden everything sucked." It's enough to make you want to hole up in your basement with canned goods and a weapons cache.

In the film, Moore heads to Littleton, where he visits Lockheed Martin, the weapons maker and Littleton's biggest employer. Always one to blame societal ills on big corporations and/or the military-industrial complex, Moore interviews a Lockheed flack while his camera pans the factory's corny successory posters. As Moore nearly pops a hamstring, hyper-extending himself while reaching for a causal factor in the Columbine shootings, he asks the poor flack if he doesn't "think our kids say to themselves, 'Well, gee, dad goes off to the factory every day, and he builds missiles, he builds weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'" (Neither Klebold's nor Harris's parents worked for Lockheed, and Klebold's father has actually been identified as a liberal who favors gun control).

By this point, the flack is as puzzled as we are. He kindly explains that he's not catching the parallel, and that our missiles are generally built to defend us "from somebody else who was the aggressor against us. We don't get irritated with somebody and just because we get mad at them, drop a bomb or fire a missile at them." In what is perhaps the most-heavy handed two minutes in any film of the last 30 years, here, Moore cuts to a montage of American atrocities throughout the decades.

Against the strains of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," Moore cuts to a caption and image timeline explaining how we are guilty of everything from propping up tin-pot dictators to killing innocent civilians the world over. As Armstong sings the last words, Moore flashes a visual of the smoking World Trade Center, with the plane flying into tower two as a caption informs "Sept 11, 2001: Osama Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people." Perhaps the likes of Bianca Jagger, Daniel Berrigan or the French would think Moore's uncorked a real sly piece of satire, but he's rolling out pretty heavy artillery to explain a school shooting.

The two-fold problem Moore runs into with attempting to fashion some deep polemic out of found material is that: (A) He has no idea what he wants to say, and (
B)
Neither does anyone that he finds. As he encounters Marilyn Manson backstage, they commiserate about the preposterousness of the Columbine rap nearly getting pinned on Manson by opportunists who said that the killers listened to his violent lyrics. (And they're right, it is preposterous, but slightly less preposterous than blaming Lockheed Martin). Manson tells Moore that the media are responsible for a "campaign of fear and consumption--keep everyone afraid and they'll consume." Moore agrees, and adds, apropos of nothing, that on the day of the shootings, the president dropped more bombs on Kosovo than at any other time in that war. This sounds less like a coherent argument, more like a conversation between two late-night dorm-room potheads.

But Moore doesn't stop there. Following his half-baked culture-of-fear theme, he goes to South Central, to ask a cop, who is, in all likelihood, about to bust some minority down the street, why he doesn't instead bust the people who are responsible for polluting the air, that makes it impossible to see the "Hollywood" sign from South Central. Later, he meets with a producer of the show "Cops," and suggests that instead of demonizing blacks and Hispanics by showing them getting arrested on television, maybe they could do a show called "Corporate Cops," where Enron-types get arrested. (The producer, tells Moore it wouldn't make much of a visual, unless they could get the corporate criminal to "take his shirt off, throw his cellular phone at the police as they come through the door, [and to] jump out that window--then we'd have a show.")

The only solution Moore offers to curtail gun violence, isn't, oddly enough, gun control, but for us to become more like Canada--a country that has it's fair share of guns, but a tiny fraction of our gun deaths. Why this is so, Moore never adequately explores. In interviews he has made some faint noises about there being less suffering, and thus, less violence in Canada because of their socialized medicine. But for the most part, Moore leaves the viewer at sea, free to suppose that if we could just listen to Anne Murray records, take up curling, eat poutine and add "eh" to the end of our sentences, we too, would be a peace-loving people.

By the end, Moore's deus ex machina creaks so loudly you'll need earplugs. Going back to visit Flint, Michigan (Moore's working class hometown, an antecedent he's usually fond of mentioning 12 or 13 times per interview), he re-visits the 2000 school shooting in which a six-year old boy found a gun in his uncle's house, brought it to school, and shot and killed a six-year-old girl. Moore pours it on thick. The media, at the time, were tempted to blame any number of factors for the tragic death. But class-warrior Moore settles on his usual bogeymen--conservative greedheads, multinational corporations, the NRA, all the regulars.

