MICHAEL MOORE'S MISSION
New York Post Online Edition: www.nypost.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
June 23, 2004 --
Political provocateur Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" opens in theaters in New York today (and nationwide on Friday), and therein lies an intellectual dilemma for champions of campaign-finance "reform."
Moore, the very model of the modern propagandist, is also a skilled self-promoter. If nothing else, the movie will make the rotund rabblerouser even richer than he already is.
On one level, "Fahrenheit 911" is only a movie — albeit one that writer Christopher Hitchens and Post film critic Jonathan Foreman can liken to the work of Leni Riefenstahl, Adolf Hitler's favorite filmmaker. As a film, it will flop or fly without help or hindrance from us.
Our concern is with another aspect of Moore's movie: It's basically a two-hour attack ad on President Bush.
"I hope this country will be back in our hands in a very short period of time," Moore says. That is, he hopes that his movie will make John Kerry president.
Moore certainly has the right to pursue such a goal as he pleases. America prizes freedom of speech, Exhibit A being all the tendentiously conspiratorial — and just plain stupid — movies that Michael Moore has churned out over the years.
But should this unapologetically partisan piece of "art" count as an explicit contribution to the Kerry campaign?
After all, the McCain-Feingold campaign-reform law imposes a moratorium on much explicit political advertising in the weeks before Election Day.
Yes, the ink was hardly dry on McCain-Feingold when a loophole was discovered: Democrat-sponsored "independent" groups (so-called 527s, after the section in the federal tax code covering their specific activities) were buying ad time to blast Bush. And Republican 527s are reportedly taking aim at Kerry.
But the busy beavers behind campaign-finance "reform" are already laboring to shut down the 527s as soon as they can.
Yet why stop there? What about Moore's cinematic screed, and those of others? Should they be forced to go dark as Election Day approaches?
Michael Moore makes us gag — but folks who think that the feds shouldn't be able to gag Moore need to think long and hard about where campaign-finance "reform" is taking the First Amendment.
It's not a nice place. |
