When Punchline Trumps Honesty
There's more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.
BY SCOTT SIMON
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may
win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and
Jack Kelly fired.
Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore
film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by
Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of
facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a
1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.
A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase.
But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed
and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of
Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and
enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the
story he wants to tell.
Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael,
blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how
the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and
caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and
facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap
for laughing."
His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or
misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license
rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to
make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael
observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work
of a slick ad exec."
The main premise of Mr. Moore's recent work is that both Presidents Bush
have been what amounts to Manchurian Candidates of the Saudi royal family.
Mr. Moore suggests (he depends so much on innuendo that a simple,
declarative verb like "says" is usually impossible) the Saudi government,
having soured on their pawns for unstated reasons, launched the attacks of
Sept. 11.
"What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed onto
a suicide mission?" Moore asks in the best-selling "Dude, Where's My
Country?" "What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi
government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family?"
Central to Mr. Moore's indictment of the current President Bush is his
charge that the U.S. government secretly assisted the evacuation of bin
Laden family members from the U.S. in the hours following the Sept. 11
attacks, when all other flights nationwide were grounded. He supports this
with grainy images of indecipherable documents.
But on our show on Saturday, Richard Clarke, the government's former
counter-terrorism adviser and no apologist for the Bush administration, told
us that he had authorized those flights, but only after air travel had been
restored and all the Saudis had been questioned. "I think Moore's making a
mountain of a molehill," he said. Moreover, said Mr. Clarke, "He never
interviewed me." Instead, Mr. Moore had simply lifted a clip from an ABC
interview. Perhaps Mr. Moore just didn't want to get an answer that he
didn't want to hear. (See how useful innuendoes can be?)
In what is perhaps the most wrenching scene in the film, an Iraqi woman is
shown wailing amid the rubble caused by a bomb that killed members of her
family. I do not doubt her account, or her sorrow. I have interviewed Iraqis
about U.S. bombs that killed civilians. People who agree to wars should see
the human damage bombs can do.
But reporters who were taken around to see the sites of civilian deaths
during the bombing of Baghdad also observed that some of those errant bombs
were fired by Iraqi anti-aircraft crews. Mr. Moore doesn't let the audience
know when and where this bomb was dropped, or otherwise try to identify the
culprit of the tragedy.
Mr. Moore tries hard to identify himself with U.S. troops and their
concerns. But he spends an awful lot of effort depicting them as dupes and
brutes. At one point in "Fahrenheit 9/11," someone off-camera prods a U.S.
soldier into singing a favorite hip-hop song with profane lyrics. Mr. Moore
then runs the soldier's voice over combat footage, to make it seem as if the
soldier were insensitively singing along with the destruction.
In another scene, U.S. soldiers make savage jokes about the awkward effects
of rigor mortis on one part of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier. I do not
doubt the authenticity of those pictures. But I also have no particular
reason to trust it. A few basic details, like where and when the video was
shot, are considered traditional reporting techniques (especially after the
front-page photos of British soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners turned out
to be frauds). A few other basic facts might have informed the audience. Was
the Iraqi killed in battle? By a suicide bomb? Moore says the U.S. soldiers
are good boys turned coarse in an immoral war. But I have also heard those
kind of ugly and anxious jokes about corpses from overstressed emergency
room physicians.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from
Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he
"uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine
those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds
"Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really
want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can
reach working-class Americans?
Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50
years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in
Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and
grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political
spectrum.
But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press
conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like
the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge
people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see
more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a
blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.
Mr. Simon hosts NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" and is the author of
theforthcoming "Pretty Birds," a novel about the siege of Sarajevo, from
Random House.
When Punchline Trumps Honesty
There's more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.
BY SCOTT SIMON
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT
Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may
win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and
Jack Kelly fired.
Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore
film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by
Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of
facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a
1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.
A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase.
But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed
and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of
Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and
enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the
story he wants to tell.
Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael,
blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how
the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and
caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and
facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap
for laughing."
His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or
misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license
rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to
make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael
observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work
of a slick ad exec."
The main premise of Mr. Moore's recent work is that both Presidents Bush
have been what amounts to Manchurian Candidates of the Saudi royal family.
Mr. Moore suggests (he depends so much on innuendo that a simple,
declarative verb like "says" is usually impossible) the Saudi government,
having soured on their pawns for unstated reasons, launched the attacks of
Sept. 11.
"What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed onto
a suicide mission?" Moore asks in the best-selling "Dude, Where's My
Country?" "What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi
government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family?"
Central to Mr. Moore's indictment of the current President Bush is his
charge that the U.S. government secretly assisted the evacuation of bin
Laden family members from the U.S. in the hours following the Sept. 11
attacks, when all other flights nationwide were grounded. He supports this
with grainy images of indecipherable documents.
But on our show on Saturday, Richard Clarke, the government's former
counter-terrorism adviser and no apologist for the Bush administration, told
us that he had authorized those flights, but only after air travel had been
restored and all the Saudis had been questioned. "I think Moore's making a
mountain of a molehill," he said. Moreover, said Mr. Clarke, "He never
interviewed me." Instead, Mr. Moore had simply lifted a clip from an ABC
interview. Perhaps Mr. Moore just didn't want to get an answer that he
didn't want to hear. (See how useful innuendoes can be?)
In what is perhaps the most wrenching scene in the film, an Iraqi woman is
shown wailing amid the rubble caused by a bomb that killed members of her
family. I do not doubt her account, or her sorrow. I have interviewed Iraqis
about U.S. bombs that killed civilians. People who agree to wars should see
the human damage bombs can do.
But reporters who were taken around to see the sites of civilian deaths
during the bombing of Baghdad also observed that some of those errant bombs
were fired by Iraqi anti-aircraft crews. Mr. Moore doesn't let the audience
know when and where this bomb was dropped, or otherwise try to identify the
culprit of the tragedy.
Mr. Moore tries hard to identify himself with U.S. troops and their
concerns. But he spends an awful lot of effort depicting them as dupes and
brutes. At one point in "Fahrenheit 9/11," someone off-camera prods a U.S.
soldier into singing a favorite hip-hop song with profane lyrics. Mr. Moore
then runs the soldier's voice over combat footage, to make it seem as if the
soldier were insensitively singing along with the destruction.
In another scene, U.S. soldiers make savage jokes about the awkward effects
of rigor mortis on one part of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier. I do not
doubt the authenticity of those pictures. But I also have no particular
reason to trust it. A few basic details, like where and when the video was
shot, are considered traditional reporting techniques (especially after the
front-page photos of British soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners turned out
to be frauds). A few other basic facts might have informed the audience. Was
the Iraqi killed in battle? By a suicide bomb? Moore says the U.S. soldiers
are good boys turned coarse in an immoral war. But I have also heard those
kind of ugly and anxious jokes about corpses from overstressed emergency
room physicians.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from
Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he
"uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine
those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds
"Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really
want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can
reach working-class Americans?
Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50
years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in
Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and
grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political
spectrum.
But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press
conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like
the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge
people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see
more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a
blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.
Mr. Simon hosts NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday" and is the author of
theforthcoming "Pretty Birds," a novel about the siege of Sarajevo, from
Random House.
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