Because of brutally unfair welfare-to-work laws, Tamarla Owens, the boy's mother, was forced to trek to work 40 miles away everyday to Auburn Hills. She had to drive through rich people's neighborhoods to work two minimum-wage jobs, one of which was pouring drinks at Dick Clark's "American Bandstand Grill." Dick Clark, it seems, has blood on his hands. But he has lots of company, since our old friends Lockheed Martin, Moore tells us--his head now spinning so fast that sprockets seem ready to bust loose--have become the number one firm in the country in privatizing state welfare systems.

Because Owens, obviously victimized by the system, was forced to be an absentee mother out of necessity, she had to leave her children with her brother. Largely unsupervised, her youngest found a gun, brought it to school, and iced his first-grade classmate.

It's a harrowing tale, one which Moore first takes to Dick Clark in an ambush interview (Clark quickly peels away in a minivan, unfortunately missing Moore), and later to NRA president Charlton Heston. Heston, of course, has announced he has symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's, which is apparent, because when Moore buys a star map and shows up at Heston's gate unannounced, he lets Moore in for an interview. Starting off slowly, peppering him with chatter about the second amendment, Moore ends up closing in for the kill, asking Heston if he'd apologize for bringing NRA conventions to both Flint and Littleton after their respective shootings. Heston wisely calls it quits, but as he flees his own living room, Moore follows him, hectoring him with a picture of the girl Tamarla Owens's son shot. "This is her. Please take a look at her, please, this is the girl," Moore says, before propping the photo against Heston's house.

It is perhaps the single-most shameful moment ever in a Moore project, which is saying something, since Moore authored an entire chapter on how O.J. Simpson couldn't have killed his wife (because rich people usually hire lowerlings to do their dirty work). Not only did he ambush a doddering old man who had nothing to do with the shooting, but he related the Owens story in a fashion that was dishonest in nearly every way.

For what Moore didn't tell us about Tamarla Owens and her family could fill several newspaper and magazine articles, and did. The uncle's house where Owens left her children was, additionally, a crack house, where guns were often traded for drugs. The gun that the boy stole from a shoebox on a mattress in his uncle's bedroom had been reported stolen once before. And Owens was hardly a model parent, merely getting squeezed by unfortunate circumstances. According to Time magazine, Owens herself was a drug addict (she denied it). Additionally, reported Newhouse News Service, according to a state Family Independence Agency petition, she admitted holding down her oldest boy so he could be beaten with a belt by two male friends, and she also admitted beating the boy with a belt while sitting on him, after first duct-taping his hands, feet and mouth.

In short, Owens and her clan were to responsible gun ownership what Moore is to responsible journalism. To beat Heston up for her problems is itself an act of violence. It is perhaps understandable why Moore attempted to drop himself from the narrative, and put a less-fortunate type like Owens front-and-center. As he recently told one reporter, he has a sign on his editing-room door that says "when in doubt, cut me out." The reason he says, is "First of all, I can't stand the look of myself. Secondly, a little bit of me goes a long way. . . . because it's just a bit much. That's how it feels when I watch it." After watching "Bowling For Columbine," it's easy to see how he feels.

Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.


And this...

quote:

'Bowling For Columbine' throws a gutter ball

| October 18, 2002 | Michael Medved

As a work of cinematic entertainment and political provocation, Michael Moore's widely acclaimed new documentary "Bowling for Columbine" qualifies as a substantial success. Despite its outrageously incoherent, even contradictory, ideological agenda, the movie offers an engaging surface that displays frisky originality, frequent wit, skillful editing, wildly ambitious scope and often impassioned advocacy.

Moore goes beyond the role of mischievous, irreverent blue collar fatso that he popularized in his previous films (most notably "Roger & Me") and his short-lived television show ("TVNation"). This time, Moore promises nothing less than a penetrating exploration of "the fearful heart and soul of the United States," and in the course of guiding us on that journey he comes across as irresponsible, demagogic, shamelessly manipulative and, in the end, unspeakably cruel.

The title refers to reports that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attended an early morning bowling class on the same day in 1999 that they killed 15 people at Columbine High School. Moore therefore insists that it makes as much sense to blame bowling for their murderous rampage as to consider the gory computer games or violent videos or satanic music they enthusiastically enjoyed.

