Bowling for Columbine.

[red indian]

Any of you septics seen this film yet? what did you make of it? I saw it last night, still not sure what to make of it.

 

[asutickler]

I'm certainly not going to go see it. Michael Moore is the political left's version of Rush Limbaugh; a loud, self-important asshole who is virtually incapable of an independent thought.

Sadly, the insipid "I'm right, you're wrong, and I'm LOUDER" mentality espoused by the two aforementioned mirror-image morons is gradually replacing intelligent, civilized debate as the most common mode of political discussion in this country. It's sad, really... 🙁

 

[Biggles of 266]

oh, you certainly can't trust mike to make a well-balanced and unbiased film, but he can be very clever with his selective depiction in making someone out to be an asshole. Sadly, sometimes he doesn't have to try very hard.

 

[bticklishfeet]

What is this guy trying to prove? Bringing up all this, doesn't he consider the families? I won't see it for the fact that Michael Moore is just another trouble maker stirring up some shit! Rush Limbaugh is not even in the race with this thinks he is a know it all!
I mean come on, gun control is basically a joke. If a person wants a gun their damn sure gonna get one, lot's of places and resourses they don't have to go through the proper channels to do so. Thats just my opinion.

 

[red indian]

Blimey!......where to start......

.....one thing that really pissed me off right through the film was his tendancy to take the piss out of people he did not aggree with, but allow people he did aggree with to give uninterrupted lectures, free of any flippant interjections, while he nodds sagely in response to their every word. This was very unfair regardless of what point he was trying to make with the film.

His attempt to compare America and Canada regarding levels of crime was very confusing, he made the point that the American media blows any news story about shootings out of all proportion to the reality on the streets, and we are then shown Moore wondering around on the notorious streets of L.A. where the riots took place a few years back, the point being (I assume) that things are not as bad as they are made out, then we are taken to Canada and shown the benign laid back life style there, which contrasts starkly with the terrifying urban jungled night mare of America, and he asks why the Americans can not be more like this? but of course....er......well they ARE more like this because its all just media hype any way and you can walk around the so called danger areas of L.A. with out fear......mmmm yes Mr Moore, I think you just dissapeared up your own arse mate!

His use of statistics was extremely dishonest, we are given the numbers of deaths as a result of gun crime in a given year, for Britain, Canada and Japan amongst others, all of which were in the low hundreds or less, and then.......wait for it........(big drum roll).....America....12000!!!!......wow!!!! no mention of the fact you could probably put the entire population of those other countries on Statten Island.

I found the use of what Moore no doubt thinks is witty urbane irony, very heavy handed and predictable, footage of American marching bands playing Sousa marches at ticker tape carnivals, cut with images of the Vietnam war for instance, has been done to death by much better film makers 30 years ago, and its just boring and felt very second hand. Lets face it chaps you just can not do sarcasm or irony, leave it to us Brits eh?


His attempt to integrate American intervention in Yougoslavia with American domestic gun culture was pathetic, and given that he is supposed to be a man on a mission to seek the truth we could have done with some honest facts about American intervention in the Balkans such as the fact that the entire world community were practically begging the U.S. to go in there and sort out the mess!! total silence from Mr Truth Seeker on this point.


I loved Moores barely concealed dissapointment when the Wall Mart executive announced the ending of ammuntion sales, this was clearly not what he had wanted, another chance to mock and humillate in public people who dont aggree with him had gone up in smoke.


I found his dishonest and cowardly interveiw with Charton Heston very irritating, I just kept thinking "for gods sake man put your fucking cards on the table and GET ON WITH IT!!!" I ended up feeling sorry for Heston, which i am sure was not the idea of the interview

Then of course we get the cloying sentimentality, which even the great truth seeking anti American Mr Moore can not resist, when he leaves the picture of the dead child on Hestons drive. This just made me feel even more sorry for Heston, what ever he is, he is not a child murderer or an advocate in favour of school gun massacres. It also made me think Micheal Moore is a twat.

 

[red indian]

Oh dear...

....so no ones been to see it then?

 

[ShiningIce]

Gun control is an issue I have actually no opinion on.

 

[dig dug dog]

Dear red indian,

I saw the film and thought it was well done, clever and that it made some important points. Of course it was one-sided; MM has an agenda and a statement he wanted to make. I don't have a problem with that. Let those who disagree make one of their own.

