Dude, Where's My Sanity? ... Michael Moore and his critics. posted by Richard Seymour

Michael Moore is a liar. It's been proven. Every film, book or article he has produced has involved some kind of deception designed to amplify his case or make a case where none existed at all. So we are told by the rightwing US media, and now by Spinsanity.org .

The apparently rigorous fact-checking has produced a website and many, many articles and television slots for critics of Moore's work.

Spinsanity begins with a resume of the stock accusations deployed against Moore. "Moore repeated a well-debunked myth about supposed US aid to the Taliban, falsely portrayed a scene in a Michigan bank to make it appear as though one could open an account and walk out with a gun, and altered a Bush-Quayle '88 campaign ad, among numerous other distortions."

So, I suppose it would be as well to start there. The US aid to the Taliban is reported in Michael Moore's film as reported by the State Department . The critics assert that the money was handled by the UN and NGOs. Interesting logic since these same critics usually have no problem in asserting that the oil-for-food 'aid' which was given to Iraq was spent by Saddam Hussein on his palaces (so John Sweeney told me). But this aid was given in the context of US support for the Taliban (at a time when, as Moore points out, other impoverished nations with larger populations were not flattered with the same attention). This was also in the context of Taliban visits to the US to discuss an oil pipeline , an idea now being discussed by Kirzai with Pakistan and Turkmenistan The usual argument from critics is to say that this was 'food aid', an act of generosity by a benign United States. There are good reasons for thinking this is cobblers, as Moore suggests , but at that point we're entering the realm of speculation. Moore is making a case based on a quite common interpretation of the facts - Spinsanity and others counterpose it with their own interpretation which is hardly more plausible and probably a good deal less given what we know about US generosity .

The scene from the bank "falsely portrayed" is in fact an accurate portrayal of real events. The original advertisement was real, the bank offer was real, the bank really did supply him with that gun. Critics complain that Moore couldn't have got that gun from that bank, because those guns (Weatherby Mark V Magnum rifle) are only available "in a vault four hours away". Additionally, the guns you see behind Jacobson as she watches Moore fill in his forms are "models".

In fact, the whole thing was staged: 'His immediately walking out of the bank with a long-gun was allowed because "this whole thing was set up two months prior to the filming of the movie" when he had already complied with all the rules, including a background check.'

Aside from the fact that Moore was making a movie (duh!) and therefore had to take a little time over it (even fly-on-the-wall documentaries have scenes shot and re-shot), the Chicago Sun Times tells us: "Put as little as $ 869 in a 20-year certificate of deposit, and the Traverse City-based bank will hand over a Weatherby Inc. Mark V Synthetic rifle that lists for $ 779. Deposit more, and you have a choice of six Weatherby shotguns or a limited-edition rifle."

In other words, what you saw Moore do is what any customer could do on an average day, given the funds. Moore claims that his background check was completed in ten minutes, and he walked out of the place five minutes later. Perhaps that IS because he had arranged everything and made sure the movie would run smoothly - but if so, here's the question: YEAH, AND, SO, WHAT? A bank will give you a gun for a CD, and they'll give you the gun right away if they can. That's a fact, and a worrisome one.

The Willie Horton ad. The ad shown for a brief fraction of the movie, Bowling for Columbine, is a reference to smears on Michael Dukakis by Republican strategists in 1988. In Moore's movie, it features a subtitle reading: "Willie Horton Released. Then Kills Again."

Spinsanity say that "Moore has recently acknowledged some of his errors", and has "admitted" that he made a correction to the original subtitle. Moore "admitted" a "typo", noting that of course Willie Horton hadn't killed again, he had only raped someone. So that's okay. He also notes that Lee Atwater apologised on his deathbed for orchestrating the smear campaign against Dukakis. The sort of soft-headed literalism that insists upon Horton being a rapist, not a murderer may be called for, but it doesn't undermine the essence of the point. They also point out that the subtitle was not present in the original campaign ad. The association, however, (between Dukakis' "lax" prison policies and the release of a murderer who then rapes), was in the original campaign ad, but you wouldn't have known it from Moore's film if the subtitle hadn't been added. Does Moore substantially alter the facts, or is he merely employing artistic license? Even admitting the whole force of the critics' point, does it in any way attenuate the actuality of the smear?

Lockheed Martin's sattelites: Lockheed Martin apparently never made "nuclear weapons" when the Columbine Massacre took place. Therefore, Michael Moore must be lying when he suggests that it did to the Lockheed Martin spokesman: "So you don't think our kids say to themselves, well gee, dad goes off to the factory every day and, you know, he built missiles. These were weapons of mass destruction. What's the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?"

Naturally, you will have noticed that nowhere does Michael Moore suggest that the plant made 'nuclear weapons' or even necessarily any kind of weapons at the time of the shooting. He does suggest that such weapons were made at certain times, and the spokesman responds by acknowledging that such weapons were made but by suggesting that these were defensive.

Nevertheless, according to Spinsanity, Moore's new book 'sets the record straight, writing that "Lockheed Martin, the biggest arms maker in the world, built rockets that carried into space the special new satellites that guided the missiles fired into Baghdad" during the recent war in Iraq. (page 74)' Oh, I do beg your pardon, but that does indeed set the record straight. Lockheed Martin did indeed once make missiles. They now make sattelites to guide those missiles. Obviously there's no connection between the two.

Spinsanity complains about the following: "Clark has said that he received phone calls on Sept. 11 and in the weeks after from people at 'think tanks' and from people within the White House telling him to use his position as a pundit for CNN to 'connect' Sept. 11 to Saddam Hussein." (From "Dude, Where's My Country?") Apparently, Wesley Clark has since set the record straight and said it was a think-tank, not the Whitehouse who contacted him on 9/11. Well, that's a reliable statement since noone could think that Clark would be pressured by the Whitehouse and others into changing his story a little. But even if it is true it doesn't change the literal veracity of Michael Moore's statement in the book, something you would expect the dogmatic literalists of Spinsanity to understand.

