Celsius 488

So I forgot to mention that I saw Fahrenheit 9/11 a few weeks ago. A lot of people I know have seen it. While I loved Bowling for Columbine, I was highly skeptical going into 9/11. Most people suggested Moore was overly deceptive in getting his message across (I believe Laura referred to it as a "piece of crap").

Overall I would say I was pleasantly surprised. The movie was fairly entertaining, although not nearly as much so as Columbine. The picture Michael Moore paints is a disturbing, but mostly accurate one - a picture of an administration that lied to the world and took the lives of hundreds of innocent people, including its own soldiers.

Most people who complain about Fahrenheit say it wasn't "objective." I'm not sure who goes to a Michael Moore movie expecting objectivity, but whatever. There are no lies in the movie, but sure, he doesn't show 2 extreme sides of every issue - that's not his job. Yes, he shows us a picture of a happy little Iraqi boy flying a kite before the invasion. I don't think Moore expected anyone to believe all of Iraq was a happy place pre-invasion, nor was he denying the terror of Hussein's regime. But Iraq wasn't a complete totalitarian hell-hole either (like North Korea is, you know, the one without oil, but with WMDs, that we didn't invade). Moore doesn't need to show us images of "bad Iraq." He knows that we've had that shit shoveled down our throat by CNN and all the other US news media.

There seems to have been formed, over the last few years, in western society, the idea that in order to be a "moderate" person you have to believe something that falls into a narrow range in the geometric centre of extreme-left and extreme-right opinion. So if the status quo becomes far more right, so must the "centre." For example, you are considered too extreme if you say the first gulf war was about oil. But if you analyze it rationally, you'd know it was all about oil. I personally know soldiers that were there that admit that. Yet those that bring that up in an argument are treated like conspiracy theorists.

That same forced-moderation is what makes many people bash Fahrenheit 9/11. It deviates too much from what the mainstream media says about the Iraq war, and therefore it's "propaganda." There, of course, are the people who simply don't like what Moore is pointing out. These people tend to refer to the movie as being "full of lies" (without being able to point out any), they call Moore an ass (which he is) or fat (which he also is). The depressing thing is that that ass had to make a movie to tell the things that should be part of the mainstream news media. But they're too busy being concerned about whether the Olsen twins are anorexic or not.

Anyway, that was a bit rant-ish of me. To summarize, go see Fahrenheit 9/11, and try to keep an open mind. Contrast it to what you have been told so far. If something seems outlandish, do some research. If you still think Bush is great, let me know.