I don't have time to address all your points, but I disagree with your interpretation of his reaction to the Wal-Mart decision. I believe he was surprised, but very pleased at a (small) victory. Also, unfortunately, Heston has become a very unlikeable person because of his, "from my cold, dead hands" approach. He did take the NRA to places where massacres had occured just days before. Heston confirmed those facts and had no explanation for such insensitivity (to put it mildly). No sympathy for him--he has none for those who opppose him.

In particular, I believe Moore's points about the creation of a "culture of fear"--and its economic motives--were right on.

The use and abuse of guns in America is certainly an issue demanding much more attention than it receives.

dig dug

 

[JoBelle]

Heston has become a very unlikeable person because of his, "from my cold, dead hands" approach. He did take the NRA to places where massacres had occured just days before. Heston confirmed those facts and had no explanation for such insensitivity (to put it mildly). No sympathy for him--he has none for those who opppose him.

Didn't Heston recently say that he regretted his decision to go into the "war zone" so soon after the fact? I may be mistaken,but I think I heard that in an interview. Any help in either direction would be appreciated.

Red, we've discussed this before, but I would like to say it in forum for discussion. I think most of American agrees with the basic premise that there is a problem at hand in America considering this subject. It's the EXTREMIST - "You're bad people, America" presentation that put most people off of the discussion. Rather than seek a solution, it was Moore's seeking the limelight with a popular subject. He wasn't out for social justice...he's out to make a buck at the expense of a bunch of kids who lost their lives.

Jo

 

[dig dug dog]

Jo,

Do you really believe Michael Moore is just a money-hungry businessman with no actual concern for the issues he is addressing? What is your evidence for this, and how was the film Bowling for Columbine at the "expense of the kids who lost their lives". Let me be clear in my question: how does the film come at their "expense", i.e., hurt them in one way or another? If you actually meant that he was "taking advantage" of their pain, then every newspaper, magazine, and TV station in the country should be accused of the same thing.

dig dug

 

[red indian]

For the record............

.....I actually agree with the broad out line of what Moore is trying to get across, but his attempts at getting his ideas across in this film i found very poor for the reasons already stated. I find claims by reviewers that this is "the best documentary ever made" quiet laughable, we get better presented and far more clearly considered documentaries on local radio.

 

[JoBelle]

DDD,

To be honest, yes. I think that's about what he amounts to. He was a very busy man promoting his film.BUT, not a single word that I ever heard in an interview was about a solution. Everytime he opened his mouth, it began with, "In my film....blahblahblah." His filmed outlined a sad situation that was there, is there, and will be there. He exploited the rage and sadness of people for his gain. THAT'S how I see it.

The inital reports of the shootings are not taking advantage...but yes, I agree the further "investigative reports" that just rehashed the same thing time and again were!

He did it on a larger scale...same crap. ALL OVER again....just a bigger scale. And lookie, lookie, lookie, now everyone knows his name.

Jo

 

[Oddjob0226]

I'm certainly not going to go see it. Michael Moore is the political left's version of Rush Limbaugh; a loud, self-important asshole who is virtually incapable of an independent thought.

Sadly, the insipid "I'm right, you're wrong, and I'm LOUDER" mentality espoused by the two aforementioned mirror-image morons is gradually replacing intelligent, civilized debate as the most common mode of political discussion in this country. It's sad, really... 🙁

Actually, this was his least leftist film of his 3, and his books and t.v. shows. He starts the film right off by admitting he's a card carrying lifetime member of the NRA. And he never comes down on hunters or the right to defend one's self. Even when he shows a segment on the Michigan Militia, he mostly lets them do the talking and let's the viewer make up their own mind.

I went in expecting a total anti-gun film, which is how it is being merketed, which is too bad, becuase it's actually a fascinating thing to watch and the marketing might keep people away. Ceratinly, he get's preachy, and he leaves out a few details here and there but that's not all that the film's about. What impressed me the most about Moore this time was, in fact, his restraint. In his other films Moore always put forth a kind of utopian argument, a kind of "If we did it this way, things would be better." political idea. Things would be more fair, more right, if we leaned a little more to the left. But in this film, he didn't depend on theory - he went to a country with a culture like ours, where gun ownership is popular like w/us, where the society has a similar make up to ours, and, in fact, there are more guns owned per capita there than in the U.S. - and he explored the facts and theories of people living within the system, rather than supposing what the system might be like if.....

And unlike the one blanket simple solutions that he comes up with in his other films, Moore comes up with no clear simple answer to why so many people die from gun violence. He just says here's some contributing factors, here's some things that could change, but overall it's sad, and that's all. I've seen both "leftist" and "rightist" documentaries, ones I've both liked and disliked, but this one was pretty interesting, and it did indeed make me think, not make me jump to any conclusions.

