Does a `good cause' justify demagoguery of `9/11'?
By: Cathy
Young
The Boston Globe
July 5, 2004
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/07/05/does_a_good_cause_justify_demagoguery_of_911/
A NUMBER of people have compared "Fahrenheit 9/11," the new film
by
left-wing enfant terrible Michael Moore, to the other controversial hit
movie of 2004, Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." In his weblog,
journalist Andrew Sullivan outlines some unflattering similarities, from the
demonization of the villains to the emotional
bludgeoning of the audience
with graphic violence to the crude exploitation of a bereaved mother's
grief. Several film critics have also pointed to the kinship between the two
movies.
There are intriguing off-screen parallels, too. Both films became the focus
of heated debate before their release; both had troubles with distributors.
Both Gibson and Moore adroitly milked the controversy for all it was worth,
marketing their oeuvre as the movie that The Powers That Be (
the liberal media, the Bush administration and the conservative attack
machine) didn't want you to see. In each case, this politicized and
polarizing marketing campaign appealed to its target audience's sense of
paranoia and victimization: to many conservative Christians' conviction that
they and their values are under assault by secularist liberals; to many
liberal Democrats' conviction that they live under illegal occupation by an
evil fascist clique.
Some reviewers, such as the Los Angeles Times's
Kenneth Turan and Slate's
David Edelstein, have noted the kinship between the two films; Edelstein
bluntly dubbed "Fahrenheit 9/11" "the liberals' `The Passion of
the Christ.'
" Yet, curiously, these critics treated
titles of Turan's reviews capture the difference:
"A Narrow Vision and
Staggering Violence" versus "No holds barred: Michael Moore's
partisan yet
provocative `Fahrenheit 9/11' commands attention."
Other critics who, not long ago, assailed "The Passion of the Christ"
for
its simplistic mindset, its intolerance, its lack of balance, and its distor
tions of history have praised "Fahrenheit
9/11," sometimes while fully
acknowledging that it shares these flaws. (This trend was first noted on a
website called Beautiful Atrocities.) "Some of its particulars may not be
true or fair"; "blithely trampling the boundary between documentary
and
demagoguery"; "obviously skews facts to its own advantage" --
those comments
are from the good reviews.
Edelstein, for one, is startlingly candid about one factor behind this
attitude. It can be summed up as: Michael Moore is a demagogue, but he's our
demagogue. This point is underscored by the caption on a still with his
review, " `9/11': Bias and bullying in a good cause." Edelstein
freely
admits that many of
but he laughs anyway because they're directed at the right people.
shameless manipulation of facts and emotions, he concludes, "must be
viewed
in the context of the
that got us there," and in the context of the right-wing hate-mongering of
the Ann Coulters and the Rush Limbaughs. This is the
playground argument:
They started it.
Yet such arguments are being made all the time. A critique of Moore's dirty
tactics in the left-of-center web magazine Salon.com prompted angry letters
claiming that, as one writer put it, "the left needs its own dirty
fighters." The corollary argument is that the end justifies the means: If
be it.
Never mind that "Fahrenheit 9/11" is about as likely to change minds
as "The
Passion of the Christ" is to convert non-Christians. If anything, as
Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen notes, it may push undecided voters
the other way. This is, after all, a film in which we are treated to idyllic
images of life in Saddam's
stunned reaction to the news of the second plane hitting the
Meanwhile, some conservatives will no doubt use
justification for nastiness and demagoguery on the right. Is Michael Moore
the counter-Ann Coulter? Is Ann Coulter the counter-Michael Moore? Either
way, the vicious cycle keeps getting more vicious. Just recently, the
Bush-Cheney reelection campaign contributed to the Moorification
(or
Coulterization) of public discourse with a television
ad that juxtaposed
Hitler images with ones of Al Gore and John Kerry. Their
excuse? The Hitler
images were taken from two ads comparing Bush to Hitler, briefly hosted by
the democratic fund-raising group MoveOn.org earlier this year among some
1,500 entries in a contest. In other words, they started it. (At least
MoveOn.org removed the spots and expressed regret over their appearance.)
Maybe Michael Moore is a man for our time. That's a pretty damning
indictment of our time.
Cathy Young is a contributing editor at Reason magazine. Her column appears
regularly in the Globe.