In fact, in his coverage of the Columbine massacre, Moore totally ignores the killers' fascination with Nazism (they chose to attack their classmates on Hitler's birthday) and instead tries to blame Lockheed-Marietta, the prominent defense contractor. It turns out that Lockheed operates a missile plant in Littleton, Colo., not far from Columbine High, so Moore makes a feeble effort to connect this endeavor with the maniacal slaughter by two teenagers. Speaking to a corporate flack, Moore tries to suggest that the "weapons of death" produced by the company somehow contributed to the culture of death that motivated Klebold and Harris. When the cheerful, bespectacled PR spokesperson politely observes "I don't really see the connection," Moore attempts to undermine him by offering a menacing shot of a huge ballistic missile.

This form of non-argument permeates the film. Much later, when Moore returns to his blighted hometown of Flint, Mich., to focus on a 6-year-old who brought a gun to school and accidentally killed one of his classmates, he tries to associate the crime with Dick Clark. The mother of the child, working hard to escape welfare, toiled part-time at a shopping mall diner that peddles nostalgia under the Dick Clark name – part of a growing national chain of such establishments. Moore therefore tracked down Mr. Clark and attempted to interview him about why he pays "his" employees so poorly. When Clark sensibly ignores him, gets into a waiting van and orders the driver to speed away, Moore turns indignantly to the camera as if to suggest that Clark's refusal to talk with him represented some shameful cover-up.

Other interviews prove more successful, and Moore occasionally lets his targets talk, usually to their own detriment. Coming across as particularly demented (and apparently dangerous) is James Nichols, brother of Oklahoma City co-conspirator Terry Nichols, who speaks with twitchy and wild-eyed pride about the arsenal of weapons and bomb-making material he maintains in his remote tofu farm (yes, he grows politically correct soy beans) in Michigan.

Shock-rocker Marilyn Manson gets far more sympathetic treatment, offering an articulate backstage defense of his music, and Matt Stone, Littleton native and co-creator of the scatological "South Park" cartoon series, receives the indulgent handling due a saint or prophet for his dismissive condemnation of suburbia.

Moore even borrows Stone's distinctive cartoon style for the movie's most outrageous and audacious sequence – a brief cartoon history of the United States in which nervous Americans, from the founding fathers to modern businessmen, display the murderous tendencies produced by intense fear, as they recoil in horror from the King, Native Americans, African slaves, working men and all foreigners, establishing, according to Moore, a tradition of distinctively Yankee violence.

Another purportedly historical interlude features a parade of alleged outrages in U.S. foreign policy, including the normal lefty litany about "progressive regimes" (Mossadegh in Iran, Allende in Chile, the Sandinistas in Nicaragua) undermined by the big, bad Central Intelligence Agency. This sequence concludes with footage of the plane striking the second World Trade Center tower while a caption proclaims: "Sept. 11, 2001: Osama bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to kill 3,000 Americans."

Of course, this image goes by too quickly for the average viewer to remind himself that the CIA – which never directly "trained" bin Laden at all – most certainly never encouraged him or anyone else to smash hijacked airplanes into skyscrapers.

Terrorism remains only a passing concern to Mr. Moore, who announces early in his rambling, shambling, arbitrarily assembled film that his real focus involves an explanation for the staggering murder rate in the United States. Meanwhile, he shamefully exaggerates America's position as "the world leader in murders" by listing only firearms killings – ignoring the fact that in many nations (particularly in the Third World) the heavy majority of all victims die through stabbings, clubbings, stranglings, stoning and other means.

Mr. Moore also only mentions the absolute numbers of murder victims in each country he assesses – so naturally a huge nation like the U.S. (population 280 million) will look vastly worse than Canada (population 29 million). As a matter of fact, in terms of murder rate (the number of killings per 100,000 population) the U.S. ranks no higher than ninth in the world, and fares only slightly worse than such "enlightened" and prosperous societies as Finland, Australia and, yes, Canada.

Unlike more simple-minded gun-control advocates, Moore (who boasts in the film of his long-time membership in the NRA) never suggests that the reason for the lower crime rate north of the border concerns the availability of guns. He makes a point of demonstrating on camera how easy it is to buy weapons and ammunition in Ontario, and accurately observes that the rate of gun ownership in Canada (a nation of hunters) comes close to that in the United States.