 

[Oddjob0226]

DDD,

He was a very busy man promoting his film. BUT, not a single word that I ever heard in an interview was about a solution. Everytime he opened his mouth, it began with, "In my film....blahblahblah

Except documentaries are some of the worst was to make any kind of money in the film world. People make them who believe in the subject. The big moneymakers in the movie world are the ones who keep making the cartoons-into-movies people. I don't know that DUDLEY DO RIGHT or ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE THE MOVIE, or human cartoon films like XXX had more value than BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE.

Moore talked about the film because his solutions are in the film. He builds his case over a period of time, which a feller can't do fully on Good Morning America, and lays out his arguments. Of course he leaves out details and facts here and there, but that comes with the territory of any documentary -it's the viewer who has to see where he/she stands. He lays it out as he sees it - documentaries are NEVER objective; the church-backed documentaries about how homosexuals can be cured by religion are shown in nightclubs & film festivals as comedies! But in exploiting the victim's families, they seemed very willing to talk about what happened and what they wanted done about guns, and none of them seemed too radical to me. Nor did they have any one clear solution.

The L.A footage, I think was a way of stating the idea that violence spilled over because a group of people felt that they were repressed - by people in a position of authority with guns backing them up. And he illustrated that there were bigger and constant problems by showing wht filth in the air and pointing out rightly that either EPA laws were not being enforced evenly or perhaps there was an issue that should be adresses that's also being ignored. And he never brought up the idea that people who wanted to defend themselves against the rioters shouldn't have been denyied that right.

While the numbers of people killed with guns was innacurate as far as per capita goes, I think the basic point being made was - that's a lot of dead people from something that's cheap and can be had with relative ease. He didn't say that in many of the countries mentioned where gun deaths were lower that guns are hard to get legally or outright illegal, and I think he didn't bring this up because then it would suggest that he was condoning banning all guns and then people would REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLLY attack him for being pro-gun control (really!) and (really!) un-American (really really!). He made the people who built bombs & threatend their school and sold drugs look pretty dumb, too, so he wasn't exactly on their side.


If you think this was bad - go see ROGER AND ME or DOWNSIZE THIS. He was pretty even-handed in this film. And, as is often the case, people are debating tactics used rather than issues raised, so, again, as often is the case, rarely do documentaries solve much.

 

[august spies]

the film was very well done and he made sound arguments and brought interesting points to light. the film was much deeper than gun control. it points out the blatent hypocracy of the american government.

if you tell people what they dont want to here sure it upsets them, but thats just the way people are.

 

[MadKalnod]

Here's a review of the film I found at The Weekly Standard

Jackass, The Documentary
Dishonesty. Tendentiousness. Blubber. Michael Moore's "Bowling For Columbine" is even worse than what we've come to expect from him.
by Matt Labash
10/31/2002 11:20:00 AM

CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, journalists are human too. We are not merely hecklers in the human comedy, the suckerfish of tragedy. We have thoughts and feelings. We experience pain and insecurity. We suffer disappointment and sorrow. Sometimes, we just need to be held.

Of all these human emotions, the most acutely-felt is often regret. For though we make it look effortless--often because we don't exert any effort--it can be a tough racket: being forced to capture in a few-thousand word snapshot all the nuances of people's lives, being frustrated when you don't quite nail them. Take me, for instance. Four years ago, I wrote a piece on documentary-filmmaker Michael Moore. Entitled "One-Trick Phony," it was what is known in the trade as a "kneecap job." Even by my own often uncharitable standards, it was a nasty piece of work.

Taking on the self-styled populist avenger, the bra-strap-snapper of corporate America, I went after Moore with a pick-axe. I said his career had been "one, long tiresome impression of a harlequin Reuther brother whistling the song of the working man," while all he really did was ambush mid-level proles in company lobbies. I called him a "Ritz-Carlton revolutionary" and a "high-cholesterol Cassandra" who dressed like "an unemployed lumberjack." After displaying initial comic genius with his General Motors-bashing "Roger & Me"--his critically acclaimed, if factually-compromised first film--Moore had, I suggested, become "a preachy bore . . . whose work has become so sanctimoniously unamusing it could make Cesar Chavez pull for management." Then I quit playing Mr. Nice Guy.

