Farenheit 9/11

[TomB]

A study came out a while back that determined that overall, FoxNews leans (don't remember actual number) 2% to the right while the other networks lean 2% to the left. I don't know how they figure this or what statistical basis they used but... It was based upon which news items they chose to follow and whether they were positive/negative in regard to them.

So, something like a 4 percent difference in content. Not worth the screaming, I think. I don't switch over the ABC and puke or anything. Truth be told, I don't have a TV so I get all of my news via the AP and the internet.

Erik

Yeah, I'm sure they are all biased one way or another, to some extent.

Tom

[ErikT]

We better be careful, Tom. Dale's gonna come in here and call us reasonable people.

[nancymae]

I saw the movie...what angered me was the fact that he lied about the WMD's...what scared me was the look on his face after they told him about the 911 attacks....the light's on..but no one's home. Not to mention his proejction of the Saudi's. Is it a wonder that their relative...Bin Landen has NOT been caught????? No surprise to me.

I want 180 days paid vacation a year...no responsibility for my work product...and no one can critize my work either. That...plus 100% covered health care..paid by the tax payers. He can keep the corporate buddies he has....they are a bunch of crooks....raping the environment, the workforce...just for the bottom line...money in their pockets.

I see the political arena as self-serving from the top all the way to the local...havn't any of these idiots ever heard of the fall of the Roman Empire?????

I'll bet Nixon is saying..."And they thought I WAS BAD????"

Nancy

[mamakash]

and watching Barney run through the brush. (And, no, I don't mean Barney Frank.)

Will O'Ban

You mean Barney Fife????



Tom

I mean Barney the dog. (Everybody's a comedian)

Will O'Ban

Oh, I was picturing Barney the Dinosaur.

[Jeff Stallard]

I was picturing Barney Rubble.

[Jeff Stallard]

I like Bush. I'm amazed that he's gotten this far with his horrible public speaking skills, but I think he's a good man with character,who's doing what he thinks is right to protect this country. I do disagree with him about invading Iraq, however, but for different reasons than most of you. Democracy is a great responsibility, and the Iraqi people are, at this point, unable to handle it. Yes, of course I'm generalizing, but the exceptions don't disprove the statement.

I haven't seen Farenheit 9/11, and I doubt I will. Moore doesn't care what my opinion is, so why should I care about his?

[oleorezinator]

...from what I've seen so far, it seems extraordinary that Bush could be elected once, let alone twice.

Funny, it seems extraordinary to some of us, too.

Susan

funny, it seems tragic to lots of us.

[ChaoticGemini]

I didn't find the movie all that surprising. Even the facts many people were shocked to learn, but I do not rely on the mainstream US media to bring me my news.

Moore does throw in his opinions, but I felt they were pretty easy to spot. (Sometimes I agreed, sometimes I did not.) Out of the four guys I saw the movie with, only one was so overwhelmed that he had a little trouble sorting out the opinions from the facts.

Tina

[dwinterfield]

I voted against Bush, and my unhappiness with him increases,

After the election, I thought he would move to prove all his critics wrong. Instead, he seems determined to prove them correct. Send more troops to Iraq a week after the election, create a fake social security crisis with a risky solution that will cost $1-2 trillion, make war rumblings toward Iran, fill his cabinet with extreme neo-conservative technocrats ......

[izzarina]

I would actually argue that it is no more biased than the "official" information that the Department of State controls and disseminates. That's what concerned me about the criticisms of Moore's "bias," as if those controlling the official sources had none themselves, in addition to widespread access to the American population. Even if some of the stuff was staged, do people really think political rallies and other government-approved events are not (at least to some extent)?

Carol

I do agree, Carol. I don't think that the vast majority of the clips in the movie were staged, but sometimes it's nice to get both sides. Perhaps I'm just a trifle too optimistic at times. Despite what my gut reaction is to this administration's antics, I want to believe that our illustrious president has our best interests at heart. Unfortunately reality does kick in, and I realize the error of ways It would just be nice to not have to question constantly, if that makes sense.

[Wombat]

I would also suggest watching Fahrenhype 9/11. Here is a review: http://dvd.ign.com/articles/564/564458p1.html

It seems like it would be a good idea to hear both sides of the story on this one. I'm sure that there are other places where one can check Mr. Moore's facts - unless you just prefer to believe them. Sometimes it's easier that way.

Erik

Thanks for the link Erik. I agree that it would be good to watch that one as well, but the review doesn't suggest Bush would come well out of a well-researched comparison. Two points strike me.

First, even if Moore could be shown to be a lousy journalist, that wouldn't make Bush a trustworthy president. According to that review, the 'Hype' answer failed altogether to address Bush's reasons for going into Iraq. Now that can't have been an oversight; the people who made that film already had Moore's film in front of them and could just play it through stopping to jot down every point that needed to be answered. If Moore were right about just one point of that magnitude, that would be a damning indictment of the administration. Whether or not Moore is a fair journalist is small beer compared to that issue.

The second point involves the large number of claims that Moore took something 'out of context.' What is not often realised is that things can be taken out of context and still count as good evidence. Let me explain.

There are two kinds of circumstance in which the charge that something has been taken out of context is made. Sometimes it happens when the person quoted neither said nor implied the message reported. A historian writes 'Hitler was not at all good for Germany.' He gets quoted as saying 'Hitler was .... good for Germany.' Obviously this example would be too blatant to fool anyone who checks, but just a little subtlety can make checking difficult. Clearly this sort of quoting out of context is misleading and quite wrong.