How, then, does Moore explain his portrayal of America as a blood-soaked, paranoid, deeply demented, incurably violent and sick society, while our neighbors to the north come across in his account as the privileged citizens of a friendly, peaceable paradise? In part, the movie credits Canada's more "advanced" social-welfare system (read socialism) with special emphasis on its "free" medical care. He also praises Canadians for their utopian lack of racism, pointing out that with a "minority population" of 13 percent they live in a "diverse" nation just as we do. Unfortunately, he never notes that Asians represent the most numerous "minority" in Canada, and that in all Western countries these immigrants assimilate (and inter-marry with whites) more quickly and frequently than blacks or Latinos.

Racial issues provide the movie with a grand finale that counts as one of the most despicable (and riveting) cinematic exercises ever featured in a major release. The filmmaker and on-camera star concludes his non-linear voyage by pursuing an interview at the home of Charlton Heston, Hollywood legend and president of the NRA.

The resulting confrontation is almost unbearably painful to watch, as Heston begins the interchange looking robust, masterful, confident and charming and then, under Moore's blatantly unfair and needling questioning, slowly crumbles to the sad status of a frail old man. At first, Moore demands explanations for Heston's appearance at NRA rallies in Colorado and Flint, Mich., shortly after the gun-related tragedies there. Then he moves on to try to force his prey into a corner over America's persistently high homicide rate (without acknowledging the dramatic declines of recent years).

Finally, with Moore flaunting his favorite example of "safe, peaceful" Canada, and pushing relentlessly for some basis for America's more numerous murders, he forces a reluctant, uncertain suggestion from Heston. "I don't know," the great actor begins, and then tentatively mentions the greater racial diversity in the United States.

Mr. Moore pounces on this statement, and virtually accuses Heston of racism – never acknowledging (or telling his audience) that the current president of the NRA enjoyed a personal friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King and participated more prominently in the civil-rights movement and its marches than any other major Hollywood star. Unwilling (or unable) to make this point himself, Mr. Heston merely disconnects his microphone, gets up out of his chair and walks away from Moore and his camera – a wounded refugee seeking shelter in another wing of his own home.

Even without Charlton Heston's courageous announcement of his own battle with Alzheimer's symptoms (an announcement which Moore, of course, never references), this appalling interview would represent a new low in a manipulative filmmaker's checkered career. While posing as a rebel, a loner and crusader for common sense, Mr. Moore remains a totally conventional and thoroughly predictable leftist, particularly in his ill-concealed distaste for America and ordinary Americans. He never bothers to challenge politically correct assumptions, and typically dispenses with any untrendy or unpopular idea – such as Heston's connection of high murder rates to the nation's racial composition – as if it remained so obviously idiotic that it required no rebuttal.

As a matter of fact, the suspicion voiced by Mr. Heston that our homicide rate relates directly to our unusually diverse racial makeup proves more right than wrong. The most recent Department Of Justice statistics indicate that African-Americans commit murder at a rate more than eight times higher than white people, and now represent the majority of U.S. homicide arrests (while only 12 percent of the total population). In other words, if you isolate the murder rate among white people only, on both sides of the border, the difference between the U.S. and Canada almost entirely disappears.

That fact may produce discomfort, and certainly demands serious explanation (with reference, in part, to this nation's persistent history of racism) but it deserves acknowledgment before Moore's movie succeeds in trashing the exalted reputation of one of the most decent and respected actors and activists in Hollywood history. Charlton Heston has enjoyed nearly 60 years of stable, loving marriage (a rarity anywhere, but especially in Tinseltown) and earned the respect and affection even of colleagues who disagree with him on every political proposition.

The French may embrace Michael Moore's America bashing screed (they unanimously awarded it the "55th Anniversary Prize" at the Cannes Film Festival), but citizens of this country will remember Heston's work in movies and in politics long after this sly but ultimately nasty little film has been forgotten. In the end, the wandering, discursive and intermittently brilliant "Bowling for Columbine" amounts to a cinematic gutter ball. Rated R for harsh language, and for scenes of chilling violence – including chilling surveillance camera video of the actual Columbine massacre.

TWO STARS.


Yeah, right, like I am actually going to watch this piece of excrement?

I am actually going give this fat freak my hard earned money? Yeah, RIGHT!! ROFLMAO!!!

[ 11-03-2002, 02:13 AM: Message edited by: Jaguar ]

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World net daily is a for profit group "A free press for a free people" HAHA....what a load of crap.....

The weekly standard is affiliated with FOX news so I don't have to touch that.....

The patriot whose strings are pulled by big business and the central government...the status quo for a confused and manipulated citizenry....