While most Moore critics stop at ridiculing him, since he is, both figuratively and literally, a fat target, I talked to his co-workers, acquaintances, and former employees, nearly all of whom made my editorial pronouncements look like a good-natured game of Slapjack. They called him "paranoid," "mercurial," "demanding," and a "fork-tongued manipulator." Though Moore's entire shtick is predicated on fighting the jackboot of corporate oppression, they detailed everything from his temper tantrums to his threatening to fire an assistant who sent a yellow cab instead of a limo to fetch him at the airport. They compared working conditions under Moore to "a sweatshop," "indentured servitude," and "a concentration camp." One of his former producers said it was like "working for Idi Amin--without the laughs." Another staffer simply said, "My parents want him dead."

But that was then, and now, it is four years later. With the mellowing brought on by age, I realize that we are all God's children, doing the best we can, struggling to get by. And so today, outside the heat of battle, in the cool light of day, as I watch Moore's latest documentary, "Bowling For Columbine," I can't help but be haunted by one mammoth regret: that my piece wasn't nearly mean enough.

For some time now, cultural observers have noticed that being a sparkling left-wing satirist is not a vocation in danger of overpopulation. Now that Mort Sahl is dead (or is he still alive?), you might count Molly Ivins and Jim Hightower, which is hard to do if you've actually read them. The Nation's Katha Pollitt is a sparkling self-parodist, though not much of a satirist. So the field has pretty much been abandoned to Michael Moore, and more's the pity, since it is hard to imagine the likes of Twain or Swift comparing themselves to Mother Teresa (as Moore has done), while still expecting to be taken seriously as funnymen.

Not that the marketplace has passed a similar judgment. Moore's latest book, "Stupid White Men" (which isn't, as the title suggests, an autobiography), has become a New York Times number one best-seller. A collection of union-hall-pamphleteer conspiracies stitched together in the mouth-breathing verbiage of someone who's quite proud of their GED, the book is useful in that it collects all Moore's crackpot theories in one place. The media tells us lies. . . . the election was stolen. . . . George W. Bush is an alcoholic. . . . we need Jimmy Carter. . . . on and on it goes.

As for the yuks quotient, a typical line is "I think it was Thomas Aquinas who once observed, 'There's nothing like your own shit to make you realize how much you stink.'" Clever stuff. In a sidebar chart (it's the kind of book with sidebar charts) Moore offers "Mike's Fantasy List of Women Presidents" which includes Hillary Clinton ("only if I could get invited for sleepovers") and President Oprah ( "the fireside chats with Dr. Phil would save us all.") Yuck.

Considering that Moore, just days after September 11, wrote "We, the United States of America, are culpable in committing so many acts of terror and bloodshed that we had better get a clue about the culture of violence in which we have been active participants"--it's small wonder that the New Republic has called Moore "Chomsky for children." But it is precisely his culture-of-violence rap, along with his knee-jerk anti-Americanism, that has seen Moore earn some of his best reviews since "Roger & Me."

Having already won several film-festival awards, "Bowling For Columbine" was such a hit at the Cannes film festival, that it won a 13-minute standing ovation, along with the 55th anniversary Jury Prize. While the French are renowned for lapping up sub-standard American entertainment products, they are less likely to celebrate screechy and preachy moralistic diatribes, of which "Bowling for Columbine" is almost nothing but. But since the film contains heaping spoonfuls of America-bad-everyone-else-good notions, they appear eager to make an exception. As Brandweek reported, since Moore's film also won the "Cannes Prix Educational National" award, voted on by hundreds of French teachers and students, it will now become part of their national curriculum, shown every year at schools in France.

In fairness to the French, Moore's version of America gives them plenty to hate. Besides being a slovenly repository of happy meals and Shamrock Shakes, the protagonist (Moore) is a whiny nitwit, at turns deathly earnest and smugly glib--and he's supposed to be the good guy.

The drama in a Moore film always comes from a cinematic version of the "Tonight Show"'s Jay-Walking segment--the running bit in which Jay Leno hits the streets and asks ordinary Americans to display their ignorance by asking them such stumpers as, "In what year did we fight the War of 1812?" Checking my stopwatch, I clock the film at 1 minute 20 seconds before Moore's first human sacrifice--a harmless bank teller in Michigan, who sports a sensible hairstyle and a North County Bank golf shirt. As part of a bank promotion, they are giving away free guns, after background checks, when a customer opens a new account.

After the teller asks if Moore's ever been ruled "mentally defective"--a fair question, considering the customer--Moore asks her, "Do you think it's a little bit dangerous handing out guns at a bank?" This is, of course, amusing in the way Moore's films periodically are--in the way cooking ants under a magnifying glass on a hot sidewalk tends to enthrall your average ten-year-old boy. Unfortunately, it is one of his last entertaining moments.

