The Left's Propagandist: Michael Moore and the
Intellectual State of Today's Left
by Robert Tracinski
http://www.tiadaily.com/php-bin/news/showArticle.php?id=866
I have not given, and do not intend to give, much
attention in TIA Daily to
Michael Moore's anti-Bush screed "Fahrenheit 9/11."
But I do want to point out
the ominous and so far little-noted trend underlying
the reaction to his film by
left-leaning political leaders and cultural
commentators.
I should state at first that I have not yet decided
whether I will drag myself to the
theaters and subject myself to this film. I probably
will, for the same reason that
I forced myself to sit through "The Passion of the
Christ"--just to know the
enemy. But I already have a good idea of the film's
vices and flaws. I learned
these, not primarily by reading the attacks on
Moore's film, but by reading its
many glowingly positive reviews.
Moore's film, from what I can gather, is composed of
three basic elements:
1. Conspiracy theories.
Washington Post columnist William Raspberry lauds the
film as "a masterful job
of connecting the dots between Saudi money and the
business interests of the
president and his friends." Other reviewers note that
Moore's target is that
favorite leftist bogeyman, the "military-industrial
complex."
2. Ad-hominem attacks.
Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert says Moore
"makes good use of candid
footage, including an eerie video showing Bush
practicing facial expressions
before going live with his address to the nation
about 9/11. Apparently Bush
and other members of his administration don't know
what every TV reporter
knows, that a satellite image can be live before they
get the cue to start talking.
That accounts for the quease-inducing footage of
Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz wetting his pocket comb in his mouth
before slicking back his
hair. When that doesn't do it, he spits in his hand
and wipes it down. If his
mother is alive, I hope for his sake she doesn't see
this film. Such scenes are
typical of vintage Moore, catching his subjects off
guard."
Such scenes are also utterly trivial and are an
attempt to substitute ridicule of a
man's personal habits for an examination of his
ideas.
3. Maudlin appeals to emotion.
The conspicuously fawning Mick LaSalle, writing in
the San Francisco
Chronicle, describes how "As the president talks
about the need for war, Moore
shows kids playing in Baghdad. Later, he shows a boy
lying in the street with
his forearm barely attached to his body. On the home
front, Moore shows a
mother whose son was killed in Iraq, reading her
son's final letter--in which he
says that he hopes the president isn't re-elected."
But does the grief of a distraught mother actually
_prove_ anything? Of course
not.
If these are accurate descriptions--and they are all
from positive reviews of the
film--then this is an utterly _unintellectual_ film,
a film with nothing important to
say, no serious philosophical or political
perspective, nothing to offer for the
mind of a critically thinking viewer. (Indeed, its
record-breaking crowds seem to
be composed mostly of true believers who have brought
a tent-revival
atmosphere to the screenings, as described in an
MSNBC report.)
"Fahrenheit 9/11," in short, is a spiteful product of
the intellectual bankruptcy of
the contemporary left. Thus, I agree with comments
made by James Robbins
yesterday at National Review Online :
"Conservatives should not protest this film; that
only gives it more notoriety and
makes its multimillionaire 'everyman' director even
wealthier. I would sooner
acknowledge Moore as the intellectual leader of the
Left, and this film his (and
their) emblematic masterwork. This is the best they
have to offer."
But as a said earlier, the most interesting thing
about this film is the reaction of
its reviewers.
As I surveyed about a dozen major reviews of the
film, what struck me first was
the degree of lockstep philosophic conformity. Not a
single reviewer inclined to
the right politically, none supported the war in Iraq
(or any part of the War on
Terrorism, from what I could tell), and none had
anything but the most scathing
and dismissive views about President Bush. Every few
years, a poll comes out
showing that newspaper and television reporters
overwhelmingly come from a
leftist perspective--much farther to the left than
that of their average reader.
Among film reviewers, apparently, that pattern is
even stronger: the leftist
outlook is universal.
This gives a doubly ironic meaning to a tag-line used
at the top of some posters
for Moore's film: "Controversy--What Controversy?"
