Demosophia

Transcript of CNN Review of Michael Moore

The original transcript the Jeff Greenfield/Jeff Jarvis review of the Michael Moore film is here. And Jarvis has his own blog review here. The CNN review is embedded within a larger transcipt, so I've lifted the relevant portion for the sake of convenience. I think Jarvis' comments, both on his blog and on CNN, are particularly relevent to the notion of Demosophia, in effect making the point that Moore's film is more likely to generate Demoso-idiocy. (Actually, according to the Online English-Greek Dictionary the appropriate term would be Demosagnoia, meaning "foolishness or ignorance of the people") Anyway, here's the transcript:

BROWN: In the news business, it's often said if all sides in the story accuse you of favoring the others you probably got it just about right. Michael Moore, however, is not a reporter.

He makes movies that have a point of view in capital letters, usually pretty clear which side he is on. Well, OK, you'd be blind not to notice which side he is on. His latest movie opened nationwide today.

Here's our Senior Analyst Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: My friends and I decided to pose as a TV crew from Toledo to sneak inside the factory.

GREENFIELD (voice-over): Fifteen years ago, filmmaker Michael Moore released "Roger & Me." It portrayed the devastating impact on his hometown of Flint, Michigan from General Motors plant closings.

Moore's comic thread, his fruitless pursuit of GM Chief Roger Smith, helped make it a hugely successful film in spite of some critics who charged that Moore had played fast and loose with the time sequence of events.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, here's my first question. Do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?

GREENFIELD: In 2002, Moore's "Bowling for Columbine" took on gun violence in America in the wake of the school shooting in Littleton, Colorado. It won the Academy Award for Best Documentary and became the highest grossing non-music documentary in history in spite of some critics who charged that Moore had played fast and loose with some of the facts.

For example, Moore suggested that a military missile plant in Littleton may have helped create the atmosphere for the school shootings. In fact, that Lockheed Martin plant made launch vehicles for TV satellites.

But those controversies were blips compared to the furor triggered by Moore's latest offering, "Fahrenheit 9/11," which won the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this spring and which just opened in the United States to rapturous praise and searing condemnation.

(on camera): Michael Moore makes no pretense of balance or fairness here. This film is a brief against the president. It portrays Bush as a lazy, empty-headed child of privilege who came to power in a stolen election and who used the attacks of September 11 as a pretext to wage a war against a country that posed no threat and did us no harm.

(voice-over): There are some standard Michael Moore devices, for instance the confrontation with authority. Here, Moore attempts to persuade some members of Congress to offer up their children for enlistment in the military.

Here, Moore attempts to persuade some members of Congress to offer up their children for enlistment in the military. And a series of clips try to turn Bush's own words against him, for instance, this sound bite from a golf course on the war on terror.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FAHRENHEIT 9/11")

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.

Now watch this drive.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: Or this quip at a white-tie dinner.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "FAHRENHEIT 9/11")

BUSH: Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.

(LAUGHTER)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GREENFIELD: But many of the controversies surround clips that were not provided to us for screening, such as a series of greetings between Bush, father and son, with a variety of Saudis.

Moore argues that a long-standing cozy financial relationship is why Saudis were permitted to fly out of the country just after 9/11. No less a Bush critic than onetime terrorism chief Richard Clarke says it was his decision and he would do it again.

Moore's response, that does not explain why the Saudis were put in the head of the line.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GREENFIELD: Now, other disputes have to deal with the meaning of the images Moore offers. He shows us, for instance, scenes of a peaceful, tranquil Iraq on the eve of the war, barber shops, weddings, kids flying kites, the same kind of images we could have seen from Tokyo just before Pearl Harbor.

Moore told me he wasn't trying to minimize Saddam's evil, just to show the inevitable innocent victims of U.S. bombing that he says is much less precise than advertised. He shows us a parade of administration officials being made up for television appearances, shots that would make just about any one of us look silly. No, Moore, told me, it was a metaphor, the actors about to appear to recite their fictions.

And the film's most powerful moments come as we watch the grief of a proud mother of a soldier after she learns of her son's death in Iraq, grief that of course cannot tell us whether that death was in pursuit of a worthy cause or folly.

I asked Moore whether he thought this polemic would change any minds. No, he said, not the undecided, but, he added, it might get more young people to the polls this fall. And that's one point about which there is no dispute, Aaron. The whole point of this movie is to help defeat President Bush in November.

BROWN: Jeff.

And we introduce another Jeff. Jeff Jarvis is with us. He's a former TV critic for "TV Guide" and for "People" magazine, Mr. Jarvis also the editor and creator of "Entertainment Weekly" magazine. He writes a blog called BuzzMachine.com. And, most importantly to us, he reviewed the movie, "Fahrenheit 9/11."

