Libelers, Start Your Engines!

Bowling for Colubmine, Michael Moore's interesting and dishonest documentary, is now out on DVD, with one new alteration (a doctored caption on a Bush-Quayle campaign commercial is now un-doctored). In typically charming fashion, Moore has pre-emptively declared that

Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel.

Meanwhile, the Spinsanity boys have a fresh round-up of the Bowling items that were presented as facts, but which were in fact not. For a more partisan but also information-rich take, check out BowlingForTruth.com.

Comments

[Citizen]

Are you sure you've got that link correct, Ryan?

[Mark S.]

Errrrr... No Michael. I quote my copy of the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual (page 283 or my edition:

"Libel is injury to reputation. Words, pictures or cartoons that expose a person to public hatred, shame, disgrace or ridicule, or induce an ill opinion of a person are libelous."

Moving to page 285 "Fair Comment And Criticism":

"Everyone has the right to comment on matters of public interet and concern provided they do so fairly and with an honest purpose. Such comments or criticism are not libelous, however sever in their terms, unless they are written mailiciously."

In other words Moore: Thanks to Fair Comment, you and you're stupid film are fair game.

[nm156]

Moore? He was great in The Saint. I wasn't too impressed with him as 007, though. What? Not Roger? Michael Moore? Why would anyone care about what that pantload has to say? Out.

[Jean Bart]

nm156,

He's entertaining in the same way Ann Coulter is; its essentially pornography for the politically minded.

[nm156]

Michael Moore, Ann Coulter, and a vat of Jello. The mind boggles. Then it reels in horror.

[dragoon]

The really scary part is imagining the children.

[Ray]

One of my wife's emotional reactionary friends came over one day going on about the movie and how it opened her eyes.

Her own description of the movie was as convoluted a thing I've ever heard. Not seeing the movie myself, and not planning on it, I can only surmise that BCF declared:

Americans are overly fearful because they watch too much TV and in reaction to that fear, they buy a lot of guns.

The next day I looked up the gun violence numbers on Fedstats.gov or whatever the site is and was genuinely surprised at how low the numbers actually are. For gun violence and crime in general.

[nm156]

I'm not certain if Coulter is pro-life or not, but if anything could get her to change her mind, being knocked up by Moore would have to be it.

[fyodor]

Ray,

Yeah, BFC tried to make it look like our "culture of fear" was some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, and that TV news shows played a major role in creating that culture. A friend I saw it with said he thought that was the most "profound" part of it, as we comfortably wandered about the mall we saw it at. Bowlingfortruth.com makes the good point that at best Moore is doing the very same thing he's criticizing. My primary reaction is that since Moore is a propogandist and hardly a social scientist, I have pretty much zilch reason to believe this hypothesis resulted from anything close to rigorous academic analysis or study, and therefore it simply carries no weight with me. There's probably no data available to contradict it, so there's not a lot to say to those who choose to believe it. I found it a rather tedious and annoying flick.

[Mo]

The media does increase a sort of "culture of fear" though. Remember when child abductions were all over the news? No one seemed to notice that kidnappings were lower than they were for decades (thanks to all the hype, we now have the RAVE Act). Or how about the rash of shark attacks that filled the airwaves? People were scared shitless to get into the water, even thoug stastically, you're more likely to die falling down a flight of stairs. Not that the media is necessarily to blame, they only work with what's given to them. But things like shark attacks sell a lot better than kids drowning in backyard pools or tripping down a set of stairs.

I remember when I first moved to New York, I was deathly afraid of the crime. Once I lived there for a few weeks, I realized it wasn't nearly as bad as the news made it out to be. Not that I'm defending Moore here, but let's not give news shows a free pass. They excel at sensationalizing what really is a relatively minor problem.

[fyodor]

"Not that the media is necessarily to blame"

Right, even if one takes the intuitively unassailable point that news media can be sensationalistic, there remains several questions that must be answered before this has any relevance. Such as, does the US news media practice a greater degree of fear-mongering than other countries'? (I believe Moore claims this to be the case, but again, how rigorous, or even honest, was his analysis?) Is there any correlation between sensationalistic news media and crime? Can we isolate the cause and effect? And I'm sure there's plenty of other issues I haven't even thought of, being only a layman on such matters. Also, I believe Moore zeroed in on reporting of violent crime, which raises the question of whether such reporting is out of proportion with that of other countries if we really do have more violent crime...? So while sure, I can agree that the news media can tend to be sensationalistic, especially about certain things, Moore's thesis still leaves me cold and unimpressed rather than opening my eyes! (That's also because I didn't need to see BFC to know about that sensationalisticness!)

[Russ]

Did anyone else watch that movie and come away with the impression that the only sane person left in the entire country is Marilyn Manson?

[Robert Hutchinson]

Absolutely every fact in the film is true.

I can't believe no one's pounced on this sentence yet. Michael Moore, annoying AND impeccably tautological.

