| Michael Moore is a controversial jack-ass with an oversized heart of gold. I think the world of him - he's a funny guy who stirs up a laugh riot while giving the establishment ulcers. He has a lot of courage, a good deal of wit, and my undying admiration. A lot of people hate him. If my anecdotal observations from trying to convince friends and relatives to watch him are the least bit accurate, I'd say most people who hate him (maybe even 90%) have never watched any of his films. They were told they'd hate it, so they avoided him. It's sadly easy in this country to be ignorant about how much the government and big corporations are trying to screw you over. And, if you've been told you might not like his work, why spend your hard earned cash just confirming that? | |
Moore's latest film, Slacker Uprising, goes live tonight, and it's available for free! It's a full-length film, something of a follow up to his award-winning Fahrenheit 9/11 mixed with a chronicle of Moore's political activities during the last election cycle. You can get the whole film (and the legal right to burn it, spread it, exhibit it, email it to your grandma, etc) from slackeruprising.com, where the downloading will begin at midnight tonight. Spread the word. Spread the film. Pass it around like the devious little pirate you are in your heart of hearts. |
Monday, September 22, 2008
Slacker Uprising Tonight
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
9 comments:
I've seen every one of his films and enjoyed them. However, I cannot respect someone who supports his views with intellectual dishonesty. I even agree with most of his policy views, but I can't stand the smug dishonesty.
Example? Please give me a few examples of Moore's dishonesty. I'm not doubting you (at least not much), I just want to make sure I'm not falling for anything I shouldn't have.
Pretend for a moment I'm the kind of idiot who swallowed some anti-evolutionary BS from a biology teacher years ago, and is now paranoid that I might be missing various lies because I'm just not critical enough of my sources. Please educate me.
Thanks!
To be clear: I've heard a couple of allegations before of dishonesty on Moore's part. Yours is the first one I've heard from someone who actually watched his films.
Most claims of dishonesty have come from people who haven't seen his films, and so they could only make vague accusations. The one time someone actually told me a specific thing they thought Moore had lied about (which they'd heard about his "lie" from Fox News), I did a little research and found that Fox was wrong (and possibly making a semantics-based argument for the sake of being able to claim he was lying).
Obviously, I haven't verified everything Moore says. And some things he says are just sarcastic bullshit not meant to be taken seriously, like something Jake, X, or I might say when we're feeling a little cheeky.
If you're just talking about the smarmy way he gets in people's faces and tries to catch companies and CEOs unaware, those things I have little problem with. That's stuff the mainstream media does all the time, and Moore (unlike Fox News or CNN) admits to being in the entertainment business.
But if you know a specific claim he made that proved to be false, I'd love to hear it so I can research it myself.
Thanks for your help!
I really don't want to take the time to go into great detail, so I'll just point to others who have:
http://www.slate.com/id/2102723/
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Movies/07/15/moore.gupta/index.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/06/28/opinion/main626484.shtml
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article2753620.ece
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20020403.html
Thank you for sharing the list.
I read the first one - the slate article. The author of that article perpetuates the "Iraq was trying to buy WMDs" myth that's been pretty thoroughly debunked.
He also puts words in Moore's mouth on more than one occasion (the repeated "not enough troops" mantra the author harps on, which I certainly never noticed in any of my 3 viewings of the film; or the strange meandering to randomly accuse Moore of being against the proxy clause to get out of the draft in the civil war - a clause that was absolutely of dubious and insulting character in that it allowed wealthy people to buy their way out of the draft) which is kinda funny because in another part of the same article he criticizes Moore for doing that very thing (putting words in someone's mouth) to the President.
The author also clearly fails to understand sarcasm. I mean, really, when Moore was asking congressmen to send their children to Iraq, he didn't really mean that he actually wanted their children to go to Iraq. He was using confrontation and humor to make the congressmen admit that they were doing something wrong. Yet the author of the article very wryly uses that to claim this means Moore isn't a pacifist. It's kinda weird.
Overall, the argument (of the Slate article) seems to be that it's somehow dishonest to say "we shouldn't go to war" and at the same time say "if we're going to go to war, we should try to win it, not make it run in perpetuity". The author sees that as dishonesty, I see it as common sense. At no point have we fought the war in Iraq or Afghanistan the way we fought WW2. If we had, both those countries would be on their way to being like modern-day Germany or Japan.