What controversy, indeed?
Nearly everyone tasked by the mainstream media to
review this film is an
acolyte of Moore's far-left views.
But what is disturbing about the reaction to this
film is not this near-universal
agreement with Moore's un-intellectual vaporings. The
most important common
theme of the reviews is not an uncritical acceptance
of Moore's slanted facts
and weak reasoning: it is an openly expressed
contempt for facts and reasoning
as such.
Many of the reviewers openly acknowledge that Moore
is a "biased"
"propagandist" peddling a "hatchet-job"--remember
that these are descriptions
taken from _positive_ reviews. They conclude,
however, that Michael Moore
may be a propagandist--but that's OK, because he is
_our_ propagandist. He
may spread lies, but they are useful lies.
Here is a sampling:
-- Rick Groen, Toronto Globe & Mail: "It's no
criticism to say this is
manipulative-- all films are, and should be. The
problem is that the attempt at
manipulation is way too transparent, and thus fails."
-- David Sterritt, Christian Science Monitor: "Is the
label 'documentary'
appropriate for this openly activist movie? Of course
it is, unless you cling to
some idealized notion of 'objective' film."
-- Washington Post columnist William Raspberry:
"Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit
9/11'.is an overwrought piece of propaganda--a 110-
minute hatchet job that
doesn't even bother to pretend to be fair.. But why
did the mostly liberal crowd
at last week's Washington premiere--people who like
to think of themselves as
thoughtful and fair-minded--applaud so
unrestrainedly? They applauded, I
suspect, for much the same reason so many members of
the black Christian
middle-class applaud the harangues of Black Muslim
minister Louis Farrakhan.
Some of his facts may be wrong and some of his
connections strained, but his
_attitude_ is right."
-- J. Hoberman, Village Voice: "But a well-wrought
account of the
administration's use of absurd terror
alerts...dissipates once Moore drops Bush
to make fun of an assortment of terrorized Americans,
hapless peaceniks, and
befuddled state troopers. The flipside to this
derision is Moore's sentimentality--
most apparent in his willingness to milk the grief of
a Flint gold-star mother. And
yet, if it registers 1,000 voters or swings 500 votes
in Michigan..." (Ellipse in
original.)
But perhaps the most inadvertently revealing passage
is this one:
-- Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: "Assessing
the merits of a political
film is a tricky business. Obviously, its quality is
partly a function of its power to
persuade, but its persuasiveness is in the eye of the
beholder. Yet there are
other things to consider: The movie's passion. Its
serious purpose. Its tone. Its
mix of words and images, and the way both linger in
the mind. There's the way
the movie fashions its arguments, and the cumulative
effect the experience
provides--what you feel walking out, what you think
about the next day. By all
these measures, 'Fahrenheit 9/11' is Michael Moore's
best film."
Notice what does not make it on to this list of
criteria for judging a documentary
film: whether it is _true_. Are its facts correct?
Are they presented in the proper
context? Does it make a coherent argument? Notice
what this reviewer cares
about instead: that the film _works_, that it has an
impact on the political
leanings of the audience. That is the common theme of
the reviews.
Behind all of these reviews is un-admitted Marxist
premise--the root idea that is
necessary to justify propaganda. In the ideology of
materialist Marxist
totalitarianism, it was widely accepted that ideas
are just a "superstructure," a
"legitimating ideology" whose sole purpose is to
advance the power of one
group or class over another. The seizure of political
power, in this view, is the
only truly important goal--and the marshalling of
ideas and arguments is to be
judged only by how it serves raw power politics.
More than a decade after the nominal fall of Soviet
tyranny, that is the ugly
totalitarian outlook that leers out at us from the
film reviews offered by these
mainstream "progressives."
We have talked in recent weeks about the threats
posed by the dogmatism of
the religious right. But the reaction to this film
shows the still-potent and
arguably more vicious threat posed by the contempt
for facts, arguments, and
the mind on the part of the nihilistic left.
Robert Tracinski is the editor and publisher of TIA
Daily and the Intellectual
Activist.
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