Freedom's Fidelity

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

I'm back, but catching up at work and allocating time to working on my review Dinesh D'Souza's lecture, which will come later this week. Since I am strapped for time, I'll take some easy shots at an easy target, Michael Moore.

Some video was made public last week of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, practicing their shots in the woods. Shooting (oddly enough) bowling balls and trees and laughing it up imagining it's someone's head. It's pretty disgusting. Of course Michael Moore managed to exploit the tragedy into an academy award for himself for "Bowling for Columbine", which as far as I can tell, has not yet reduced gun violence in the United States. But we all know that's cause Cowboy Bush is president. Right?

You know, I also saw Moore on Bill Maher's cable show (can't think of the name) a few weeks, or months, ago. First he mentioned that he hadn't been searched on the way in to the studio as comprehensively as he was victim to last year and quipped, "Did we catch bin Laden or something? Did I not hear about it?" The audience laughed. It seems Moore is quite concerned about security.

He began carping about how there isn't really a threat, and how Republicans and the right are exaggerating the terrorist threat for their own ends, you know the argument -- Big Business, Bush, Oil. Oil, Bush, Big Business. HALLIBURTON, Bush, Oil etc., etc. -- to support his position he cites statistics showing a significant decreases in terrorist attacks the world over in 2002, and I've read the reports, he is correct. At this point, if Bill Maher had half the interviewing prowess that his ego insists upon he would have said to Michael, " You're so right Michael, now what policy or conditions do you think explain this drop?"

I can't imagine Moore being anything but speechless, so either he is thick headed or I am thick headed, cause to me it's pretty clear that the war on terror and the fact that we've been dropping bombs on terrorist training camps and regimes that support them for the last 20 months or so explains it all. That and the fact that most dictators in the Middle East, are now well aware of the fact that if a terrorist attack were to originate from their country, they could get in line behind Saddam for history's dustbin.

Anyway, Michael Moore's new book asks "Dude, Where's My Country?" and my first thought is of Ashton Kutcher's character in the movie whose namesake became Moore's book title. My next thought is "Dude, look 90 miles south."

Anyway, the point of this was to point to this link to this critical review that documents Moore's habits of playing "fast and loose with the truth." If you scroll down there is a link to a companion piece outlining all of the errors found in the book.

posted by Paul  permalink | |