POST-FAHRENHEITISM

THE SOUND OF BACKLASH

Two years ago, I wrote a piece entitled Triumph of his will, or the ideology of slander, in which I detailed all the attempts from a furious and then desperate right to smear, hurt, shake and in a word trip up a furious and then almighty movie going by the name of Fahrenheit 9/11, which was pitching tents and flags of left and truth all around an until then gray world with black horizons, threatening the control rooms of threat and terrifying the specialists of fear.

The cold, paranoid, nihilistic Machine already looked pretty daft and frightening at the time, but also, and all in all, ludicrous and pitifully helpless. It was biting the dust. It was going to be defeated. It couldn’t possibly survive the worldwide onslaught from We The People led by the Commander-in-Chief of our choice. Rage, truth and reason seemed enough. It was, in Mike’s words, the sound of a dying dinosaur.

Two years later, the dinosaur is still dying, for dinosaurs will die, but it isn’t dead. At all. It tears us apart with its claws and keeps us crushed under its belly, while polls regularly and solemnly inform it that We The People are not glad at all – but won’t go as far as to actually move our asses to bump it off. For BUSH WON. And MOORE LOST.

Backlash. The infinitely bitter taste of backlash, well known from the ancient Rome. Vae Victis.

History is written by the victors, and We The People generally agree that this is the way it should be. Few of us have taken the lies, and those of us who abhor Bush and his policies are even more numerous than they ever were. But most of us have adjusted to reality and drunk the Kool-Aid. And so yesterday’s slander and propaganda have become today’s normality and obviousness. In spite of the low profile he has kept, Mike has not been forgotten by the Machine, and he’s getting duly mocked and ridiculed by its slaves old and new.

Everywhere we hear the sound of marching charging feet… Er, no. Try again.

Everywhere we hear the sound of magical chants of obsessive and childish hatred against Bush, with tiresome litanies of sensational revelations about Bush’s real agenda, far-fetched and impossible to impose conspiracy theories about Bush’s real crimes, tedious rehashing of Bush’s real level of stupidity and real records in incompetence. As if what’s plain to see and what’s at our disposal in a democracy weren’t enough to make us damn him and drive him out. As if the left valued its narcissism more than its action. As if the only real secret worth telling wasn’t that Bush and his ilk have become the closet fascination of their opponents, and their only true heroes now that We The People have bowed to the masters of the world and made ourselves willing orphans, by tacitly accepting to disown yesterday’s positive counterpart to what we pretend to hate and to spout the enemy’s propaganda in the enemy’s words.

With Bush’s victory, it is the temptation of Personal Irresponsibility that has won over the weak hearts. In the wake of triumphant immorality, open cynicism, unpunished inhumanity, minds that were simply mediocre, conventional or aimless in life until then got literally aroused by the sirens of Bush’s “Why not ?”, as if their call was the only kind of challenge they could take up. Ah, to be a winner by proxy. To identify with a no good jackass as useless as yourself, but so much mightier. To feel powerful even though you’re a nobody through simple behavioral changes such as gang mentality, invasion of privacy, playground bullying, warlike attitudes, cult of strength and random violence or cruelty. To forget you are really screwed up to the bone and but one of the casualties of that dead hope that once lent you its wings. Moore had showed you that silver lining that faded, and you will never forgive him THAT… until, or unless, the bastard wins again for your entertainment.

All it takes is forgetting about your varnish of morals. All it takes is a long, good, deep dive into confusion and unbridled principle of pleasure. Talk like them, behave like them, think like them – but don’t forget to be against them. A lot a lot a lot. Show that you are free thinkers who won’t let themselves be told what to think nor what to do by ANYONE. Be both a rebel and one of Bush’s kind. In “counter-revolution”, there is still “revolution”. It’s all that matters.



THE KILLING OF FAHRENHEIT 9/11

The history of this alchemy of communicating vessels can be tracked down very easily. A single article is enough to get the general idea of what happened : Richard Goldstein’s excellent and unfortunately all too prophetic Mauling Michael Moore : The Attack on Fahrenheit 9/11 - Fox lays back while ABC and NBC pile on, published in The Village Voice only a few days after the movie’s release.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mikeinthenews/index.php?id=43

With the benefit of hindsight, the actual subtlety of the media’s well orchestrated campaign of slander will become apparent to the most honest among us pretentious conceited lot, always so busy laughing at the stupidity of the right while the man is quietly sticking it to us.

