Fahrenheit 9/11 Review
"We're trying to get members of Congress to get their kids to enlist and go over to Iraq." - Michael Moore
By Phaedo Phaedrus (theatetus@grooveshow.com)
Fahrenheit 9/11 has surpassed the previously unmatched total for a documentary film of $100 million dollars in theater receipts as it enters its second month of release. The initial furor has died down to a duller rumble across the land. Linda Ronstadt made headlines when she was fired as a performer by the Aladdin Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas for dedicating Desperado to Moore, provoking some fans to boo or walk out.Many of us already knew (including the tens of thousands that protested his inauguration) that when George W. Bush took office in early 2001 that there were going to be problems. Bush was the ne'er-do-well son of an elitist Connecticut family who posed as a Texan. He was a poor student in college, dodged Viet Nam as a member of a champagne unit of the Texas Air National Guard, was a failed businessman, an oil man who couldn't find oil in the Persian Gulf, and a front man for the group that bought the Texas Rangers baseball team and got rich by condemning property around a new ballpark they blackmailed the city of Arlington into building for them.
Much of what is called Fahrenheit 9/11's most damning material, the description of the feckless beginning for the illegitimate Bush presidency has been around since the beginning of his term. Following the tragedy of the attack, we had to pull together and pretend that this ignorant and indolent man was the energetic leader we needed for an instant response to the terrorists. Even the famous scene of a baffled Bush sitting for agonizing minutes with My Pet Goat on his lap in the classroom as the need to authorize the shooting down of hijacked airplane missiles ticked by has been available on the Internet for months.
Another documentary, Unprecedented, was a much fuller analysis of the debacle in Florida, but did not contain the devastatingly compelling images of Gore as President of the Senate being forced to rule again and again against objections to the certification of the dubious vote count because no senator would sign an objection. The same senators who went on to award Bush's supporters with massive tax cuts, pass the Patriot Act and vote unanimously to give unfettered war powers to a minority president.
Much of the mainstream media have been much more concerned about their six-figure incomes than applying any real journalism to exploding the multitude of lies that have been proffered as policy by the Bush administration. Between correcting Bush's outrageous statements or ignoring his most outrageous acts, the media has followed a careful line of being an arm of the Bush propaganda machine. The pictures of Ted Koppel of ABC in his tanker's helmet cheerleading the sweep across Iraq against an army that was not much more potent than the Louisiana National Guard is a particularly laughable moment. Kyra Phillips of CNN with her exultant cry of "Welcome to 'shock and awe' from the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln!" as planes took off to rain destruction down on Iraqi civilians is an example of the more despicable "reporting" that took place. Michael Moore's indictment of the corporate swill that passes for news media in America is more shocking and worse than anything that he says or shows about Bush.
If you have not seen the film, much of what you have read about Fahrenheit 9/11 is wrong. The movie is easy on George Bush rather than the skewering that is portrayed in the press. Very little attention is paid to Bush's draft dodging, except to establish a link with the Saudis through a fellow officer in the Guard who was also suspended from duty at the same time as Bush. Very little attention is paid to Bush's history of substance abuse. His notoriety for bumbling syntax in public speaking is avoided by and large with two notable exceptions. No mention is made of his propensity to choke on pretzels, drop dogs, bump his head, and crash Segways and mountain bikes. Very little attention is paid to the disturbing relationship to that figure he named as the most important political philosopher, Jesus Christ. As a fundamentalist, born-again follower of the most radical interpretations of the teachings of the Christian god, Bush injects his personal religion into the national discourse on a level never before seen in American politics. Yet Moore steers clear of all this inflammatory material and more in his portrait of this president. The most important focus of the Bush portion of Fahrenheit is Bush's incompetence as a commander-in-chief and, in that case, the facts speak for themselves very eloquently indeed.