From there, we are off across America to prove we are a nation of militia-joining, bloodthirsty gun nuts, who use the rubric of the second amendment as a fig-leaf excuse to pump lead into each other for sport. The film's catchy, if non-sequitirish title, "Bowling for Columbine," is a reference to the uber gun-nut Columbine killers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who happened to go bowling in an elective-class the morning of the massacre.

From the tofu farm of James Nichols, brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry, to Q&A's with disenfranchised juvies, sporting bad skin and worse dental work, Moore seems to unearth every anti-government extremist who dreams of black helicopters and blood in the streets, proving that we are a violent nation almost beyond salvation.

Moore himself has said his is not merely an anti-gun film, but a larger film about the culture of fear that fosters our gun culture. "The American media," he told Phil Donahue, "wants to pump you full of fear." He says the media overstate everything from child abductions to the recession, which is a curious statement, coming from the author of so many sky-is-falling manifestoes. Just take a paragraph, almost at random, from "Stupid White Men," and you come up with: "Investors lost millions in the stock market. Crime went up for the first time in a decade. Job losses skyrocketed. American icons like Montgomery Ward and TWA vanished. Suddenly we were 2.5 million barrels short of oil--every day! Israelis started killing Palestinians again, and Palestinians returned the favor. By mid-2001, thirty-seven countries were at war around the world. China became our new enemy--again. . . . In short, all of a sudden everything sucked." It's enough to make you want to hole up in your basement with canned goods and a weapons cache.

In the film, Moore heads to Littleton, where he visits Lockheed Martin, the weapons maker and Littleton's biggest employer. Always one to blame societal ills on big corporations and/or the military-industrial complex, Moore interviews a Lockheed flack while his camera pans the factory's corny successory posters. As Moore nearly pops a hamstring, hyper-extending himself while reaching for a causal factor in the Columbine shootings, he asks the poor flack if he doesn't "think our kids say to themselves, 'Well, gee, dad goes off to the factory every day, and he builds missiles, he builds weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?'" (Neither Klebold's nor Harris's parents worked for Lockheed, and Klebold's father has actually been identified as a liberal who favors gun control).

By this point, the flack is as puzzled as we are. He kindly explains that he's not catching the parallel, and that our missiles are generally built to defend us "from somebody else who was the aggressor against us. We don't get irritated with somebody and just because we get mad at them, drop a bomb or fire a missile at them." In what is perhaps the most-heavy handed two minutes in any film of the last 30 years, here, Moore cuts to a montage of American atrocities throughout the decades.

Against the strains of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," Moore cuts to a caption and image timeline explaining how we are guilty of everything from propping up tin-pot dictators to killing innocent civilians the world over. As Armstong sings the last words, Moore flashes a visual of the smoking World Trade Center, with the plane flying into tower two as a caption informs "Sept 11, 2001: Osama Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people." Perhaps the likes of Bianca Jagger, Daniel Berrigan or the French would think Moore's uncorked a real sly piece of satire, but he's rolling out pretty heavy artillery to explain a school shooting.

The two-fold problem Moore runs into with attempting to fashion some deep polemic out of found material is that: (A) He has no idea what he wants to say, and (B) Neither does anyone that he finds. As he encounters Marilyn Manson backstage, they commiserate about the preposterousness of the Columbine rap nearly getting pinned on Manson by opportunists who said that the killers listened to his violent lyrics. (And they're right, it is preposterous, but slightly less preposterous than blaming Lockheed Martin). Manson tells Moore that the media are responsible for a "campaign of fear and consumption--keep everyone afraid and they'll consume." Moore agrees, and adds, apropos of nothing, that on the day of the shootings, the president dropped more bombs on Kosovo than at any other time in that war. This sounds less like a coherent argument, more like a conversation between two late-night dorm-room potheads.

But Moore doesn't stop there. Following his half-baked culture-of-fear theme, he goes to South Central, to ask a cop, who is, in all likelihood, about to bust some minority down the street, why he doesn't instead bust the people who are responsible for polluting the air, that makes it impossible to see the "Hollywood" sign from South Central. Later, he meets with a producer of the show "Cops," and suggests that instead of demonizing blacks and Hispanics by showing them getting arrested on television, maybe they could do a show called "Corporate Cops," where Enron-types get arrested. (The producer, tells Moore it wouldn't make much of a visual, unless they could get the corporate criminal to "take his shirt off, throw his cellular phone at the police as they come through the door, [and to] jump out that window--then we'd have a show.")