When it became clear that a two hour movie would seriously threaten the masters of the world, the White House didn’t follow the gross advocates of open censorship like David Bossie and his Citizens United. No. Dodging ridicule, they entrusted their media whores with that mission.

I remember how dumbstruck I was when I read Fox’s angelic, praising review of Fahrenheit 9/11 – even though it was Bush’s most servile channel and Mike’s most molested target. Where was the con ?

Nowhere. It was just beautiful team work. While the limelight was on the root of all evil, the crooks kept a brave face going – and it was two “moderate”, “objective” channels which enacted the essential of the dirty work. ABC ran “Fact or Fiction ?” across their screens during Good Morning America and World News Tonight, and never used Mike’s responses to George Stephanopoulos’s vicious questions and harsh criticisms on This Week. NBC ran highly negative assessments of the film on both its Nightly News and its cable channel MSNBC, called its coverage a “truth-squad report” and made no mention of the readily available rebuttals to its accusations. CNN and CBS, whose audiences lean slightly leftward, took a decent but quite forgettable pro-and-con approach to Fahrenheit 9/11, as timid and pale as the Democratic challenger who could (you never know) win the election. In both cases, it was not to be what the populace remembered.

As Richard Goldstein correctly sums it up, “What ABC and NBC called into question is Moore's extrapolation and interpretation of information; in other words, his slant. But by using loaded phrases like "truth squad" and "fact or fiction," and by omitting Moore's answers to key questions, these networks did the very thing they accuse him of doing. I would argue that this sort of distortion is far more dangerous in the context of a news broadcast than in a clearly opinionated film.”

And, as Richard Goldstein correctly emphasizes, one of these “moderate” and “objective” channels (NBC) is owned by General Electric, a prime defense contractor, and the second of these “moderate” and “objective” channels (ABC) is owned by Disney, Jeb Bush’s lackey and all time Conservative champ.

Two years later, this is how a self-proclaimed “interested observer who stands for reason, compassion and tolerance between human beings” percipiently (and typically) analyses Fahrenheit 9/11, all by himself and in all moderation and objectivity :


A LAMENTABLE PIECE OF INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY

Dear all,

I watched this film with a sense of rising dismay. Lest fiery fellow posters start pinning insulting labels on me and drawing the lines of battle right away, I hasten to add that I am not a conservative, or indeed a "liberal" in the sense that this word has been mangled today. I am just an interested observer who stands for reason, compassion and tolerance between human beings.

Michael Moore has clearly made it his mission in life to expose the bigotry, hypocrisy and self-interested greed of some conservatives, as well as their deceitful dealings in coming to power. But unfortunately, in his dangerous single-mindedness Moore cannot resist the easy temptations of intellectual dishonesty. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a veritable dictionary of all the traditional dirty tricks of propaganda: soundbites and speeches taken out of context, moralistic oversimplifications, emotional manipulation, fakely spontaneous testimonials, mood-altering soundtracks, cynically staged melodrama, misleading footage, and clearly biased and selective interviewing styles (meek, leading and conciliatory towards those Moore agrees with, aggressive, dismissive and obstructionist towards those with whom he does not) are all recurring features of his extremely subjective analysis. It is true that aside from the important matter of Moore's methods, I have no way of verifying or disproving most of the factual basis for his claims, even if much of the film is grounded upon unsubstantiated conjecture and circumstantial evidence anyway - but in any case I would not trust the motives of anyone trying to convince me of anything in such sneaky and underhand ways.

Moore’s highly partial style of reporting is all the more cause for dismay because he does have truth on his side. The deep flaws of those he condemns in Fahrenheit 9/11 are genuine, as many alternative sources from all over the political spectrum have long suggested; so is their corruption, self-righteousness, arrogance and the dangerous dogmatism of their views, and these are indeed cause for the greatest concern. But truth speaks loudly enough for itself and should be left to make its own impression, otherwise it is made into a farce, as George Orwell rightly pointed out when he said that “all propaganda is a lie, even when it tells the truth”. Moore’s documentaries incidentally include direct quotations from Orwell’s works, which suggests that Moore has at least some peripheral knowledge of his ideas. It is very telling, therefore, that he merely chose those that suited him whilst deliberately disregarding the one above, in spite of its crucial significance in interpreting all of Orwell’s political philosophy.

