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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (50834)	6/19/2004 4:11:40 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793917

Dateline Mikey Right thinking blog Michael Moore was on Dateline NBC tonight. First off, kudos to Matt Lauer for actually daring to ask Mikey a few tough questions. That's such a rarity in major media interviews with Moore. Here's a few highlights. Lauer: "You accepted the Palm D'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival. It's a huge honor, especially for a film like this. And you said, I think the quote was, ‘I did not set out to make a political film. The art of this, the cinema, comes before the politics.’" Moore: "That's right. That's absolutely right." Lauer: "I'm amazed you said it with a straight face." Moore: "Why is that, why?" Lauer: "Because I think there is politics in every single frame of this movie." Moore: "Oh, of course there is. Don't misunderstand me. There's politics right now in this discussion. There's politics in all aspects of our daily lives." Lauer: "But you didn't set out to poke a sharp stick in the eye of the Bush administration and the Bush family?" Moore: "That's part of what I'm doing. But most importantly, listen, if I just wanted to -- if it was just about the politics, if that was my primary motivation, politics, I would, you know, suspend what I'm doing right now and get out on a campaign trail." Lauer: "Some people say that's what you've done." Moore: "Or maybe I should be running for office this year. I mean if politics was my main motivation I would be doing politics. But I'm a filmmaker. First and foremost the art has to come before the politics otherwise, you don't get -- the politics don't work." Who does he think is actually going to believe this shit? That the art was primary over the politics? That he didn't set out to make a political movie? What an unmitigated, steaming load of crap! Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Mikey set out to make the best movie he could. But to actually state that he didn't set out to make a political movie requires an astonishing faith in the ignorance of your target audience. The next great part was when Lauer brought up the subject of the bin Laden family flights, and mentions Richard Clarke's comments. "He's quoted as saying, 'I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake and I'd do it again.' He called the furor over the flights a tempest in a teapot." Moore: "That's his position." Lauer: "OK, but you didn't put those comments in the movie." Moore: "Well, he didn't say that. He wrote that in his book." Lauer: "Well, that has been out for a couple of months." Moore: "Look, he took the word of the FBI. He took the word of the FBI in those days after 9/11. And he thinks he didn't make a mistake is what he said." In other words, Clarke didn't support Mikey's manufactured version of events, so he's discounted them completely and neglected to include them in his film. Lauer then asks him about the film crews that Mikey sent into Iraq to interview US troops. Lauer: "Do you think that the soldiers thought they were talking to a film crew that was working with –" Moore: "Some of them did and some of them didn't." Lauer: "Do you think that's fair?" Moore: "Well, I think it's fair that the American people know what's going on." Note the way Mikey totally dodges the question. He was asked whether he thought it was fair that out troops were talking to what they thought was a legitimate news crew but which was actually a Michael Moore film crew. That requires a simple yes or no answer, and he completely sidestepped the entire issue. Lauer should have hammered him on it. Moore's parting quote, however, is absolutely fucking priceless. "You know I've been sitting here for like the last 20 minutes thinking, man, if he would have only asked Bush administration officials these kind of hard questions in the weeks leading up to the war, and then when the war started, maybe there wouldn't be a war. Because the American people, once given the truth, you know the old saying from Abraham Lincoln, give the people the facts and the Republic will be safe." Here we see Mikey's victim complex in action. "Man, if you'd only asked Bush questions this tough!" I think that Mikey is starting to realize that he's not going to get as much of a free pass this time around. Like Roger Ebert said this morning, many journalists who kissed Moore's ass during interviews for BFC later found out that Moore had lied and cheated, making them look bad for supporting him. So they're going to question him more this time, and I don't think Mikey likes that one bit. He loves softball interviews. Every time he takes part in an adversarial interview he whines and complains like a teenage girl, because he honestly doesn't think he deserves it. right-thinking.com