The only solution Moore offers to curtail gun violence, isn't, oddly enough, gun control, but for us to become more like Canada--a country that has it's fair share of guns, but a tiny fraction of our gun deaths. Why this is so, Moore never adequately explores. In interviews he has made some faint noises about there being less suffering, and thus, less violence in Canada because of their socialized medicine. But for the most part, Moore leaves the viewer at sea, free to suppose that if we could just listen to Anne Murray records, take up curling, eat poutine and add "eh" to the end of our sentences, we too, would be a peace-loving people.

By the end, Moore's deus ex machina creaks so loudly you'll need earplugs. Going back to visit Flint, Michigan (Moore's working class hometown, an antecedent he's usually fond of mentioning 12 or 13 times per interview), he re-visits the 2000 school shooting in which a six-year old boy found a gun in his uncle's house, brought it to school, and shot and killed a six-year-old girl. Moore pours it on thick. The media, at the time, were tempted to blame any number of factors for the tragic death. But class-warrior Moore settles on his usual bogeymen--conservative greedheads, multinational corporations, the NRA, all the regulars.

Because of brutally unfair welfare-to-work laws, Tamarla Owens, the boy's mother, was forced to trek to work 40 miles away everyday to Auburn Hills. She had to drive through rich people's neighborhoods to work two minimum-wage jobs, one of which was pouring drinks at Dick Clark's "American Bandstand Grill." Dick Clark, it seems, has blood on his hands. But he has lots of company, since our old friends Lockheed Martin, Moore tells us--his head now spinning so fast that sprockets seem ready to bust loose--have become the number one firm in the country in privatizing state welfare systems.

Because Owens, obviously victimized by the system, was forced to be an absentee mother out of necessity, she had to leave her children with her brother. Largely unsupervised, her youngest found a gun, brought it to school, and iced his first-grade classmate.

It's a harrowing tale, one which Moore first takes to Dick Clark in an ambush interview (Clark quickly peels away in a minivan, unfortunately missing Moore), and later to NRA president Charlton Heston. Heston, of course, has announced he has symptoms consistent with Alzheimer's, which is apparent, because when Moore buys a star map and shows up at Heston's gate unannounced, he lets Moore in for an interview. Starting off slowly, peppering him with chatter about the second amendment, Moore ends up closing in for the kill, asking Heston if he'd apologize for bringing NRA conventions to both Flint and Littleton after their respective shootings. Heston wisely calls it quits, but as he flees his own living room, Moore follows him, hectoring him with a picture of the girl Tamarla Owens's son shot. "This is her. Please take a look at her, please, this is the girl," Moore says, before propping the photo against Heston's house.

It is perhaps the single-most shameful moment ever in a Moore project, which is saying something, since Moore authored an entire chapter on how O.J. Simpson couldn't have killed his wife (because rich people usually hire lowerlings to do their dirty work). Not only did he ambush a doddering old man who had nothing to do with the shooting, but he related the Owens story in a fashion that was dishonest in nearly every way.

For what Moore didn't tell us about Tamarla Owens and her family could fill several newspaper and magazine articles, and did. The uncle's house where Owens left her children was, additionally, a crack house, where guns were often traded for drugs. The gun that the boy stole from a shoebox on a mattress in his uncle's bedroom had been reported stolen once before. And Owens was hardly a model parent, merely getting squeezed by unfortunate circumstances. According to Time magazine, Owens herself was a drug addict (she denied it). Additionally, reported Newhouse News Service, according to a state Family Independence Agency petition, she admitted holding down her oldest boy so he could be beaten with a belt by two male friends, and she also admitted beating the boy with a belt while sitting on him, after first duct-taping his hands, feet and mouth.

In short, Owens and her clan were to responsible gun ownership what Moore is to responsible journalism. To beat Heston up for her problems is itself an act of violence. It is perhaps understandable why Moore attempted to drop himself from the narrative, and put a less-fortunate type like Owens front-and-center. As he recently told one reporter, he has a sign on his editing-room door that says "when in doubt, cut me out." The reason he says, is "First of all, I can't stand the look of myself. Secondly, a little bit of me goes a long way. . . . because it's just a bit much. That's how it feels when I watch it." After watching "Bowling For Columbine," it's easy to see how he feels.

Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

 

[red indian]

Thanks for that Maddy boy!!!!.......

.....maybe old red aint so dumb after all!!!!