The fact that Moore gave in to embellishing his findings so ludicrously robs him of all credibility, something which his opponents (incidentally the primary target audience of his documentaries) will certainly not fail to point out, and thus his careful -and in many respects, valid- examination of the injustices that go on in conservative America will be utterly lost except on those who already share his opinions. Those who do not, on the other hand, will merely become even more incensed at this new evidence of what they see as the unshakable dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the liberals, and their view in this instance will be fully justified: even being a hardcore liberal (and therefore, ironically, a proponent of the inherent validity of several different points of view), Moore still cannot quite shake the puritanical orthodoxy that dictates that his is the only “right” view and commands him to annihilate all opposition to it, regardless of the means employed. Moore, like too many in America, proposes to fight unjustly for the sake of justice, untruthfully for the sake of truth and intolerantly for the sake of tolerance.

I am surprised that in discussing this film, no one else seems to have had the vision to leave all the partisan ranting aside, and simply take the film on its own merits, which are few indeed. I urge all those who would like to learn more about the hidden facets of the Bush administration, whatever your political affiliation, to give this dangerously biased film a miss, and rely instead on sources which look at these issues with a genuine respect for the truth.

Kind regards,

C



DO THE POST-MODERN

I skimmed through this review without the slightest interest, the heading A lamentable piece of intellectual dishonesty already containing everything required for an OD of anti-Mooreness of the lethal kind (and it's the only kind around), and I found exactly what I thought I'd find : "dirty tricks of propaganda"... "no way of verifying or disproving most of the factual basis for his claims"... Orwell used against a socialist... "he merely chose those that suited him"... "unshakable dishonesty and untrustworthiness of the liberals, and their view in this instance will be fully justified"... "unjustly for the sake of justice, untruthfully for the sake of truth and intolerantly for the sake of tolerance."... The pleasant phraseology, the educated style only made the lack of imagination, of common sense, of everything, more obvious.

There was, of course, no possible reply to a naive masterpiece of such dimensions.

But the cruel innocence of this infinitely sad tirade (what is sadder than a nice, open-minded and civil person who spouts garbage, unaware of the ventriloquist who first sneaked the “free”, “spontaneous” opinions inside his head ?) put me through such an agony that I couldn’t leave it unanswered.

What on earth could I say ? What would you have told him ?

I said that it wasn’t true. I said that it was a string of stereotypes. That all of the cliches which survived the defeat were here. A string of nonsensical, groundless propositions selected by the collective unconscious like the atheists say that randomness chose in the dance of atoms, to form the apologetic, self-hating discourse which explains reasonably, level-headedly, rationally why Fahrenheit 9/11 sucked, why we should never trust nor have trusted Michael Moore, and how beautiful we would be and look if not for him.

I told Mr Nice Guy that he was dreaming awake. That his piece was reasonably, level-headedly, rationally stark raving mad. That this was the kind of stance which appealed to confused, mediocre and cowardly minds who find in it a reason to think of treason as tolerance, of gross lack of realism as nuance, of cluelessness as subtlety, of lack of identity as broad-mindedness and of lack of sense of class and empathy as evolved enlightenment. That this was ass fùcked by Bush. That this was the reason why we lose and lose and lose and lose, and the reason why we will lose again for a long, long time.

That this was centrist.

Mr Nice Guy replied. For the life of me I couldn’t paste this second dissertation here. Suffice to say that it was so kind, so polite, that I couldn’t read until the end.

I told him :

”Your post begins with the supposition I must be quite keen on the post-modern school of social science. I loathe post-modernism. Post-modernism says that there is no truth. It's one of the factories of cynicism, apathy and trendy chic despair. Post-modernism is what Michael Moore defeated in 2004, before being himself defeated by the beast.”

