Mudslinging 101

Noel Vera

"Documentary" filmmaker Michael Moore is hardly one to inspire sober
thoughts about fair play and unimpeachable journalism; if anything,
Moore likes to play fast and loose with the facts, as can be seen in
his debut film "Roger and Me" (the comical attempts by the city of
Flint to distract its people from their economic troubles--a
luxurious Hyatt Regency, an "Auto World" theme park, a "Water Street
Pavilion"--turn out to have been built back when the town was still
prosperous), in "Bowling for Columbine" (a scene of Moore receiving a
gun from a bank for opening an account turns out to have been staged)
and even in stories concerning himself (he's not from Flint,
Michigan, exactly but from Davison, a more affluent suburb of Flint).

Moore's at it again, and in grand style, with "Fahrenheit 9/11," and
his target this time is the ogre that hovered around the margins
of "Columbine," helping foster what Moore called a "culture of fear"--
President George "Dubya" Bush himself, center-stage, and right in the
center of Moore's cross hairs.

"Fahrenheit" begins with a hilarious account of the Bush
Administration--how Bush supposedly stole the elections (Moore's
evidence is thin here, but the images he gathers of the reactions to
Bush's win--the black caucus determinedly but futilely objecting to
the outcome in the House of Representatives, the egg splattering
against Bush's limousine window--are startling (because we never
really see them in mainstream media) to see). He makes a fairly good
case of Bush turning out to be an ineffective, lame-duck president
(he couldn't win appointments for his judges or get his bills passed,
and his approval ratings were sinking); points out Bush's vacation
record (a whopping 42%), and gives us a few of his more spectacularly
insensitive remarks (he tells an audience of fundraisers "some call
you the elite; I call you my base"--though apparently Moore took this
footage from a dinner where the speaker is supposed to make fun of
himself).

Moore's portrait sounds vaguely familiar--a somnolent population
hoodwinked by a populist image into voting for a lazy, immature,
intellectually inadequate candidate. When you think about it, that
was the situation we Filipinos found ourselves in some years back,
with the election of Joseph Ejercito Estrada into Malacanang Palace--
the difference being, Estrada only corrupted our government, debased
our image to the world (an idiot for president!) and ruined our
economy; he didn't drag us into an unnecessary war.

Moore's strongest moment as a filmmaker comes perhaps with his
depiction of 9/11itself: a black screen, no images of the buildings
themselves, but cries from the terrified and wounded on the
soundtrack--it's about as effective a depiction of an overfamiliar
piece of history as anything I can think of. Moore follows this up
with perhaps the single most damning image of Bush I've ever seen--
"Dubya" in an elementary school classroom, sitting as if paralyzed
while the schoolteacher reads to the kids ("My Pet Goat," Moore tells
us; actually it was a book with a reading exercise called "The Pet
Goat"), mulling over what his Chief of Staff had just told him: that
his country was under attack.

Moore, in trying to summarize Bush's administration post-9/11, is
more effective pointing out the absurdities of Homeland Security (the
color-coded warnings; the inadequate border security; the persecution
of harmless oddball groups; the tight security around the Saudi
embassy) than he is with pointing up conspiracies between the
administration and the Saudis (mostly taken from Craig Unger's "House
of Bush, House of Saud"--only Moore's hints and allegations are so
darkly hinted and, well, alleged you're better off buying Unger's
book to understand what Moore's talking about). Moore goes on to make
a whopper of an assertion, that Bush invaded Afghanistan not to get
Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda operatives for 9/11, but to run a
Unocal pipeline through Afghanistan; as proof of this, he shows us
images of a pipe (which has nothing to do with the Unocal proposal,
abandoned since 1998).

Moore is better off--or at least, livelier--reacting to people than
he is at marshalling facts--or it's just that he knows people are
simply better entertainment value. He has footage of soldiers in Iraq
as either decent kids who are not sure what they're doing there, or
rabid psychos abusing their Iraqi prisoner's erection. He points out
that usually the poorest and least educated--a good proportion of
them black--enlist in the army, and tries to make the case that Bush
has hoodwinked them, sent them to possibly die in a foreign country
for no good reason at all. You might say Moore when unsympathetic
(towards the prisoner-abusing psychos, for one) seems strident and
hysterical, and when sympathetic (as towards the more decent
soldiers) seems stickily sentimental--either way, you find yourself
listening to him, curious (the way a carnival barker can make you
curious) at what lurid piece of showmanship he will bring up next.

We finally come to Lila Lipscomb--office worker, patriot, mother. She
believes in doing one's duty; she has two brothers who are Vietnam
vets, and a second oldest son joining the army at 19. When he dies in
Iraq, Lipscomb is devastated; her belief in her president and
government is shaken. She goes to Washington D.C. to try find
answers, and Moore follows her; her story is easily the most moving
passage in the film, and you wonder what the hell it's doing there.

Because unlike Bush sitting in a schoolroom wondering what to do, or
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz sticking a comb in his mouth
and running its well-lubricated teeth through his hair, or even Moore
himself, driving around in an ice-cream truck reading Bush's Patriot
Act or ambushing congressmen and asking them to send their sons to
war, Lipscomb comes off not as a caricatured grotesque, but a real
person (Moore must have known what gold he had in his hands, and left
Lipscomb largely alone, her story more or less speaking for itself).
This is real human pain you see onscreen, not some Moore-ish
exaggeration of it, and it sticks out like a sore thumb; everything
else, even Moore's antics, or his (rather justifiable) rage, looks
shabby in comparison.

Which finally brings us to the question--is Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11"
a good film? I don't think there's any question about it--its facts
are weak, its interpretations outlandish, its tone shrill and
manipulative. Any strength it possesses in attacking Bush comes from
the fact that Bush is so eminently attackable; the pity is that Moore
seems inept at really exploiting the material at hand, at making a
solid case out of the fact that Bush has messed up America, Iraq,
everything.

That said--is it an important film? That's not as easy to answer; I
have to set aside my hat as film critic before I even dare to try.

Public reaction to the film when it came out in America was like to a
breath of fresh air inside a long-clogged outhouse; you can hear the
cries of relief, the lungs filling themselves with fresh air. Moore
brings a brave, gadfly exuberance to the art of Bush-bashing,
something neither opposition nor mainstream media has really dared to
indulge in in years, at least not since 9/11 (and arguably not since
Bush was elected); Moore, for better or for worse, is about as good
an alternative voice as we're likely to get. More, at this time of
writing it seems that every distortion of facts or outright lie Bush
or his supporters fling at the public has the effect of increasing
his lead in the polls, while his opponent's numbers lie dead in the
water; it's as if the times and mood were not conducive to facing
reality, or to reaching out to one's non-American (or non-white, or
non-Christian, or just plain different) fellow man, and Bush somehow
embodies those feelings perfectly. In this kind of scenario, truth
and honest journalism aren't just ineffective, they're irrelevant.

As I've pointed out before, we've been in that situation here in
Manila, and the solution--what solution we could come up with,
considering--was to rise up and kick the son of a bitch out
ourselves. America doesn't feel the need for that kind of extreme
action (at least, not yet), in which case the next practicable
solution might be a voice that can lie and distort as skillfully and
sincerely as the incumbent; it seems that what's needed isn't a
better-made, more honest "Fahrenheit 9/11" but a whole gaggle of
them, pitched as loudly and obnoxiously as Bush's campaign ads,
blaring away at a deaf American public.

(First published in Businessworld, 10/1/04)

(Comment? Email me at noelbotevera@...)