[nm156]

Robert: Every fact is true. Moore was the director, he starred in the movie. These are all facts that cannot be disputed. I think perhaps you are referring to the claims made by the film. They, of course, are bullshit. The 2nd link pretty much covers it.

[Girth]

When Bowling came out on DVD, my roommate and his girlfriend were all fired up about watching it, and I had been intrigued for a while. It took me less than five minutes to want to leave the room.

The worst part of the whole thing, though, was that I was asked why I didn't want to watch it, and I raised several objections to Moore's facts, opinions, and the overall style of the film (fiction passed off as documentary), and my objections were blown off as irrelevant, as though the fabrications that Moore passes off as facts stand as such without question.

I enjoyed Roger and Me. Bowling for Columbine is a piece of trash, IMHO.

[Citizen]

Marilyn Manson: http://www.theonion.com/onion3703/marilyn_mason.html This cracks me up.

[D.A. Ridgely]

Well, of course, every *fact* is true. There can be false assertions of fact, but there can't very well be false facts, now can there?

[joe]

That Bowling for Truth site is a real POS. I clicked on about half of their links. Roughly half object not to a factual distortion, but to an opinion. You don't like the way Moore explains the relationship between UN sanctions and Iraqi child mortality? Then make your own movie, asshole. Or state your position and defend it with facts. Don't just call Moore a liar because he doesn't spin facts the way you'd like.

The other half distort Moore's points in order to create straw men, then knock them down. Moore brings examples of institutions in our culture that are linked to violence in some way - department stores that sell bullets, defense contractors, etc. Then he hypothesizes that the ubiquity and approval of violence in America encourages people to act violently. The Bowling for Truth site plays dumb, and pretends that Moore claims KMart caused the Columbine massacre.

Idiots. Or liars. Or both.

I've never really wanted to see the movie before going to that site. But when an echo chamber of "criticism" gets going, and the sound and fury turns out to signify nothing, it peaks my curiosity.

[twistedmerkin]

In my opinion the worst part of the movie was the lack of a point. Through the movie Moore repeatedly and, I think, convincingly stressed that the high gun violence rate in the US is NOT due to the large number of firearms. Yet in the last scene he tries to blame the murder of a young girl on the NRA and specifically Charlton Heston. But since Moses and the NRA do not advocate violence but only gun ownership and if Moore himself thinks that gun ownership is not to blame, what's the point of the scene? He also tries to blame the same murder on Dick Clark because Clark gave the shooter's mother a job. He obviously used the tragic death simply to forward his movie.

[Mooretruth.com]

Joe of course is totally correct. There is not a sigle lie or distortion of the truth in the movie. The plaque that Moore changed the words on? A lie, probably by the neocons (WMDs ring a bell?). The fact that the factory in the movie really didn't build ICBMs? Trival nonsense, as some factory out there is oppressing poor people and keeping people in fear.

It is pretty much a fact (at least among educated informed and tolerent liberals) that White People really own guns because they Fear people of Color and we are violent society because we killed all the peace-loving one-with-nature Native Americans.

How dare people question this movie? Anyone who challenges this movie is just an idiot and a goosestepping conformist reactionary. At least that is what informed, tolerent and educated liberals believe. Stop listening to Bush and thik for yourself! Believe everything Micheal says!

[Mark A.]

"You're a liar!"

"No -- YOU are!"

"No, you're a liar!"

"YOU are!"

"No, YOU are!"

yada yada yada..........................

[Colin Edwards]

"Don't just call Moore a liar because he doesn't spin facts the way you'd like."

I think one issue is the amount of 'spin' that Moore is putting on the facts here. Staged sequences, extremely selective editing; the modifications to the political add were just classic Moore intellectual dishonesty. This is not a discussion in good faith he is having... when he couldn't find things to support his case he just outright invented them.

The other issue, is the movie is just pure nihilism... conspiracy theory... and debunks it... conspiracy theory.. and debunks it, repeat and repeat. There has to be some self indulgent dark humor going on here; a blatantly fear mongering movie on fear mongering. Some of the sequences were not that bad individually, but taken as a whole... this movie was pure rubbish.

[Captain Spaulding]

He didn't undoctor the ad. He changed the doctoring from "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." to "Willie Horton released. Then rapes a woman." The ad's just doctored more factually.

[Mo]

Moore:
"if I state something as a fact, I need the viewers to trust that those facts are correct."

Because if the masses start to question me, then they'll realize what a fake I am.

[Anonymous]

NEWSFLASH: Rich millionaire makes corporate movie (and shits on his workers), gets busted by grassroots effort to expose his proganda.

However, since those doing the busting are right-wing they are mindless followers, idiots and liars. Since the rich millionaire is left, he is a nonconformist sticking up to the "man" and keepin it real.

Also in the news, same story in California, where left guy formerly in hispanic KKK gets pass, right guy is smeared (without evidence) as racist.

[Ryan]

mooretruth.com,
Not very subtle but amusing nonetheless.