I told him :

”What do you want me to tell you ? Uh ? What do you want me to tell you ? I'm sure you're very nice. But you're like a lot of other people. Absolutely clueless. Clueless beyond words, beyond anything I could ever express. Well, I tried.”

And then I ran.



WAS IT JUST A DREAM ?

Fahrenheit 9/11 has carried the immense hope of a whole nation – perhaps of a whole world – and opened the door for a string of important and often difficult political documentaries, bringing us unprecedented awareness and a genuine mutation in art whose depth and impact are too considerable to be measured as yet. And still.

Still… It seems like there is, as a rule, NO real possibility to explain that a new political movie is important, serious and accurate WITHOUT trashing Michael Moore while doing so. Moore is the foil that every director, every critic will use to swear he's "not like Moore" or that such movie is good because it's "not like Moore". Anything will look greater, deeper and more lasting if you DO belittle Fahrenheit 9/11 while praising it (“The opposite of Michael Moore, honest”). The more it's like Moore, the more it's not like Moore. At best, Fahrenheit 9/11 is just cut down to an "electioneering documentary" (polite phrasing for “kleenex propaganda”), now out of time and past its sell-by date.

To start like a flag and to end like a yogurt. What a sad fate.

In real life, Mike is forgotten or gets mindlessly smeared on the “obvious” mode : “Moore may be a fraud, but Bush…”, “Sure, Osama likes him, but Bush…”, “Yeah, he’s a hack, but Bush…”. Across the Internet, part of the once hyperactive pro-Moore sites are now dormant, and part have turned to Crocodile City and Rattlesnake Gulch, attracting the worst scum (true right, fake left, real swines, real jerks, real bastards) and functioning like more insidious, more hypocritical versions of moorewatch. And when once in a blue moon Mike is actually discussed, it’s always on negative, absent mode : Damon’s ridiculous suit yes, the Traverse City Film Festival no.

An armless jackass makes up a new deceit (YAWN !!!!!!), and woosh – it gets Smalltown slightly going. As that stupid affair of “no-problem with a name” functioned as a minor political fad lately, I could only make note of the persistence of the general blackout on any kind of positive or normal (ie professional) news about Michael Moore over the weeks and over the months that it made obvious. A rather strange silence in view of the positive and important news about the Traverse City Film Festival, his Freedom of Speech Scholarship, a bit about "Sicko", his note on "An Inconvenient Truth"… and finally, of course, the imperturbable drone of the neo-con slander machine.

He’s not there.

That’s what post-modernism does : it doesn’t debunk, it dissolves. There is no truth, therefore there is no truth-teller. If one turns up, let’s bring on the bath of muriatic acid for him then. Post-Fahrenheitism.

There was no sell-by date to Fahrenheit 9/11. It's a timeless work of art in its own right portraying the power of the artist against the power of the power, and, in parallel, the power of awareness in a common woman against the power of blindness in the master of the world. There is no opposition between Moore and Spurlock, Moore and Greenwald, Moore and Moretti. Different filmmakers do different parts of the same immense tasks.

But Fahrenheit 9/11 is a kind of "matrix", whose meaning is primary, basic, fundamental, and generates all of the other meanings. All we need to know and do is in F9/11. That's why it shook the world and that's why it also took all the backlash. Dura media lex, sed media lex. What if anyone was going to realize that the normal, healthy fate of Fahrenheit 9/11 would have been to spread out harmoniously into the ongoing fights to function as their pattern ? What if all the movie-goers of all like-minded movies should connect the dots between the different parts of the same work ? What if the American left was to turn into something else than tribes and factions engaged in power plays and ego trips with no real leader, no real agenda, no synthesis and no vision ?

Hush….

Somebody once told me that my response to attacks against Fahrenheit 9/11 was "comparable to the response of the Jewish to Holocaust Denial". He was only half-joking and I only half-smiled. This denial is a crime against collective conscience in the spiritual order. It killed nobody, but it kills millions of minds. There's no torture but the cynicism is there, the lie is there, the death wish is there, the machine is there, and it's moved by the "Jews" more and better than by anyone else.

Can a great movie ever really die ? Of course not….

But it can be killed.

Nighty-night everybody. Sleep tight.