Michael Moore

Go see FARENHEIT 9/11.

Then make all your families see it. And your friends. And their families and THEIR friends . . .




It is the civic goddamn duty of every resident of the United States of America to see this film.



You'll hear people say that Michael Moore hates America. That's a motherfucking lie, and it will be told by the same motherfucking liars who sold you Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Michael Moore LOVES America. He just hates President Bush (and all those neocon shitbags who work his strings), which ain't the same thing at all.

A.O. Scott, in his review of the film in the New York Times, calls Michael Moore "a credit to the Republic." And that is by God true, but it doesn't go far enough. I attended the very first showing of this film, at 1:25 PM on a Friday afternoon, and the theater was standing room only -- and at the end, the place burst into spontaneous applause that turned into a standing ovation.

That gives me hope for my country.

On the night when that smug scumbag in the Oval Office smirked his way through the announcement that the United States had invaded Iraq, I turned to my wife and told her that for the first time in my life, I was ashamed to be an American. Not long after the "end of major combat operations," Turner Classic Movies showed YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, the classic Cagney biopic of George M. Cohan, and I tell you without shame that when they played "Over There," I burst into tears.

I was grieving for my country -- for the idea of America. For the America of the Declaration of Independence. The America of the Gettysburg Address and Lincoln's Second Inaugural, the Bill of Rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Shit, I was even grieving for the America of "The Boys of Pont du Hoc."

Michael Moore is changing all that.

Michael Moore makes me proud to be an American again.

It is the greatest goddamn privilege imaginable to live in a country where a man can make a film like this, and not be executed by the government on whom he inflicts a two-hour hatchet job. (Well, at least, he hasn't been executed SO FAR . . . though the odds of him having a "fatal accident" in the next year or so have increased by several orders of magnitude.)

Is FARENHEIT 9/11 fair and balanced?

-- Erm, not so much.

Is FARENHEIT 9/11 a journalistic documentary, intent on portraying and preserving a moment in history?

-- Ye . . . well, no.

Is FARENHEIT 9/11 a rhetorical sixteen-inch cannon loaded with grapeshot, aimed at the Bush Administration?

-- Basically, yes.

Michael Moore is a very angry man. And he is a very gifted filmmaker. And, of course, when your basic premise is that our current Administration is a pack of venal thugs who hate everything about this country except how much money their friends can squeeze out of it, the movie pretty much writes itself.

He is so serious about this that the film is very short on laughs, and very short on his trademark ambush stunts. Mostly, it's made up of images that are public record -- he lets Mr. Bush speak for himself, which is the cruellest thing you can do to that fucking brain-damaged fratboy.

And the most extended interview in the film is with a woman from his home town, Mrs. Lila Lipscomb, and he just shuts up and lets her talk, because any comment would only be an insult. This is a deeply patriotic woman, whose fundamental goodness and unbearable grief make her almost impossible to watch.

I can only hope that every one of those soulless Bushdroids who will stand up to denounce this film has to go face to face with Mrs Lipscomb, and explain to HER why they think people shouldn't see it.



That's my take. Yours might be different. Which is okay. Even if you walk out of the film still convinced that Dubya is the greatest President since Washington, that's okay.

See it, that's all.

See it.