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alexist at 12:47am on 20/05/2004
alexist at 12:47am on 20/05/2004I can't help but think that one of the reasons Fahrenheit 9/11 was so popular there is because it confirmed what people wanted to think about Bush. If it had been a conservative film, would it have been so popular?
I used to like Michael Moore--his work on TV was brilliant. But ever since he's gone on this single-minded anti-Bush vendetta, he's been a little tiresome. It's not the kind of thing I go for. I don't like the focus on politicians-as-people (Bill Clinton was hardly a paragon of virtue), and I don't like hysterical tabloid journalism. Every time I go into the bookstore and browse the new nonfiction, I want to scream. Most of it tends to be from right-wingers, claiming that various liberal positions (or liberals themselves) are destroying the country (or world). What I find particularly amusing is that many of the people who make fun of this stuff lap up Moore's--which is the left wing equivalent. Bad journalism is acceptable if it agrees with your point of view, eh?
I don't care about how much you think Bush is an idiot, or endless retreads of what's wrong with his policy (I can see that for myself). You can trash a politician from today till tomorrow, but what if you get elected? I'm much more interested in being told what someone will do instead. Of course, that's a lot harder than just throwing mud.
(A similar argument applies to critics of Tony Blair. If he resigned over Iraq, what would that get you aside from a feeling of satisfaction and Gordon Brown as PM? I'm not even sure there's any reason for him to resign. Everyone thinks they know better than Tony, but in this case, I actually think he was pretty stuck. Would he have been any better off if he had sided with France? It's not as if you can say the Opposition would have been any better. If anyone thinks the Tories would've sided with France [which wants a common EU foreign and defense policy] over the US, they're in cloud cuckooland. You can argue that Blair oversold the war, but what was he going to do, go on TV and say, "We're really not at all sure about WMDs, but we're following the US, so in we go"? I'm not a Blairite--I think he's an overcentralizing target-obsessed control freak--but I'm not at all sure he had as much choice about Iraq as we'd like to think.)
I used to like Michael Moore--his work on TV was brilliant. But ever since he's gone on this single-minded anti-Bush vendetta, he's been a little tiresome. It's not the kind of thing I go for. I don't like the focus on politicians-as-people (Bill Clinton was hardly a paragon of virtue), and I don't like hysterical tabloid journalism. Every time I go into the bookstore and browse the new nonfiction, I want to scream. Most of it tends to be from right-wingers, claiming that various liberal positions (or liberals themselves) are destroying the country (or world). What I find particularly amusing is that many of the people who make fun of this stuff lap up Moore's--which is the left wing equivalent. Bad journalism is acceptable if it agrees with your point of view, eh?
I don't care about how much you think Bush is an idiot, or endless retreads of what's wrong with his policy (I can see that for myself). You can trash a politician from today till tomorrow, but what if you get elected? I'm much more interested in being told what someone will do instead. Of course, that's a lot harder than just throwing mud.
(A similar argument applies to critics of Tony Blair. If he resigned over Iraq, what would that get you aside from a feeling of satisfaction and Gordon Brown as PM? I'm not even sure there's any reason for him to resign. Everyone thinks they know better than Tony, but in this case, I actually think he was pretty stuck. Would he have been any better off if he had sided with France? It's not as if you can say the Opposition would have been any better. If anyone thinks the Tories would've sided with France [which wants a common EU foreign and defense policy] over the US, they're in cloud cuckooland. You can argue that Blair oversold the war, but what was he going to do, go on TV and say, "We're really not at all sure about WMDs, but we're following the US, so in we go"? I'm not a Blairite--I think he's an overcentralizing target-obsessed control freak--but I'm not at all sure he had as much choice about Iraq as we'd like to think.)
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