The Silver Screen
It’s been 22 years since the June 25, 2004, release date of an idiotic Michael Moore movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which disparaged George W. Bush. An educated populace should have seen through the outright lies and myriad distortions that dogged every frame of Moore's cut-and-paste crockumentary. If you read the residual reviews found online, however, apparently not.
The film was as dishonest as its producer. “Fahrenheit 9/11” represented a not-too-stealthy example of crowd-pandering propaganda like that practiced by the Soviets for decades. It stands today as a testament to Moore's moral lapses, thinly veiled as a legitimate exercise in protest.
In a drawn-out and paranoid opening sequence, Moore leads the audience to believe that George W. Bush personally escorted the bin Laden family out of the country directly after September 11, 2001. Actually, Richard Clarke, Bush's former chief of counterterrorism and ultimately a non-Bush supporter, has publicly stated that he personally authorized those departures.
Down and So Dirty
Moore then presents endless distortions and fabrications, such as claiming that the bin Laden clan (save Osama himself), through the Carlyle Group, had an "intimate" connection with the Bush family.
Moore's montage of out-of-context film snippets, offered at lightning speed, is designed to dupe largely post-MTV, non-thinking, Left-leaning audiences into trusting that coherent points have been made. Not so, at all.
“Fahrenheit 9/11” was based on a big lie and fueled by audacious and convoluted assertions. President Bush was castigated for taking "too many vacations." Does any serious person believe that, following 9/11, he didn't work for hours on end, even on vacation?
Big Lie, After Big Lie
Bush was on a golf course offering a standard response to a reporter's question on terrorism. He then told the reporter to watch his golf drive. What did one expect? Bush was obviously playing golf! Can the corpulent Moore even play nine?
More damning to Moore is the scene where Bush was frozen in his chair at a Sarasota elementary school. As Slate.com author Christopher Hitchens described it, Bush was shown "looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11."
Hitchens: "Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then, half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say – that he knew the attack was coming..."
A Long Line of Leftist Hit Pieces
Any discerning individual invariably concludes that the film is shameful, one in a long line of Leftist hit pieces designed to incriminate G.O.P. presidents and politicians. Movies about Richard Nixon abound. Ronald Reagan is tangentially jousted at in films, if not directly.
Beyond “Fahrenheit 9/11,” George W. Bush had to endure “W.” by Oliver Stone. “Vice” was an all-out attack on Bush's Vice President Dick Cheney. The script asserts that Cheney sought to invade Iraq with little or no cause. The film leads viewers to believe that Cheney had early warning about the 9/11 attack and was a party to it!
That “Fahrenheit 9/11” was a box office hit makes one wonder about the nation's gene pool. Rank and file Democrats, as well as radical viewers, blindly accepted the film, which remains frightening. Everyone who bought into “Fahrenheit 9/11” likely has their head firmly ensconced in the dorsal orifice of their own anatomy. Yet, here we are today, decades later, and the stench from this ‘artistic’ endeavor lingers on.
How odd: nobody has made a movie about Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden. A good producer and director could really go to town with these characters.