 

[dig dug dog]

Who has time to read that novella-length review? Skimming it, I make two comments: (1) Can you say, "ad hominem"?--I knew you could. (2) Two can play at that game: It's from THE WEEKLY STANDARD, for God's sake. What did you expect?

"For the record," I oppose much of what Moore has to say, particularly concerning foreign policy. What I do not understand is why people see Moore's work as "tendentious," or "dishonest," but ignore the massive propaganda on every issue under the sun which passes itself off as "journalism" or "capitalism" or "advertising" or "think tanks" or "institutes" or "peace movements" or....

Jo: I consider his lack of "providing an answer" to the film's credit. There is no simple answer, but we certainly need to be exposed to the vital issues he raises--straight up and in the face.

ddd

 

[august spies]

Against the strains of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," Moore cuts to a caption and image timeline explaining how we are guilty of everything from propping up tin-pot dictators to killing innocent civilians the world over. As Armstong sings the last words, Moore flashes a visual of the smoking World Trade Center, with the plane flying into tower two as a caption informs "Sept 11, 2001: Osama Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people."

notice how the author tries to make it look like more is lying but he cant outright say it because he knows its the truth.

i also heard that article had a lot of well thought arguments (except it didnt)

 

[Biggles of 266]

it's pretty sad when a journalist who is obviously smart enough to take all his ideas and opinions and link them into that massive review has to resort to name-calling to make himself feel tough. If you ever dislike a person and have to sink to making fun of their baldness or height or weight... I mean really, grow up.

 

[Oddjob0226]

Against the strains of Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World," Moore cuts to a caption and image timeline explaining how we are guilty of everything from propping up tin-pot dictators to killing innocent civilians the world over. As Armstong sings the last words, Moore flashes a visual of the smoking World Trade Center, with the plane flying into tower two as a caption informs "Sept 11, 2001: Osama Bin Laden uses his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people." Perhaps the likes of Bianca Jagger, Daniel Berrigan or the French would think Moore's uncorked a real sly piece of satire, but he's rolling out pretty heavy artillery to explain a school shooting.

Actually, the montage wasn't used to explain "a" school shooting (the Boston Masscre which triggered the American Revolution only had 5 deaths.... and IT was triggured by a group of people taunting a guy with a gun); the montage was used to refute the argument of the Lockheed Martin fella'.

When you critic a film, the criticism has more meaning when you see it and use your own words.

Like AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER - that sucked-a-rooty!

 

[Sadistictickler]

I think Bowling for columbine is one of the best documentaries I've ever seen, due to the fact that he simply points out a big problem. Columbine probably wouldn't had happened if guns were illegal; here in Holland we never have that stuff, because it's really hard to get a gun.

 

[red indian]

How about Switzerland?..............

........they have more guns than people, and the law in that country is that you MUST have AT LEAST one gun in your house. Also all new born males are imeadeatly given an induction date to start their national service.

However they have just about the lowest number of gun related crimes in the world. I dont know the answer btw, just thought it was worth knowing!

 

[Sadistictickler]

switzerland is also one of the richest countries in the world, and well, the swiss are in my opinion a bit different compared to the rest of the world

 

[execmail77]

Aren't Documentaries supposed to be truthful?!

I posted the article below on another thread here discussing Michael Moore's book, "Stupid White Men," but I'll post it again so others can see why there's already talk of pulling Mr. Moore's Oscar away...

This was from the Wall Street Journal's website on Friday, March 21, 2003, and written by John Fund, two days BEFORE Moore won his Oscar:


UNMOORED FROM REALITY
AN IDEOLOGICAL CON ARTIST IS THE FAVORITE FOR AN OSCAR

With Hollywood in a fever pitch against the war in Iraq, Michael Moore is likely to win the Oscar for Best Documentary at Sunday's Academy Awards. "Bowling for Columbine," Mr. Moore's work of anti-American propaganda, has grossed over $15 million, an amazing sum for a film billed as a documentary. But the film, a merry dissection of America's "culture of fear" and love of guns, is filled with so many inaccuracies and distortions that it ought to be classed as a work of fiction.

Mr. Moore is naturally a big hit among the French. The jury at the Cannes Film Festival created a special, one-time only award to honor his film and then gave it a 13-minute standing ovation. "Not since Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer have we seen such a successful export of anti-Americanism," observes Andrew Sullivan in London's Sunday Times.