Spinsanity has more gripes: "There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq's leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports. That's $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator." (page 69) Thus Moore's book. Spinsanity rages that "that "trade" was done under the auspices of the United Nations oil-for-food program, which allowed Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil to purchase humanitarian supplies ... One can only imagine what Moore would have said if the U.S. refused to purchase Iraqi oil and allowed its citizens to starve".

Well, presumably America was doing it for humanitarian reasons. I have no reason to believe that the US acts for any other motive than humanitarian ones, and I certainly don't believe they imposed sanctions which were considered murderous by the DIA before their implementation and which have since proven so, with any harm in mind. Obviously, that 'trade' wasn't really 'trade' because it was allowed under UN "auspicies". Or, perhaps it really IS trade when one country purchases something from another country. What do readers think?

The allegations against Moore proceed from untrue, to vague, to tedious to bizarre. In an Extra the Spinsanity editors detail numerous 'errors' in Moore's book: "Moore offers the suggestion that the Saudi government was behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks ... there this no evidence that the Saudi government or Saudi officials helped plan the September 11 attacks".

Again: "Moore claims that the U.S. "oversaw the assassination of [Congo leader Patrice] Lumumba" in 1961. However, according to a July, 2000 US News & World Report article, Lumumba was actually killed by Belgian operatives (though, as that article makes clear, the CIA apparently did have its own plot to assassinate him)." Anyone who knows about the assassination of Patrice Lumumba and the murky details surrounding it also know that there is ample evidence from numerous investigations of US involvement, and Ludo DeWitte's book on this matter makes this clear. One review of the book summarises thus:

"[T]he government released archive material related to the Kennedy assassination that included an interview with the White House minute-taker under the Eisenhower administration, Robert Johnson.

In a meeting held with security advisers in August 1960, two months after Congo achieved its formal independence from Belgium, Eisenhower ordered the CIA to "eliminate" Lumumba, according to Johnson's account.

There was a stunned silence for about 15 seconds and the meeting continued, Johnson recalled.

The CIA's director, Allen Dulles, referred to the Congolese leader as a "mad dog."

Among the American agents on the ground in the Congo was a young CIA man working under diplomatic cover, Frank Carlucci, who tried to work his way into Lumumba's confidence in the months before the murder. Carlucci went on to become national security advisor and defense secretary in the Reagan administration and is today the chairman of the Carlyle Group, the influential merchant bank that includes George Bush Sr. among its directors.

According to Larry Devlin, then the CIA station chief in Leopoldville (Kinshasa), the agency's chief technical officer arrived in the African nation shortly after the elimination order from Eisenhower. With him he brought a tube of poisoned toothpaste that was to be placed in the Congolese leader's bathroom. The improbable plot was dropped, however, in favor of a more direct method. Lumumba was delivered into the hands of his bitterest political enemy, Moises Tshombe, the secessionist leader of Katanga."

Yet another: "Moore uses fake quotes as chapter headings, implying that Bush (or administration officials) said things they never said. The most problematic is '#3 Whopper with Bacon: 'Iraq has ties to Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda!'' (page 53) He quotes Bush repeatedly stating that 'We know [Saddam] has ties to Al Qaeda' - but provides no source suggesting the administration tied Saddam to Bin Laden personally." So, supposing that Moore was only speaking of Bush and his staff (not the media, the 'experts', the pundits, the neocon intellectuals etc.) what is the material difference if Saddam was falsely said to have ties to Al Qaeda or if he was falsely said to have ties to Al Qaeda and its leader?

The list of bogus charges and surrealisms goes on and on. Sometimes, there are charges which merit further investigation. But the bulk of them are so idiotic, so literal-minded, so surreal that they would barely merit mention if they were not part of a concerted attempt to smear Moore. It would certainly be inappropriate to see Moore as a Chomskyian critic with all the academic rigor that pertains thereto. Moore has research teams ensuring that nothing he writes can land him in court, but that doesn't protect him from errors. The fact that he is a satirist affords him some freedom to exaggerate, smooth over rough edges with some glib humour and simplify rather complex arguments. It entitles him to offer the humorous proposition that Saudi Arabia knocked down the World Trade Centre in a fit of pique, without having the witless drones behind far too many internet sites pointing out the patently fucking obvious. One is only surprised that they didn't mention that Moore had urged Oprah Winfrey to run for President and point out "there is no evidence that Oprah Winfrey has expressed any desire to run for President or that she would represent Moore's twisted views if she did".

There are, of course, perfectly good reasons to criticise Moore. Some have been put off by his claim that Gen Wesley Clarkson is "antiwar" and would therefore make a good Democrat candidate for President. Others don't like him saying that Mumia Abu Jamal "probably killed that guy". These are differences of judgment as much as they are of fact, and those who criticise Moore on these grounds are being a lot more honest about their implicit ideological assumptions than the 'neutral' partisans of Spinsanity and the infantile nutball who runs "Bowling for Truth". There are many on Moore's side who would like him to be more careful, if only to protect himself from the inevitable rightwing attacks. But lenin finds the whole argument tedious. The meticulous and bloody-minded poster-boys for rationality at Spinsanity must, of course, sustain their equidistant poise between Michael Moore and Anne Coulter - which is a way of reinforcing ideological assumptions as much as it is an attempt to hide them behind apparent neutrality. Spinsanity's prose has roughly the dryness, texture and quality of a stale cow-pat, and if Moore had composed a book of outright lies called "The Complete and Utter Truth" I would still rather read that than swallow any more schoolboy 'gotchas' from his opponents.