One of Bush's most notorious schticks following the September 11th tragedy was to brag about his trifecta of problems and how this will affect the budget. He would tell his audiences: "Obviously, we've got budget matters. You know, when I was running for president, in Chicago, somebody said, would you ever have deficit spending? I said, only if we were at war, or only if we had a recession, or only if we had a national emergency. Never did I dream we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.) But that's what we got. And we're going to deal with it." Of course, it was later discovered it was Al Gore who had actually mentioned this trifecta that might cause a deficit prior to the tragedy. And of course, the same president who authorized a $300 advance on refunds to every taxpayer to attempt to buy their vote has run up the highest deficit in history at somewhere over $500 billion.
The press would have you believe that this is Michael Moore's opinion and spin on the Bush presidency. That is far from how the movie plays. Michael Moore stays out of the way for the most part and the facts speak for themselves in actual clips. There was no link between Iraq and the terrorists who attacked America. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no imminent threat to America from Iraq.
The press would have you believe that this is Moore's artistry that makes a flimsy case against Bush so powerful. Wrong again. The editing is good but any junior college Broadcasting student could have spliced together this video footage to pop songs and made a movie almost this good. Surprisingly, there is nothing very special in the moviemaking. It is the power of the images themselves that make Fahrenheit 9/11 worth seeing. The idiocy and evil of the president juxtaposed with the results of his policies is the bitter theme that clenches the jaw in this film. It is truly the comic antics of the Carrot-Top president contrasted with murdered children and mass destruction to devastating effect.
There is no doubting the courage of Michael Moore in making this film. The Republican attack machine was poised with its fake-news slobbery of shouting punditry like Bill O'Reilly and talk radio to the blond-haired Stepford anchors with their permanent sneer to the rabid online forums where the most tawdry discussion is common grist for the mill. This is the same machinery that relentlessly spent millions to attack and entrap the Clinton administration and is now turning its sights on the Democratic presidential nominee. This is the same machinery that is depicted in the film as propping up, applauding, and attempting to popularize the very policies of the current administration with a fog of deception, marketing, and fake patriotism.
The case against the Saudis is also not the way the press portrays it. The Bush-Saudi connection is certainly like something from the X-Files and it comes off like a grand conspiracy. Somehow the Saudi connection begins to be more like Alfred Hitchcock's legendary "MacGuffin"—the item that begins the story and seems to be what the story is about, but really the story is about something else entirely. This film is really about the human toll resulting from war in Iraq and the falsehoods that exploited the environment following the destruction of the towers.
Moore includes depictions of prisoner abuse by American soldiers but nothing compared to the way the Bush Administration has since been found to have jettisoned the Geneva Convention as American policy. Many in the press and public professed shock that these deeds could be perpetrated by American soldiers. But on one hand America is also the country of the Trail of Tears, slavery, Andersonville, Wounded Knee, Sand Creek, My Lai, thousands of lynchings and hate crimes, brutal and vicious serial killers and street gangs. So, it is not difficult to expect some of this to emerge in our military as exemplified by the soldiers exulting in their dealing of death while having heavy metal music piped into their helmets.
The agonies of the thousands of wounded soldiers are told in the brave statements of a few with shattered bodies, minds, and lives. The aftermath of war in this country from the destroyed Civil War veterans, the shell shock of World War I, the difficulties of World War IIveterans to return to society, and the horrific results of the wars in Viet Nam and the Persian Gulf should have taught those leaders determined to make war for profit that the bill will come due as tens of thousands of young Americans are exposed to the most base and evil aspects of humanity—for a lie.
Congress does not get off lightly in the film as Moore confronts our legislative branch directly by trying to get members to enlist their children in the Army and also rolls around the Capitol in an ice cream van reading the Patriot Act to them when he finds that few had read what they voted for in the fear-filled days following the terrorist attacks. Right-wing California congressman John Doolittle is especially humorous as he contorts like a gymnast to avoid shaking Moore's hand and to avoid even a word on film. At one point, Moore films across the street from the Saudi Embassy in Washington and is confronted by officers of the Secret Service.
