THEME: FAHRENHEIT 9/11 & ITS IMPLICATIONS
First, full disclosure, I am a registered Democrat who voted for George W. Bush in 2000. As for my political views, I was pro-Bush during the 2000 election circus, and I am now virulently anti-Bush since the Iraq War.

Prior to seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 I had never scene a Michael Moore film, and I never had any wish to see a Michael Moore film because they always seemed too obviously Liberal to me. However, I wanted to see Fahrenheit 9/11 simply because I thought that regardless of your affiliation, the movie has new information to offer and you should approach it without fear and prejudice. Watch it and simply judge for yourself.

What is disturbing about the reaction to Fahrenheit 9/11 is just how lazy reporters & the media are in response to some serious allegations. I see the most important polemical stab in Fahrenheit 9/11 as not against President George W. Bush, but against the corporate media machine that Bush implicitly uses to propagate his "mission." I think that is the whole message of the opening montage where we see the now infamous Wolfowitz comb licking scene. What you see from the media is a movie, not unlike the one you are about to watch.

I experienced many feelings while watching this movie. The most unexpected feeling was a feeling of relief. I felt the same way that Winston felt in Orwell's 1984 when he first made love to Julia, committing their first act of "sex crime." The audience was shy about laughing at first to Moore's cheap shots and slapstick comedy. Were we afraid of being filmed by Homeland Security? But as the movie progressed, we laughed louder and louder. We let down our guard and communally shared our feelings alone in the dark. As the movie progressed to its emotional climax, the Lila Lipscomb story, we all then went willingly the other way and communally had a good cry. A man in his late 40s was crying next to me, as well as two ladies in their 60s.

The ability of Michael Moore to allow his audience to vent their feelings of anger and sadness after 4 years of being told to just relax and trust the administration, is what makes to movie so powerful. Yes, Moore is a master manipulator. Ironically, he has been compared to Leni Riefenstahl by his detractors. However, the message that I take is that Moore openly confesses to manipulation, the difference being that his agenda is in plain site, whereas the master manipulators, i.e. the corporate media has a hidden agenda and yet pretends to be protecting the public interest by being guardians of the truth.

Michael Moore can take no greater satisfaction that he has done a good job than the fact that in my theater, as well as at Cannes, as well as in other theaters in other cities, the end the movie is met with spontaneous applause. The last movie that I saw where the audience erupted in spontaneous applause at the end was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

Michael Moore is like a modern day Socrates. He is a pimple on the pristine, smooth skin of polite society. Attacks on Moore focus on character assassination. How many times have I heard him derided as a "fat slob"? Now who's lobbing the cheap shots? Like Socrates, he goes about his unkempt ways morally corrupting youth with his clever polemic. Like Socrates, he is seen as a public menace. Polite society seeks to distance itself from him because to actually address his concerns would threaten so many of the assumptions that underlie the workings of this society.

Here is an excerpt from an article by By Sumana Chatterjee and David Goldstein of KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS:

Michael Moore's film "Fahrenheit 9/11" has been called many things: incendiary, thought-provoking, satirical, propaganda.

But is it true?

...

Bush's actions on 9/11

In one of the film's most controversial sequences, Moore shows the president at an elementary school in Florida on Sept. 11, 2001.

Two planes have crashed into the World Trade Center towers, and Bush is sitting in front of second-grade students reading "My Pet Goat."

...

Bush remains in the classroom for seven minutes before leaving to talk to his staff about the attacks.

Moore suggests the president's possible thoughts during those minutes: Should I have vacationed less and worked more? Should I have listened to anti-terrorism experts warning of an al-Qaida attack?

The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks and the government's response interviewed Bush.

The commission staff said in an interim report that the president "felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."


Saudi flights after 9/11

Moore says the administration allowed 142 Saudi Arabian nationals, including about two dozen relatives of Osama bin Laden, to leave the United States after Sept. 11 without proper questioning by law enforcement agencies.

