Melissa Overbeck
Assistant Perspectives
Editor
Michael Moore’s highly anticipated documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” was intended to tell the “truth about President Bush,” swaying moderate voters around the country to turn their backs on the president in the November election. Instead, the hit summer movie served as fuel for the existing battle between the extreme ends of both parties, while leaving moderate voters still undecided.
The movie was a mix of fact and opinion, giving each end of the political spectrum ammunition to support its respective beliefs. Liberal voters can focus on the well-documented facts, using them as proof for their argument that Bush and his administration have been a disaster for the country and need to be replaced.
Yet Moore’s clearly slanted editorial commentary and use of leading questions leave the door open for conservatives to decry the whole movie as liberal editorial fluff and as proof that the Democratic Party has a tendency to confuse fact and opinion. Not to mention the fact that it adds validity to the Republican claim that the media has a leftist bias and that Hollywood and extremists control the Democratic National Committee.
“Fahrenheit 9/11” could have been a rock-solid case against Bush. It is filled with facts supported by documents from sources respected by both parties. The 9/11 Commission’s conclusions, for example, confirmed a number of the facts presented in the movie. The Commission validated Moore’s accusation that Bush hadn’t taken the steps available to him to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, that he never met with his head of counterterrorism, Richard Clarke, to discuss the terrorist threat and that he never bothered to read a security briefing warning of bin Laden’s plan to attack the United States using airplanes. The briefing, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,” sat untouched on the President’s desk.
These facts are well-researched and documented — the kind of information that belongs in a documentary — but this movie was not a documentary.
A documentary, by definition, presents facts objectively without editorializing. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is filled with Moore’s commentary that, while entertaining, clouds the validity of the facts it contains and makes the movie appear as simply another attempt by liberals to sabotage Bush with inaccurate information.
Moore often shows Bush’s face slightly distorted, so as to look unintelligent, or suggests what Bush was thinking at a particular moment. Both theatrical effects show clear intent to mock the president, and thus discredit the movie by demonstrating both bias and Moore’s personal disdain for Bush.
When the movie shows Bush being informed of the Sept. 11 attacks, Moore zooms in on the president’s face and does a voiceover of his thoughts.
“As Bush sat in that Florida classroom, was he wondering if maybe he should have shown up to work more often? Should he have held at least one meeting since taking office to discuss the threat of terrorism with his head of counterterrorism (Richard Clarke)?” Moore says in the movie.
Although this style gets a good laugh out of moviegoers, Moore’s comments are sarcastic, disrespectful, and unnecessary; they destroy the movie’s credibility and with that its chances of being an effective documentary.
Rather than clearly trying to make Bush look bad through cheap shots, Moore should have simply presented the wide array of incriminating facts he had.
The factual information in “Fahrenheit 9/11” alone would make a powerful case against Bush — that Bush didn’t take the available steps to prevent Sept. 11, that he attempted to prevent Congress from investigating the terrorist attacks, that he went to war claiming the existence of weapons of mass destruction that were never found, and that he began proposing pay and benefit cuts for military personnel and their families, among others. The Democratic Party was anxiously awaiting the movie that was supposed to make the case against Bush once and for all. Instead, it got commentary and confusion and its credibility as an organization smudged by its association with Michael Moore. In the end, the only message the movie conveys is that Moore dislikes Bush. Good to know, but while Moore wastes time making his opinion known, the clock ticks away towards November, with the country still waiting for someone to make a fair, unbiased case against Bush.
08-30-2004