Yes, sometimes Moore is sarcastic, and sometimes he asks rhetorical questions. But he's actually pretty honest about doing so.
Reading the whole article, the only really solid point was the photo of Bush with Tony Blair that was allegedly depicted as a "vacation". If that's true (I'd have to watch the film again to say for sure) it's dishonesty on Moore's part, and that would despicable. But since Bush has officially set the record for most vacation days taken by a two-term President, even with a poor-choice of photo it would seem Moore's message still fit the spirit of the truth.
I'll read the other articles to see if perhaps I just started with the least grounded one, but that Slate review certainly didn't sway me to any noticeable degree.
I just read the second one - CNN. It was a little harder to parse, since it seemed to have a context of being a follow up to an argument between CNN staff and Moore on some show I haven't seen. On the show it seems the CNN staff accused Moore of lying in Sicko (which I've only seen once, so I'm not as well versed in it's contents).
Anyhow, they have 11 points that they dispute with Moore. 3 of those points are directly tied into Moore's use of #s. Moore said the US spends just over $7000 a year on health care, and Cuba spends $251 a year. He pulled those two #s from different sources, and CNN's Dr Gupta says that's dishonest. CNN sites a report he could have used that would have listed both figures. That report would have placed it at around $6,000 and $229. So, a roughly 16% drop on one figure and only an 10% drop on the other. In and of itself, that's a legitimate beef.
But CNN also admits to having claimed Moore had said $25 instead of $251 before he called them on it. They also admit that his $7000 figure was more recent data, and that the report with the $7000 figure didn't include stats on the thing that was either $229 or $251.
What more, it's all kinda moot. Moore's point was that the US spends several thousands of dollars on each person's healthcare, but leaves many people untreated, while Cuba spends just a few hundred per person yet covers their whole populace, and only ranks 2 spots below the US in terms of health care. That general point remains true no matter where you set the original numbers anywhere between $5,000 and $8,000 for the US figure and anywhere between $200 and $300 for the Cuban figure. With any number in those ranges, Moore's fact remains true and relevant. CNN seems to be mincing hairs just for the sake of calling him a liar.
For those 3 out of the 11 points, it seems the allegation of dishonesty is ironic and false.
Point by point break down:
1: Gupta/CNN seem to have completely missed the point of what Moore was saying.
2: This is the numbers issue mentioned above.
3: CNN cites a different, more recent, source whose data disagrees with Moore's but does not refute Moore's source as having been accurate at the time the film was made.
4: They again miss the point of Moore's comment, or choose to ignore it.
5: Again, they miss the point and fail to address the criticism they quote to start the point.
6: Here they put words in his mouth, and claim that he claims universal health care won't cost anything. The point of the whole cuba scene was that universal health care may cost only a few hundred dollars per year per person. Clearly Moore isn't saying it'll be free.
7: CNN's data here oddly confirms Moore's point.
8: The second point in the cuban numbers situation detailed above.
9: The third point of the cuban numbers discussion, where yet again they focus on minor variances on numbers rather than addressing the point of what the numbers represent or mean.
10: This is CNN's one good point of the whole fight. They do a decent job of showing that Moore is "creating controversy where there is none" on one out of 11 points.
11: CNN says one of CNN's sources' "only affiliation is with Vanderbilt" and therefore he has no conflict of interest. However, after Moore rebutts this, they admit that the source had stopped working for Vanderbilt in 2006, and has since gone to work for other companies. In other words, they admit Moore was right on this one.
The top two articles on the list did little to sway me, and were mostly comprised of straw-man attacks and misrepresentations, the very things they accused Moore of doing. I'm not sure I want to keep reading down the list.
Yes, Moore uses sarcasm, rhetorical questions, and clever editing to make his opponents look foolish and guilty. But so far, everything I seen or read suggests that he does indeed get his facts straight.
I kept reading. The third one, from Richard Just of CBS is very different from the two I read before it.
He dismisses all of Moore's points with just the handwaving of (and this is a quote) "Moore's a nutty conspiracy theorist". You can imagine how well that went over with me.
This article dates back to 2004, and assures us that Iraq was indeed a just war, but fails to say why. I'm trying to remember exactly when all the revelations about WMDs came out, as the article may have been laboring under some inaccurate conclusions.