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quote:

World net daily is a for profit group "A free press for a free people" HAHA....what a load of crap.....

The weekly standard is affiliated with FOX news so I don't have to touch that.....

The patriot whose strings are pulled by big business and the central government...the status quo for a confused and manipulated citizenry....


You actually believe what you just said? Oh my GOD!!! ROFLMAO!!!

Poor, Poor, Lotharr, I feel for ya dude, I really, really do.

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Okay we get it you don't want to see the film Jag and that's your right , but please don't wave those obscure right wing rags around as if they were legitimate press.

You have made abundantly clear that you have all the answers and that you are incapable of even entertaining an idea that differs from your own , skewred tortured nilistic paranoid point of view but for christ sake that's enough! WE GET IT!

Everyone on this site know where you stand just give us a friggin break from having the same right wing ravings ad nauseum regurgitated over and over again without a hint of an original idea. Next you'll be quoting the John Birch Society.

That is why I will personally never post on a political topic again. It's not enough to disagree,we have to be subjected to verbal assaults and questions regarding ones mental competence. There can be no exchange of ideas if their is no respect of the others point of view something that is apparently very alien to you.

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  • 2 months later...

Just couldn't help myself, had to bring this one back to life!! LOL

quote:

The Truth About Michael Moore

| July 25, 2002 | Pablo Wegesend

Author's "Truth" More Fancy Than Fact

Pablo Wegesend

Recently, filmmaker and political satirist Michael Moore has been getting some publicity. His most recent book "Stupid White Men" has been on the New York Times bestseller list for a while and his latest film "Bowling for Columbine" has received great applause at the Cannes Film Festival recently. His earlier works include his book "Downsize This", films "Roger and Me" and "The Big One," and the canceled TV show "TV Nation."

Some of you may not be familiar with Moore's work. Michael Moore isn't a mainstream star, but he is a star among the Radical Left, which is disproportionally represented at many of America's universities, including this one.

Popularity aside, Michael Moore uses inaccurate data, vicious stereotypes, baseless assertion and double standards in his internet editorials, books and films. There's too many of these to list in my editorial but list some I must, because Moore's rants, inaccurate and baseless as they are, reflect the misguided views of many others.

Welfare Reform

One of the issues Michael Moore is known to distort is welfare reform. On Bill Clinton's signing of a welfare reform bill in 1996, Moore asserts "[He] has been able to kick ten million people off welfare." The reality is that while welfare rolls have declined since that bill was signed (by 8.3 million, not 10 million), most left welfare voluntarily. Very few were "kicked off" welfare by the five year limit set by the welfare reform bill.

While Moore's argument crumbles in the face of actual statistics, there is another, more sinister assertion made by Michael Moore about the welfare reform bill. In 2000, Moore wrote a letter to then Presidential candidate Al Gore, in which he blamed the 1996 welfare reform bill (signed by Bill Clinton and supported by Al Gore) for the shooting death of a 6-year old girl in Michigan. On the 6-year-old boy that shot that girl, Moore wrote "One day, last February, while his mother worked off her welfare payments at the All-American restaurant, that little 6-year-old found his uncle's gun, took it to school, and shot a 6-year-old girl in the neck." Moore went on to state in that letter "Have you had a chance, Mr. Gore, to hear the 911 call from the teacher as she was trying to stop the geyser of blood shooting out from that 6-year-old's neck just before she died? You should hear it. She's the recipient of what you call 'welfare reform'."

A recipient of what Al Gore calls welfare reform? I'm not a big fan of Al Gore, but still, Moore's assertion that Gore's support of welfare reform caused the death of that 6-year-old is shameful and disgusting. That incident was totally unrelated to Al Gore's support for welfare reform.

September 11

Moore has made a lot of vicious, baseless assertions about the September 11th attacks. The most vicious one is stated in his internet editorial (which he removed from his website after it caused controversy) where he states "They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who did not vote for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the plane's destination of California — these were places that voted against Bush!"

When did anyone suggest that voting patterns mattered to the terrorists responsible for 9/11?

Moore seems to imply that the terrorists should've killed those who lived in states where Bush got majority votes.

Moore also states in reaction to 9/11, "In just eight months, Bush gets the whole world back to hating us again. He withdraws from the Kyoto agreement, walks us out of the Durban conference on racism, insists on restarting the arms race — you name it and Baby Bush has blown it all."