In the film, Craig Unger, author of the book "House of Bush, House of Saud," tells Moore that none of the Saudis underwent serious scrutiny.

"So a little interview, check the passport, what else?" Moore asks.

"Nothing," Unger replies.

The Sept. 11 commission's interim report said law enforcement interviewed 30 of the 142 Saudis, including 22 of the 26 people on the flight that took most of the bin Laden relatives out of the country.

The report said none was of interest to the investigation.

It says Saudi Arabia asked for help to get its nationals out of the United States. Because 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi citizens, the Saudi government was worried about reprisals.

The commission says it doesn't know the person in the administration the Saudi government contacted, but that the request eventually reached Richard Clarke, who was the White House counterterrorism chief at the time.

Clarke told the commission he refused to approve the request, suggesting that it be sent to the FBI so the agency could vet the Saudis for any terrorism connections.

He said the FBI approved the flights.

However, an FBI spokeswoman denied to The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress, that it had "anything to do with arranging and clearing the flights."

She said the bureau interviewed some passengers, but none was "of investigative interest."

Despite some media reports, the movie doesn't allege that the Saudis were allowed to leave while U.S. airspace was still closed.

The Bushes and Saudis

The movie paints a sinister connection between Bush and the bin Laden family.

It implies that James Bath, a friend from the president's days in the Texas Air National Guard, might have funneled bin Laden money to an unsuccessful Bush oil-drilling firm called Arbusto Energy.

The accusation is a stretch, said Bill Allison, the managing editor for the Center for Public Integrity, an independent watchdog group based in Washington.

Polite society takes comfort in such an article. Issues addressed by the movie can be politely explained away as inaccurate or misleading. We all feel better about ourselves if this were indeed the case. We don't need to spend any more time thinking about these issues because they are being presented by a fat slob who is inaccurate.

However, the fact remains that there is a non-casual relationship between the Bushes and the Saudis. One of the deep foundations of the US economy is the dependence on not only Saudi oil, but the stability and influence of the House of Saud. Why are we afraid to discuss this? Why is it uncomfortable to question whether it is healthy to have a President who has clear business ties with relatives of Osama bin Laden?

One of the most profoundly disturbing questions raised in the film is that of the whole system called the Terror Alert system. Will the terror alert ever be green again? Why does Tom Ridge see it fit to cite in a recent press conference that new evidence of a "credible threat" exists from Al Qaeda, and yet not raise the terror alert? Is the Terror Alert system effective in either thwarting terror or preparing its citizen? What is the price economic or psychic of this system?

Again, its easier to brush these questions off because they come from a fat slob.

Here is a disturbing excerpt from some presumably young Republicans. From The Battalion the college newspaper of Texas A & M, "Fahrenheit 9/11 - Conservative View" by Julie Bone:

As for its accuracy, who knows anymore? An undisputed truth barometer seems nonexistent nowadays, as Moore has created a "war room" of fact-checkers and political analysts dedicated to defending all information in the film (interestingly, he also threatens to sue any who libel him), and despite that, there are already hundreds of published reports, articles and Web sites contesting every allegation and fact stated in the film.

It is clear: Michael Moore is a fat ignorant slob. There is no need to check his facts. We just don't like him so we won't even bother. This is the saddest aspect of the state of the body politic in the USA circa 2004. Democracy fails when its constituents are lazy. I would hope that young people in this country have a bit more energy to do some "fact checking."

Finally, the other criticism of Moore questions his profit motive. I guess that as for making a profit, only Republicans are allowed to profit from their work, and Democrats can only prove their sincerity by not profiting.

It is my view that the outpouring of emotion generated by this film is not to be ignored. The feelings are there and they have been smoldering. The deepest irony is that The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 illustrate that the passion of the people cannot be denied by the corporate media that would simply like us to eat our Happy Meals and not think too much or complain about its taste.

The right, which counts most of corporate America and Wall Street is more than likely underestimating the power of Fahrenheit 9/11. My message is see the film without fear or prejudice and decide for yourself.