Is there any voter in America who hasn't made up his mind about George Bush? Whether you think he's a stalwart leader or a fascistic buffoon, his positions on the environment, education, federal budget deficits and international affairs are as clear as any president's for the last 50 years.
If you need a refresher course on Bush's politics, "Fahrenheit 9/11" provides one in which he falls halfway between Satan and Howdy Doody. The surprising thing about Michael Moore's polemic is not one-sidedness, which was a given: It's his failure to find devastating new weapons of mass destruction to aim at Bush's head. The smoking guns he holds up often fire blanks, and the ones that don't are mostly derringers.
He starts with the musty, if perhaps valid, argument that the 2000 presidential election was stolen from the rightful winner. (Moore's first whiff of a conspiracy: Bush's cousin worked at Fox News, which was the initial network to project Bush's victory.)
We then hear the well-known litany of complaints. We're in Iraq at least partly because Vice President Cheney and his cronies profited from the invasion; it's making billions of dollars for his old employer, Halliburton. Attorney General John Ashcroft neglected clear FBI warnings that Osama bin Laden planned to attack the United States in 2001. Bush either lied about Iraq's involvement in those Sept. 11 attacks or acted rashly on mistaken information.
However much you think these things are true - they're old news, and anyone who does not know them isn't coming to this film.
Moore claims Bush's corporate ties to Saudi Arabians and Saudis' immense investment in American corporations make him their tool. I expect so, but what's his larger point? That Bush covered up the bin Laden family's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, because they're wealthy Saudis and he was embarrassed to be linked to them? Where's proof? And some people actually say... "Well this film is a documentary, so it must be true" The ignorance of the general public is what Moore plays upon, and of course staunch lefties that never stop slingin mud long enought to realize they've spilt too much on themselves...
The writer-director injects himself into the proceedings less this time, but his grandstanding ploys smell of juvenile egotism. When he rents the ice cream truck and drives around Washington, D.C., reading the Patriot Act to disinterested passers-by??? Then he stands on a street corner, urging members of Congress to recruit their kids to fight in Iraq. (Moore is shocked, shocked, to learn the grunts in the U.S. Army consists mostly of people with few job alternatives. That hasn't been news since Hannibal crossed the Alps on elephants.) Further embarassing himself......
Moore can touch us with the story of Lila Lipscomb, a woman from his hometown of Flint, Mich. Lipscomb, who helps unemployed people find work, has a cathartic moment in front of the White House, when she points a finger of rage at the man who sent her son to die uselessly in Iraq. Yet even that scene is undercut by one in which she reads his last letter, which exhorts people not to re-elect Bush! (Wonder how many dead kids' letters Moore had to read to find that sentiment.)
When quotes serve his purpose, a note on the screen dates and identifies the occasions. When they don't, these dates and places are mysteriously missing. Given Moore's reputation for re-arranging information to mislead, this suggests tampering to make points. When facts are inconvenient, he omits them: In mocking the "coalition of the willing" that backed our Iraqi invasion, he mentions the tiny likes of Palau and Costa Rica but conveniently forgets the United Kingdom and Spain.
The sad thing is, this tampering was unnecessary. Anyone who thinks Bush is compassionate toward poor people would know better when he addresses rich backers: "This is an impressive crowd: the haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base." This disgusting speech, clearly was not reviewed by admin, is juxtaposed with his decision to cut benefits to veterans and their families and boost the cost of drugs they needed.
But anyone who criticizes Bush for doing so had better be scrupulously honest and careful, and Moore isn't. He rakes muck like nobody else, but almost as much of it sticks to him as to his subject.
