Tuesday, June 29, 2004
I won't be seeing it. No big sacrifice, if I didn't get out to see Troy in the theaters, I'm not going to see "it." But I wouldn't be giving Michael Moore any of my money anyway, even if I did get out to the theaters more often, and no, I don't think it's necessary to do so for me to have an opinion about the movie.
There are loads and loads of books and movies I will never read or see - books about Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, ESP, Zionist Cabals, Afghan Oil Pipelines, or the latest Chomskyite screed about how we're all blind sheep being led around by something or other sort of secret Capitalist conspiracy... Oh sure, they're on my reading list - assuming my reading list is the entire contents of the Library of Congress and they're down near the bottom...but they're on there.
In all those cases, "I get the picture." I don't need to spend my precious time and heartbeats (I only have so many left) reading that stuff to know it's crap. Prior knowledge and looking to the opinion of authorities I trust inform my opinion and help me maximize my time.
I get Michael Moore's 'picture.' Unless there's something new here (and so far there isn't), I'm not buying it. I've heard it before, I've even read some of it from Moore himself and found it to be semi-literate, irrational pap. Watching it on the screen where Moore can be even more manipulative...no, thank you. Michael Moore is the very epitome of the unreliable narrator.
So consider the source. I'm not interested in the opinions of a person who's world-view could find him saying things like this:
… There is a lot of talk amongst Bush's opponents that we should turn this war over to the United Nations. Why should the other countries of this world, countries who tried to talk us out of this folly, now have to clean up our mess? I oppose the U.N. or anyone else risking the lives of their citizens to extract us from our debacle. I'm sorry, but the the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end"
There's so much more where that came from.
There's only one reason to see this film: water cooler talk.
Thankfully, I'm self-employed.
Check out Mark Steyn in The Telegraph:
Telegraph | Opinion | The importance of being Michael Moore
I knew they were informed, intelligent sophisticates because they howled with laughter at every joke about what a bozo Bush is. They split their sides during the patriotic ballad – eagles soaring, etc – composed and sung by John Ashcroft, the famously sinister US Attorney-General. Moore reveals – and if you feel that knowing the plot would spoil the movie, please skip to the next paragraph – that Bush is a privileged simpleton under the control of war-crazed Big Oil interests who arranged to have the 2000 election stolen for him. I hadn't heard that before, had you?...