Contrary to Moore's baseless rants, the outside worlds hated the U.S. long before "Baby Bush" became President and they hated the U.S. no matter who was President.

And to call the conference in Durban a "conference on racism" is a generous misnomer. That conference was nothing more than a "hate Israel and the U.S. rally." The Chinese suppression of Tibetans, Iraqis suppression of the Kurds, ethnic warfare in Rwanda — these racial issues weren't even major issues at the anti-Semitic, anti-American "conference on racism" at Durban.

Also in reaction to 9/11, Michael Moore posed a stupid rhetorical question when he asked "When will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?"

The September 11 attacks had nothing do with poverty. The hijackers were college-educated Islamic fanatics, not uneducated slum dwellers! And if the September 11th attack happened in reaction to world poverty, why is it that none of those hijackers came from non-Islamic third World nations like Laos, Haiti, Mozambique, etc? If Moore cared so much about world poverty, why didn't he demand that the Arab oil barons as well as bin Laden invest their billions in improving conditions in the Middle East?

The terrorism we saw in September had nothing to do with world poverty and everything to do with religious fanaticism. Islamic zealots terrorize Jews in Israel, Hindus in India, Christians in Sudan, Indonesia, etc, and they terrorized the U.S., and for Moore or anyone to blame it all on world poverty and nice running shoes is ridiculous.

Elian Controversy

During the Elian controversy in Miami, Moore wrote an extremely bigoted editorial on his websites and praised the Communist regime in Cuba. Read this misguided quote from Moore's letter to Elian — "The worse that could be said is that in Cuba, you were in jeopardy of receiving health care whenever you needed it, and an excellent education in one of the few countries that has 100 percent literacy".

If we went by Moore's logic, black slaves shouldn't have escaped from the plantations in the early 1800's since black slaves received free housing, free food, and free Bible studies! What runaway slaves in the 19th century U.S. and Cuban refugees have in common is that even though they are running away from a place where housing, health care, and food is provided, they are also running away from a place where civil liberties are practically nonexistent. Though Moore and many on the Radical Left condemn the U.S. government's violation of civil liberties since Sept. 11, Moore remains silent on Fidel Castro's 40-plus years of violating civil liberties in Cuba! It seems like Moore and his Radical Left allies only care about civil liberty violations when it comes from the U.S. and its allies.

Moore's assertion of Cuba having 100 percent literacy needs closer inspection. What's the use of literacy? Literacy is important so that you can have access to a variety of information from written sources. But Cuban residents don't have access to non-communist info! So literacy in Cuba isn't really worth much as literacy in the U.S. The same holds true for education.

Moore further commented on Elian controversy by stating that "your mother placed you in a situation where you were certain to die on the open seas (as most of the rest did) and that is unconscionable. It was the ultimate form of child abuse."

No, Mr. Moore, the ultimate form of child abuse is when Janet Reno sent armed agents to kidnap Elian and sent him back to Fidel Castro's plantation of Cuba.

Moore's claim is also a bigoted slam against all immigrants who risk their lives to come to America.

If David Duke or Pat Buchanan had written such a vicious rant against those immigrants, the Radical Left would have protested. And yet, the Radical Left fails to protest Michael Moore for his vicious bigotry.

Moore continues by stating about the Cuban refugees "instead of staying in Cuba and fighting for freedom like our ancestors did in 1776, they turned tail and ran to Miami. Once here, they began demanding that we Americans fight their fight for them. What did we do? Something stupid! We fought for them!"

Unions

Michael Moore has claimed to support the unions. He has lamented about declining union membership. However, as documented on the mostly liberal Salon.com, when the writers for his canceled TV show "TV Nation" wanted to join the Writer's Guild, he had dissuaded them.
The writers have later relied on the Writer's Guild to secure payments, credits and residuals that Moore tried to cheat from them.

Michael Moore is a hypocrite, a bigot, and an exaggerator.

Just had too, notice the last part? I bolded it for you. ROFLMAO!!!

Yeah, like I am going to waste my money on this "factual" movie!! ROFLMAO!!! The guys a hypocrite, and con artist.

Not only that, I think he's a traitor.

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I'm not so sure I would go so far as to call him a traitor, that term is generally reserved for people who commit treachery. If you start calling people traitors because of the political views, however skewed, then you're treading on dangerous ground.

That said, this Michael Moor character does seam to be something of a toad.

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