Mr. Moore plays into all of the worst stereotypes and distortions about America. "Bowling for Columbine" attempts to explain interventions by the U.S. military as rooted in an inherently violent domestic culture. "I agree with the National Rifle Association when they say, 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people,' " he told NBC's "Today" show. "Except I would alter that to say, 'Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people.' We're the only country that does this, and we do it on an personal level in our neighborhoods and within our families and our schools, and we do it on a global level. The American attitude is that we believe we have a right to just go in and bomb another country. This is where Bush is going right now, right?"

To make this strained connection, Mr. Moore tries to make us believe that the two mentally disturbed high school students who massacred their fellow students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., grew up in a community that has a sinister connection to the military-industrial complex. A Lockheed Martin factory in Littleton manufactures "weapons of mass destruction," Mr. Moore claims. The factory actually makes rockets that carry TV satellites into space. And the very title of Mr. Moore's film is based on a deception. It refers to the bowling class that the Columbine killers supposedly took the morning they committed their murders. The only problem is that they actually cut the class.

Forbes reports that an early scene in "Bowling" in which Mr. Moore tries to demonstrate how easy it is to obtain guns in America was staged. He goes to a small bank in Traverse City, Mich., that offers various inducements to open an account and claims "I put $1,000 in a long-term account, they did the background check, and, within an hour, I walked out with my new Weatherby," a rifle.

But Jan Jacobson, the bank employee who worked with Mr. Moore on his account, says that only happened because Mr. Moore's film company had worked for a month to stage the scene. "What happened at the bank was a prearranged thing," she says. The gun was brought from a gun dealer in another city, where it would normally have to be picked up. "Typically, you're looking at a week to 10 days waiting period," she says. Ms. Jacobson feels used: "He just portrayed us as backward hicks."

Mr. Moore makes the preposterous claim that a Michigan program by which welfare recipients were required to work was responsible for an incident in which a six-year-old Flint boy shot a girl to death at school. Mr. Moore doesn't mention that the boy's mother had sent him to live in a crack house where her brother and a friend kept both drugs and guns--a frequently lethal combination.

Some of the fact-bending and omissions of "Bowling for Columbine" could charitably be chalked up to really sloppy research. (I called the chief archivist for Mr. Moore's film, Carl Deal, yesterday, but he hasn't called back.) Others show a willful aversion to the truth. Mr. Moore repeats the canard that the United States gave the Taliban $245 million in aid in 2000 and 2001, somehow implying we were in cahoots with them. But that money actually went to U.N.-affiliated humanitarian organizations that were completely independent of the Taliban.

David Hardy, a former Interior Department lawyer who delights in debunking government officials and pompous celebrities, has uncovered even more evidence of Mr. Moore's distortions. The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness. Another speech is described as being given immediately after the Flint shooting . In reality, it was made almost a year later. All of these and more inaccuracies can be found at Mr. Hardy's comprehensive Web site.

Ben Fritz ofSpinsanity.org also notes that Mr. Moore has "apparently altered footage of an ad run by the Bush/Quayle campaign in 1988" to buttress his claim that racial symbolism is frequently misused in American politics. His leading example is the case of Willie Horton, a murderer who became a major issue in the 1988 presidential campaign. Mr. Moore shows the Bush ad that generically attacked a prison furlough program in Michael Dukakis's Massachusetts . Superimposed over the footage of prisoners entering and exiting a prison are the words "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." While the caption appears to be part of the original ad, Mr. Moore actually inserted it; the ad made no mention of Horton. (Another ad, sponsored by the National Security Political Action Committee, a conservative group independent of the Bush campaign, did mention Horton; it aired only briefly in a few cable markets.) The phony Moore caption also is inaccurate; Horton brutalized a Maryland couple and raped the wife, but didn't kill anybody while on furlough.

In print, too, Mr. Moore plays fast and loose with the facts. In his "Stupid White Men," his best-selling book, he blithely states that five-sixths of the U.S. defense budget in 2001 went toward the construction of a single type of plane and that two-thirds of the $190 million that President Bush raised in his 2000 campaign came from just over 700 individuals, a preposterous assertion given that the limit for individual contributions at the time was $1,000.
When CNN's Lou Dobbs asked Mr. Moore about his inaccuracies, he shrugged off the quesiton. "You know, look, this is a book of political humor. So, I mean, I don't respond to that sort of stuff, you know," he said.

"Glaring inaccuracies?" Mr. Dobbs said.

"No, I don't. Why should I? How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?"

Mr. Moore would deserve an Academy Award if there were an Oscar for Best Cinematic Con Job. If "Bowling for Columbine" is a comedy, most of its fans don't know it. They actually believe they're watching something that is in rough accord with reality.