Less is Moore
Fact-checking a polemicist
It was the Observer's "Movie of the Week." The Independent's reviewer described it as "a bracing and timely exercise in dredging for the truth." The Cannes film festival gave it a Special Jury Prize, with the audience giving the film a 13 minute standing ovation. And the media hype continues. In fact, there has never been a more appropriate moment for the film-maker Michael Moore and his rants against America than now. "Bowling for Columbine," the "documentary" that is now being shown across Britain and the world, is a movie almost designed to slake the anti-American thirst, whetted by the war on terror. And from an American too! Not since Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer have we seen such a successful export of anti-Americanism, a phenomenon carefully cultivated by some on America's campuses and liberal urban enclaves. And like most American products, it sells very well.
The only problem with this scenario is that Michael Moore is a serial dissembler. His book, "Stupid White Men," was laced with inaccuracies and falsehoods. His movie is just as bad. It's worth looking at just a few of these falsehoods to see exactly what his agenda is.
The book first. Take two compelling notions advanced in "Stupid White Men." The journalist Ben Fritz went through the book with a fine tooth comb. In the book, Moore claims that five sixths of the U.S. defense budget went toward one plane. He also claims that two-thirds of president Bush's campaign finances came from 700 people. These claims are so ludicrous it says something about Moore's credibility that he even believed them himself. Both are easily refuted by a quick look at the publicly available Pentagon budget and the records of the Federal Elections Commission, which compiles all campaign contributions. (In fact, Bush's campaign was more dependent on small contributions than Gore's.) But if you are going to argue that Bush was selected by plutocrats and that the Pentagon wastes all its money, you've got to come up with some facts to support your case. So Moore just makes them up.
In "Bowling For Columbine," the entire premise of the title is false. In convoluted fashion, Moore tries to argue in the film that American gun culture is somehow related to American foreign policy. Even his most fawning critics concede he doesn't exactly make a logical connection between the two; and any historian of the Wild West would be a little mystified by the idea that American gun-culture sprang from post-war American global power. But never mind. The story Moore wants to tell is that the schoolkids who shot up Columbine high-school were so quintessentially American that they went bowling that morning; and that Columbine is also the location for a Lockheed Martin factory for "weapons of mass destruction." Hence "Bowling for Columbine." Neither of these assertions, alas, is true.
Dan Lyons of Forbes magazine has shown that, in fact, the two boys did not go bowling that morning. Early police reports to that effect turned out to be false. Moreover the Lockheed Martin factory near Columbine does not make "weapons of mass destruction," as argued in the movie. It makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites. Moore shows a clip of giant rockets. Nice try, Michael.
Perhaps the most gripping scene in the movie is one where Moore simply turns up at a bank, North Country Bank & Trust in Traverse City, Michigan, opens a bank account and gets a gun for his trouble. As he walks away, Moore chortles to the camera: "Here's my first question: do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" It would be if true. But in fact the bank in question only gives you a gun if you open long-term CDs, and then you have to go to a gun store to get the gun after a background check. The scene, according to Lyons, was staged.
A more obvious piece of mendacity comes when Moore shows a clip of the infamous Willie Horton ad. The political ad, deployed by Republicans in the campaign of 1988, featured grim footage of a prison turnstile where inmates came and went at will. It was designed to criticize Michael Dukakis's lenient furlough program for criminals. One such prisoner, an African-American called Willie Horton, raped a woman while on parole. But the Bush ad never mentioned Horton or specifically played the race card. (An independent ad, not sanctioned by Bush did.) So what does Moore do? He super-imposes on the Bush ad his own words - "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." - as if they were in the original. The point is to claim that Bush ran a racist appeal. Again: simply false.
Or take another headline claim in "Bowling for Columbine." Moore regurgitates the idea that the U.S. government gave the Taliban regime $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001. This obviously seems to show American hypocrisy and double-standards in foreign policy. But again, this is untrue. Those funds went to charitable organizations completely independent of the Taliban regime to feed starving Afghans. Moreover, this nuance has been known for a long time. Yet Moore repeats it.
There's a place for satire; and there's plenty in America to satirize. There are a few occasions when Moore manages to do just that. But the rest is hateful junk. It isn't even in the service of some kind of coherent alternative. Moore decries America's gun culture, and yet concedes that gun control won't work. He equates Tony Blair and George Bush with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and yet never asks whether either bin Laden or Saddam would let him do the work he now does in democratic societies. He even manages in his roadshow to blame passengers on the airplanes that were downed on September 11 for their fate. The right words for this are depravity and mendacity. And for reasons that are obvious, that doesn't make me laugh.
andrewsullivan.com |
