Moore's Army
Wednesday, Aug 04, 2004; 8:52 AM
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When <font color=blue>"Fahrenheit 9/11"<font color=black> became a smash hit, I ventured an educated guess that Michael Moore was mostly preaching to the converted.
Turns out I was right, at least according to the National Annenberg Election Survey.
This is not to minimize the reach of the film, which, despite criticism of its claims and conspiracy theories, is the most successful documentary of all time. That's why Moore, a perennial outsider, was swarmed by the press as he made the rounds at the Boston convention last week.
In fact, Annenberg says <font color=blue>"Fahrenheit"<font color=black> has attracted about as many people as listen to Rush Limbaugh (8 percent in the survey say they've seen the Bush-bashing movie, while 7 percent say they listened to Rush in the previous week).
In the poll, 41 percent of <font color=black>"Fahrenheit"<font color=blue> fans say it made them think less of the president -- but three out of five of them were Democrats to begin with. A third of independents say it lowered their opinion of Bush, but they were more liberal and three times as likely to have backed Gore over Bush in 2000. And, no surprise, only a handful of Republicans saw the flick.
All told, 13 percent of the movie-watchers approved of Bush's performance in office, while 86 percent disapproved. Eighty-three percent said the war had not been worth it. They also like Kerry, 70-17.
Among Limbaugh listeners, 88 percent approve of Bush's performance and 12 percent disapprove. Eighty-two percent say the war was worth it. They view Kerry unfavorably by a 78-15 margin.
As the ton of Bush-is-a-liar and Liberals-are-bigger-liars books makes clear, media marketing these days is all about capitalizing on polarization. Or, as Annenberg chief Kathleen Hall Jamieson put it: <font color=blue>"What Limbaugh and Moore have done is find the hard-core partisan audience."<font color=black>
Since I mentioned Rush, let's let him comment on the orange alert:
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"Politically, the question then, therefore, is, 'How does Bush benefit from America being at greater risk?' How in the world -- as a stand alone concept, stick with me on this -- as a stand-alone concept, how does it figure that an elevated terror threat, America at greater risk, helps George W. Bush? We're fighting the war on terror, we have these elevated threats, and this, according to Howard Dean and the kook fringe of the Democratic Party, is worried that the elevated terror threat helps Bush.
"There is only one way that that works, my friends. And the only way it works is not because Bush is genuinely benefited by the elevated terror threat. It is that the elevated terror threat exposes of weakness of Democrats. And when they make this ridiculous claim that this is all politics, what they are doing is telling us what they are afraid of. They are afraid the American people are going to realize Bush is the guy to deal with it, if for no other reason because they aren't, because they haven't made the case.".............
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