IN OTHER NEWS...

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 recently. It was fairly difficult to find a theater that still showed the movie -- in most of my area theaters it's been scratched from the movie rosters, so we had to drive to a multi-giga-cineplex to find a theater where it was being shown. The theater where it was shown was sparsely attended; perhaps the other patrons were there, like myself, to see a movie because everyone else had seen it before they had. Having seen it, I want to agree with Yoshie Furuhashi's analysis of the movie. My first impression upon leaving the theater was that I'd seen a piece of anti-Bush (and anti-Saudi) propaganda motivated to put Kerry in the White House. I didn't think that it quite made the case for Nader the antiwar candidate, if that was what my readership was wondering.

I also thought the movie was dismissive of foreigners; perhaps its audience was supposed to be "blue-blooded patriotic Americans" who don't really care a lot about what the rest of the world is about and who went for that maudlin stuff like watching the parents of dead US troops cry onscreen. At any rate, Fahrenheit 9/11 was largely concerned with breaking through the shell of pro-Bush propaganda put out by the news oligopolies since 9/11/01, rather than with helping the viewers understand any more of the larger connections than can be gathered in a reading of Craig Unger's book. That shell is perhaps why "Fahrenheit 9/11" is as radical as blockbuster moviemaking gets without getting into the realm of politicized inference.

However, I think her case against the Democrats can be strengthened in order to suggest a possible movie that would allow Moore to stop covering for the Democrats. (That's what needs to be done, after all: Moore has shown he's bright enough to avoid endorsing Kerry.) She cites a Los Angeles Times story that gets at Clinton circumstantially. What more is there? Let's imagine for a moment that Moore was to make a movie that was fair to Bush, for the sake of uncorking the larger set of connections surrounding 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq. It would investigate:

1) The Clinton war against Iraq, both in terms of CIA attempts to overthrow him, and in terms of the everyday embargo/bombing/suffering perpetrated upon the Iraqi people during Clinton's administration (with of course her interview with Lesley Stahl May 12, 1996 on Sixty Minutes, and hopefully some great footage of Albright's embarrassment by antiwar activists during a town hall meeting in Columbus Ohio in 1998).

2) At least some sort of recognition of the fact that Bush's invasion ended the US-led embargo against Iraq, a positive good in itself.

3) More stuff on the Clinton Administration's relations to the Saudis and the Taliban

4) Clinton's role in the impoverishment of Moore's beloved Flint, Michigan residents.

Throughout the film, however, you do get a wonderful class perspective... without (of course) any hint that some sort of general abolition of classes would allow the assumed equality between you and me and Bush and the bin Laden family to be a real equality. It's a wonder that, though thousands of people have seen this film around America, it doesn't seem to have done anything in favor of Kerry as against Bush. This is doubtless due to Kerry's prowar stance; also a factor is Moore's failure to specify any course of action his viewers might take. Are we to be satisfied with rich folks lapping up the oil wealth of the world? Satisfied with poor folks whose destiny it is to join the Armed Forces so they can go to Iraq, commit atrocities, kill, die, or get their minds and bodies shredded? Satisfied with Presidents appointed by the Supreme Court with the implicit permission of the Senate? Satisfied with viewer outrage having no outlet?

If any of you were wondering about the movie's end, well, the last words of Bush at the end of the movie were "won't get fooled again." But Pete Townshend refused Michael Moore permission to use his song "Won't Get Fooled Again" on Fahrenheit 9/11. Seems Townshend has political problems with Moore.

Oh well. You get what you pay for. A fun movie for a Tuesday night.