We often don't notice the other kind of case. Sometimes someone intending to convey a certain message drops their guard and says or implies something they never intended to say. Often they will complain that they have been quoted out of context because they are embarrassed and angry that their slip has been seized upon. Here, quoting out of context is perfectly in order; sometimes the only evidence of a cover up is what people inadvertently let slip. Politicians are rather good at exploiting this loophole. Give a speech mouthing platitudes in support of the party line, let one sentence slip that seriously undermines it, and then deny that your intention was subversive by asking people to attend to the whole speech. Mission accomplished but treachery deniable through the don't-take-me-out-of-context manoeuvre.

[ErikT]

I'm afraid that I disagree with your logic, Wombat. I do not see either cases which you state as being reasonable. In the case of the second, a reasonable attempt should be made to establish what exactly they meant by their purported slip. This is particularly true if I plan to use the information in a public way. A text without a context is a pretext. And I can build some mighty mean arguments on pretext.

I remember one time using the phrase "dumb as a doornob". Moments later, in an entirely different context, I called my wife a doornob. If you didn't know the context you could easily think that I meant she was dumb. But in truth I meant it in a totally different way. It wasn't some sort of slip. Julie and I laughed because some friends had heard the first part and the last part but not the middle part so they thought that I was being mean to Julie. We still laugh about it to this day. (Really, it was funny when it happened... it looses something in the re-telling )

Including context is NEVER a bad thing. Excluding context is OFTEN a bad thing.

Erik

[Wombat]

I'm afraid that I disagree with your logic, Wombat. I do not see either cases which you state as being reasonable. In the case of the second, a reasonable attempt should be made to establish what exactly they meant by their purported slip. This is particularly true if I plan to use the information in a public way. A text without a context is a pretext. And I can build some mighty mean arguments on pretext.

I remember one time using the phrase "dumb as a doornob". Moments later, in an entirely different context, I called my wife a doornob. If you didn't know the context you could easily think that I meant she was dumb. But in truth I meant it in a totally different way. It wasn't some sort of slip. Julie and I laughed because some friends had heard the first part and the last part but not the middle part so they thought that I was being mean to Julie. We still laugh about it to this day. (Really, it was funny when it happened... it looses something in the re-telling )

Including context is NEVER a bad thing. Excluding context is OFTEN a bad thing.

Erik

Well I agree with most of what you are saying here Erik. So I guess I didn't make myself clear.

A person who simply stumbles or chooses the wrong words to express waht tehy are really trying to say isn't the kind of person I had in mind. What I had in mind was the sort of contradiction or slip that gets you into trouble in court. It is very hard to lie consistently. That is fortunate for our legal system.

Let me give you a clear example. After the Bush victory, a Republican strategist went on Australian TV saying that the Democrats had lost the ability to speak to middle America. The clear implication was that Republicans still respect people the Democrats don't even understand. The interview went fine until he stopped talking about middle America and started talking about rednecks. Now if the man tried to defend himself by saying he only used the word redneck once and it was just a slip, I'm still inclined to think that he betrayed in that slip what he really thinks of 'middle America.' Yet I hear many people who make slips like this appeal to 'context' to cover for their revealing slips.

Of course, I agree entirely that it can never do any harm to listen to any remark in context. What I'm saying is that some people think that listening in context means that revealing slips like this can be discounted.

[ErikT]

First, even if Moore could be shown to be a lousy journalist, that wouldn't make Bush a trustworthy president. According to that review, the 'Hype' answer failed altogether to address Bush's reasons for going into Iraq. Now that can't have been an oversight; the people who made that film already had Moore's film in front of them and could just play it through stopping to jot down every point that needed to be answered. If Moore were right about just one point of that magnitude, that would be a damning indictment of the administration. Whether or not Moore is a fair journalist is small beer compared to that issue.

I thought that I'd better address the meat of your arguement as well.

If Mr. Moore is an excellent journalist and all of his facts are true and presented in the correct context then... what? I'm not certain what the President would stand accussed of if everthing that Moore says is true. You tell me. What are the damning indictments?

If Mr. Moore is a yellow journalist, or even just a liar, than it is disingenuous to make any assertion regarding the Bush Presidency. A number of Moore's claims have been proven false, both by other reporters and by the 9/11 Commission Report. This calls all of Moore's assertions into question. That is not to say that he is wrong in all of them, but that it would take more than simply stating them to get me to believe anything that Mr. Moore has to say (just as many of you are not inclined to believe anything that the President says).

Erik

[ErikT]

Let me give you a clear example. After the Bush victory, a Republican strategist went on Australian TV saying that the Democrats had lost the ability to speak to middle America.

Yes, I remember reading about that recently I still don't have enough information to tell you whether it's a bad thing or a good thing.

Yesterday, Kerry's main planner was quoted as saying that she thought that it was Bush's good job following 9/11 that sealed Kerry's loss. I have a hard time believing that she said that. But it was a quote without a context, so that is exactly what it sounded like she said. I'd need to hear the entire speech and maybe an interview before I'd believe that a hard core democrat that just lost the election would publicly compliment the President.

Regarding rednecks, first of all you should know that redneck is not always a bad word in our venacular. Much of middle America (where I'm from) is redneck. I grew up in and my parents still live in a 15'x60' trailer. I have friends that have the indentation of a chewing tabacco can emblazened on their jeans. (One even was a rep for Skol). It often just means rural folk. So there you've lost some of the cultural context to his statement. You don't know where he grew up or what he means by that word. He MAY have been meaning it in a denegrating way. Or maybe not. He may have simply been saying that democrats do not appeal to most of rural America (which is true if you have seen any of the country maps that show princinct wins by county). I don't know. I haven't seen the context of his words nor the expression on his face.

So, again, rather than drawing conclusions based upon a lack of information, wouldn't it make more sense to make decisions on a mass of information?