June 30, 2004, 08:00 AM

No Facts Makes Moore a Bad Boy

By Neal Jain

Fahrenheit 9/11, although extremely comedic, was an overall poor documentary. The reasons for this were the obviously extremely skewed facts and one-sided arguments. Michael Moore may not have lied in Fahrenheit 9/11, but he certainly editorialized the facts.

For example when he made a mockery of the coalition built for the War in Iraq, he failed to account for the involvement of the second most powerful military in the world, Great Britain. Not only that, Moore also failed to mention John Howard (Prime Minister of Australia) and Jose Maria Aznar’s (President of Spain) staunch support for the War in Iraq. However, Moore’s radically propogandic, pre-war Iraq images of little Iraqi boys flying kites and happy families smiling at the camera is the scene that completely shot down the credibility of this film. I wonder why Moore failed to show images of the mass graves we uncovered, as well as surviving family members of the victims of the genocide in the town of Halabja, a town which Hussein gassed in 1988. Moore’s footage of President Bush is also very interesting, and it is quite clear that Moore is trying depict the president as a very insincere and obtuse person. A key clip from the movie is a scene in which President Bush is standing on a Golf Course and says, “I call upon all nations to stop these terrorist killers. Now watch this drive.” Moore is of course trying to portray the President as insincere; however in all fairness when you catch the President or any person for that matter on a golf course, what else do you expect? However Moore is extremely talented at portraying President Bush at his worst for his propagandist agenda. These are just some examples of Moore’s “non-fictional footage.”

Moore also attempts to further drive a wedge in society’s relations between the rich and the poor when he states, “Those who go to the worst schools, live in the smallest houses, etc. are the ones who are the first to rise up and volunteer to protect this very system that they are living in.” Moore is speaking of those in poverty stricken neighborhoods enlisting in the army, but once again Moore fails to mention the entire truth. Most of soldiers who enlisted in the military do so not for a cause in which they believe in, but for the benefits that the military offers. To enlist in the military is to receive a job with great benefits, for the military pays for college tuition once a soldier has served and gives him or her extra health benefits, etc. Moore attempts to make it seem as if the poor are oppressed and forced into joining the army and fails to mention all these benefits which the US Government is kind enough to provide to the soldiers.

In addition, Moore definitely presents some extremely one-sided questions/assertions in his documentary, his main assertion is that there is a connection between the Bin Laden family and the Bush family. He presents his case by showing a list of bin Laden family members allowed to depart for Saudi Arabia just two days after September 11th, when all flights were still grounded. After doing some research, I found out that Richard Clark himself, not President Bush, has claimed responsibility for authorizing the flights of the Bin Laden family members out of the country, a fact which was conveniently left out of the movie. Moore also indicates that Bush and the bin Laden family were vaguely connected in some sort of business dealings, which means absolutely nothing, considering the fact that the Bin Ladens have renounced Osama as a member of their family, I don’t know what Moore was implying.

As the director of a documentary, Moore should have been willing to show both sides of the story. The definition of a documentary is a work which presents a situation objectively. Without Moore showing some kind of explanation for the behavior he presents, it indicates the subjective nature of this film. To sum up Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, Shrek 2 is more non-fictional than this documentary.

Neal Jain is a senior at the Kinkaid School, and is pursuing a career in Real Estate Investment as well as a career in politics.

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