Proper Propaganda

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is unfair and outrageous. You got a problem with that? By David Edelstein

Needless to say, Fahrenheit 9/11 never waffles. The liberals' The Passion of the Christ, it ascribes only the most venal motives to the other side. There is no sign in the filmmaker of an openness to other interpretations (or world views). This is not quite a documentary which I define, very loosely, as a work in which the director begins by turning on the camera and allowing the reality to speak for itself, aware of its complexities, contradictions, and multitudes. You are with Moore, or you are a war criminal. The film is part prosecutorial brief and part (as A.O. Scott has noted) rabid editorial cartoon: a blend of insight, outrage, and sniggering innuendo, the whole package threaded (and tied in a bow) with cheap shots, some of them voiced by Moore, some created in the editing room by intercutting stilted images from old movies. Moore is largely off-screen (no pun intended), but as narrator he's always there, sneering and tsk-tsking.

I definitely need to see this though I don't need to get anymore irritated than I already am over the fraud being perpetrated by Bushco. Sure, it is going to be a shameless mockery of the shameless administration of George W. Bush. But, this is only one movie. Cable networks like Foxnews do their spit shine and squeegee job on Dubya's behind 24/7. I'd say this is a welcome, relative, 10 minutes of sanity.