The article accuses Moore of intellectual dishonesty because he uses Lisa Lipscomb's son's death to make us get emotional. While such actions may have been a clever way to motivate people, it's not intellectual dishonesty.
To be safe, I looked up Intellectual Dishonesty. "Intellectual dishonesty is the advocacy of a position which the advocate knows or believes to be false, or is the advocacy of a position which the advocate does not know to be true, and has not performed rigorous due diligence to insure the truthfulness of the position." says wikipedia. Now, I know wikipedia isn't always accurate, but that definition jives with what I thought Intellectual Dishonesty meant.
In order for Moore to be guilty of Intellectual Dishonesty, he'd have to not seriously believe the points he was making.
Does Moore believe that the Bush administration was in some way complicit in the 9/11 attacks? Does Moore believe that the Bush family has business connections with the Bin Laden family? Does Moore believe the Iraq war was an unjust war founded on lies and greed? Does Moore believe that Universal Health Care would be an improvement for our country? Does Moore believe that getting guns off our streets would prevent future school shootings? The answer to all those questions is "yes". In addition to watching his films, I've read a couple of his books. In "Dude, Where's My Country" he cites and quotes the (mostly mainstream) newspaper articles that form the crux of his Bush / Bin Laden connection. He believes what he's saying.
Apparently, I was dreaming about Michael Moore, because I woke up suddenly at 5 am, with an understanding of why I was disagree-ing with David.
It's all about 3 concepts, that have been relevant here recently, and the dividing lines between them. They are:
1. Sarcasm
2. Devil's Advocate
3. Intellectual Dishonesty
Take any statement that you don't believe in.
If you say it in a funny voice, or in a joking manner, it's sarcasm.
If you preface it with "Now, I don't really believe this, but for the sake of the argument, let's pretend," then you're playing the Devil's Advocate.
Anything else, and you're being Intellectually Dishonest.
It's very easy (as evidenced by recent LHC posts) to think you're safely in Category 1 or 2, but be perceived as being a Category 3 ass-storm.
This is most common with sarcasm. It happens around my house all the time. My wife doesn't have a sarcasm voice. Instead of saying things with verbal irony, all indication of sarcasm is in her eyes. Which makes it really hard to know when she's joking unless you've got eye-contact at that moment. This caused lots of conflict between us in the early days of our relationship, as it took me a while to figure out how to tell when she was being sarcastic. I still sometimes misconstrue her jokes if they're made while I'm eating or focusing on something else.
This is going to sound awfully close to blaming her (which is not my intent), but I think that interaction is part of why I'm okay with Moore's more dubious tactics. To me, it counts as sarcasm, if it was meant as sarcasm, even if those hearing the joke don't get the humor of the joke. If I didn't have that attitude, Sarah and I wouldn't click nearly so well.
On reflecting, I can see where that's probably not how most people interpret the barriers between the three categories, so I finally see where the accusations of Intellectual Dishonesty are coming from.
From that point of view, I probably owe Siderisanon an apology for not making my intent (on the whole LHC thing) significantly clearer from the get-go.
So, when Moore's asking Congressmen if they'll send their children to war, which category does he fall in to? I see it as sarcasm, because he doesn't really mean it, and it's abundantly clear that he doesn't mean it. There is remotely little chance of anyone not detecting the bullshit in that action. At that moment, he's full of it, and everyone knows it, so it doesn't offend me.
At the same time, I'll admit that in his body of work there's at least a point or two where he puts someone on the defensive via such a tactic, and they don't get it. In such cases he never owns up to the sarcasm, at least not while confronting them. I've been seeing it as just a case of sarcasm that was lost on the person he's interacting with. Most people, however, would define that situation as intellectual dishonesty. It would piss them off.
Got it. Thank you, David, for helping me figure this out. (I wish the articles had done so more coherently. It sucks that I had to read 3 of them, sleep on it, and then figure out for myself that which they were unable to articulate themselves.) I suspect having dissected this will save me from some flamewars somewhere down the road.
Or it could be that you are trying to justify your sentiments through explaining away the findings of others in order to salvage a hero.
My trick in these situations is to constantly be a total dick. That way when someone points out that one of my idols is a dick, it causes no conflict of interest.
I also try to only idolize strippers, because I've seen what they got, and they ain't dicks.
Post a Comment