The central and very real question at the heart of hearts in Fahrenheit 9/11 is whether George W. Bush, his father, Jim Baker and others are involved in a criminal conspiracy with a foreign power to undermine the national security of the United States for profit. If so, it is beyond a shadow of a doubt the crime of the century. Was former President Bush using the information he obtained from secret CIA briefings to aid his efforts to curry favors with the Saudis? At least he was reading them.
Despite CIA briefings that were titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside US", Bush did nothing while on vacation to make air travel safer. That Attorney General Ashcroft wasn't flying commercial flights prior to the attacks is well known. Perhaps, he is the only one in the Bush Administration who actually read that memo and we know his views on counter-terrorism. He slashed the budget and didn't want to hear about it. Ashcroft was much more famous for busting prostitutes in New Orleans, jailing Tommy Chong, and covering the exposed breasts of the statue of Justice. FBI agents knew about the plans of the hijackers and the investigation was squelched. The man who ordered the stoppage was later given a government service award. No one has lost their job because of failures on 9-11. Whave a convenient excuse the tragedy would turn out to be.
It has been shown that Bush and Cheney had their eyes on attacking Iraq with the newly developed out-source, the Halliburton Army, as soon as they came into office. First the blunt instrument of American combat troops, then the Halliburton employees—unbound by any code of military behavior like carpetbaggers swarming the South following the Civil War. Again and again, Bush, Cheney, Rice Powell, Wolfawitz, and others emphasized that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, ties to al-Qaeda and the ability to attack the United States. All have proven to be completely and utterly false.
From the stage at the Academy Awards, Michael Moore received cheers and boos when he stated: "We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much." All these statements have proved to be completely and utterly true.
Ultimately, it is not Bush that is the cause of the problem. He is merely a symptom and exemplar of a larger, more insidious disease in our society—a blackness that emerges in the realm of racial and religious supremacy. The drive to dominate, exploit, and brutalize others is as old as any drive in humankind. The attempt to suppress and sublimate such evil urges is fairly new.
Fahrenheit 9/11 is not the best documentary ever, but perhaps one of the most powerful. Perhaps one could argue strongly that it is not a documentary at all, even though it would be most difficult to find a "pure" documentary as any objective portrayal is tainted by viewpoint. Is Fahrenheit 9/11 art intruding into the political process? Fahrenheit 9/11 will take its place beside Picasso's Guernica and Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind as an expression of disillusionment with the darker places of humanity and those who exploit and celebrate them. Will Fahrenheit 9/11 stand the test of time or will it be just a cinematic footnote in the much bigger question of what or who rules this nation? Will "Fahrenheit 9/11 2: Election Day" burn away this film or will Bush write his own horrifying sequel?
There is the hope that with the creation and release of Fahrenheit 9/11, America can be a better country. And that is almost enough to ask of any movie.
I was disappointed that the Ten Years After song, I'd Love to Change the World, featured so prominently in the trailer, was not in the movie. I remember when the use of The End by The Doors back in 1979's Apocalypse Now Redux led to a resurgence of interest in their music and I had hoped the same would happen for Alvin Lee and crew.
"Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
Till there are no rich no more
World pollution, there's no solution
Institution, electrocution
Just black and white, rich or poor
Them and us, stop the war
I'd love to change the world
But I don't know what to do
So I'll leave it up to you."
Unprecedented - The 2000 Presidential Election - 2004 Campaign Edition
Outfoxed - Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism
Uncovered - The Whole Truth About the Iraq War
Linda Ronstadt - Canciones de Mi Padre: A Romantic Evening in Old Mexico
Ten Years After - A Space in Time
Ten Years After - Anthology 1967-1971
Apocalypse Now Redux
The Doors
The Awful Truth - The Complete DVD Set (Seasons 1 & 2)
Roger & Me
Bowling for Columbine
This
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