It's nice to see you.

You hated it.

JEFF JARVIS, BUZZMACHINE.COM: I did, and I shouldn't have.

I'm not a Bush voter, but it is so unfair. It is such a two-by- four polemic that it makes even me want to defend Bush against it. It just -- it also insults our intelligence. Rather than trying to be funny, which is what Moore used to do to make points, it just bashes us. It seethes. And when someone seethes in your face, it makes you uncomfortable. You want to back off. And that's the way he is in this. It's uncomfortable.

BROWN: Jeff?

GREENFIELD: I think this is -- there's no pretense that this is a fair movie.

To me, it's like a Rush Limbaugh rant. Rush Limbaugh takes facts and shapes them around his point of view. I also think that how you see this movie to a great extent depends on how you see the war. Jeff's blog, which a lot of us read, has been relatively looking for positive news, I think. You remind us that the media can sometimes be negative.

People who look at this war and think it was a mistake from the beginning, or worse, are going to love this movie. But he doesn't pretend that it's fair.

JARVIS: But the problem is that, if you were going to do that, the more useful thing to do for the democracy and for discussion would be to give you both sides and then beat down the other side. But he even doesn't bother trying to give you the other side.

BROWN: Isn't this, just to get to my favorite issue, I suppose, isn't this exactly what American politics has become anyway? I mean, you know, there is this -- there is a kind of nasty undercurrent in the movie. There is a nastiness in American politics every day. The vice president yesterday goes off on a senator in language you would wash your kid's...

JARVIS: That the FCC would now charge him $3 million a day for.

BROWN: And you'd wash your kid's mouth out with soap if he used. That's where we are.

JARVIS: I would argue that that's our fault, to a great extent.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: That's our fault?

JARVIS: It's our fault.

We present America as if we're a nation divided. I really think we're a nation undecided. I think, if you look at the primaries, people were trying to decide whom to vote for. I don't think they live politics every day the way we think they do. And I think that we're not as divided as it seems. And something like this comes along, and that's exactly the damage it does.

The us vs. them in them, the them is not bin Laden. The them is not Saddam Hussein. The them is George Bush. And there are people attacking us as a nation right now. I was at 9/11 at the World Trade Center. It's very serious to me. I watched this movie blocks from there. And I resent the anger really at the wrong people. I'm not a Bush fan, but it's still one country.

GREENFIELD: I do agree that this is -- you can -- must put this into the pile, the best-selling books that split left and right. We are actually back to a kind of rhetoric that we had at the very beginning of the republic, where Thomas Jefferson was called an atheist and a supporter of forced prostitution for women and children, where John Quincy Adams was accused of pimping while he was envoy to the czar of Russia.

You can deplore it. You can try to argue where it started, but, to me, I can tell you this. The people who love this movie are people on the left who said, the liberals wimped out on the war in Iraq. The right is tougher than we are. They accused Clinton of everything, including murder. And now it's our turn to take this guy and...

(CROSSTALK)

JARVIS: There's just the problem. It's the same as Air America.

Why take Rush and say let's have our Rush? Why take Rush and say let's have our movie? Why not try to be more intelligent than that?

BROWN: Because I think what they're saying -- I'm not sure I agree with this -- but I think what they're saying is, look, if they're going to fight with knives, we're going to fight with knives, too.

GREENFIELD: Don't bring a knife to a gunfight, is an old line.

And, look, I like to think that shows like this and anchors like Aaron and even sometimes senior analysts try to do exactly what you're talking about. And, as I say, I don't think Michael Moore is trying to persuade here. He is trying to arouse. He's trying to, if you will, rally the base.

General Zinni isn't in this movie. Richard Clarke is only in it in a passing glance.

(CROSSTALK)

JARVIS: ...does no wrong here.

GREENFIELD: And those pictures, I think that Michael Moore's explanation of what those pictures of a peaceful, tranquil Iraq are doing in that picture, it's a little disingenuous.

JARVIS: It goes beyond.

He exploits a mother who lost her son in Iraq. And when she pleads I think to God saying, why did you have to take him, Moore's answer to that is a picture of Bush. That's the you. When the husband says, what are they dying for? Halliburton. It's so two-by- four. It's so unfair.

BROWN: I'm going to stop you both, but I'm going to do it gently because I never scream at anybody.

Thank you for coming in. It's nice to meet you.

JARVIS: Thank you.

BROWN: Nice job tonight. Thank you.

Talk to you next week, too. Thank you.

Posted by Demosophist at June 26, 2004 03:11 PM | TrackBack