Michael Moore's view of women/relationships

[BienvenuJDC]

My comment was just to object that "Moore doesn't misrepresent the issues that he takes on"... He is a propagandizer, plain and simple. His writings and movies are to push an ideology. I'd even agree that those on the opposite end of the spectrum do the same. Just don't insult my intelligence to say that he doesn't "misrepresent".

My comments are not meant to be political, but to critique his media work for his intent. I refrain from spending too much time with commentators and when I do entertain them with my ear, I take what they say with much skepticism.

[MarkBastable]

. I think the dislike we see for Michael Moore materializing here is in large part due to the massive ideological propoganda machine which tries to chew him up at every opportunity.

Nah. I share his political views, more or less, but I dislike him nevertheless - because he's such an unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse. No machine needs to propagandise to make me think that. All that's necessary is to see him interviewed - the unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse.

It's quite difficult, actually, to decide whether his unpleasant self-righteousness is more obnoxious than his smug arsedom, or whether, on the other hand, his arsely smugdom is even less appealing than the self-righteous unpleasantness.

[Darcy88]

Nah. I share his political views, more or less, but I dislike him nevertheless - because he's such an unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse. No machine needs to propagandise to make me think that. All that's necessary is to see him interviewed - the unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse.

It's quite difficult, actually, to decide whether his unpleasant self-righteousness is more obnoxious than his smug arsedom, or whether, on the other hand, his arsely smugdom is even less appealing than the self-righteous unpleasantness.

How indefensible to feel self-righteous when commenting on the depredations of loathsome oligarchs. How dare he. Would all the left-wing activists and figures focus during their sparse air-time on remaining impotently cordial, not on telling the truth with passionate vim.

[Alexander III]

How indefensible to feel self-righteous when commenting on the depredations of loathsome oligarchs. How dare he. Would all the left-wing activists and figures focus during their sparse air-time on remaining impotently cordial, not on telling the truth with passionate vim.

That would be fine, but he is very passionate about not telling the truth which does not suit his agenda, going so far as to obscure it and try to make the opposite seem true.

I dont get how you can admire a man such as that. Manipulations of the masses for ones agenda, is not a very defensible position. Even though I am quite sure his heart is in to it. And he thinks what he is doing is right and just.

[OrphanPip]

My comment was just to object that "Moore doesn't misrepresent the issues that he takes on"... He is a propagandizer, plain and simple. His writings and movies are to push an ideology. I'd even agree that those on the opposite end of the spectrum do the same. Just don't insult my intelligence to say that he doesn't "misrepresent".

My comments are not meant to be political, but to critique his media work for his intent. I refrain from spending too much time with commentators and when I do entertain them with my ear, I take what they say with much skepticism.

Except that I provided the reference to politifact, an independent body that factchecks political claims, and they found most of his statements to be accurate. When he is inaccurate it is usually due to him making unsubstantiated claims that lack conclusive evidence rather than him lying or misrepresenting them.

I'm curious about all these claims that Moore makes stuff up, or lies. Let's have some concrete examples. The OP is clearly misguided, the book is playing off stereotypes to make a joke, it's a rhetorical device, he's not actually saying that men and women are that way. This fact seems so painfully obvious that it hurts me to have to point it out.

As to the Heston thing, let's examine what Moore is actually doing. He's using a famous quote from Heston that is the major slogan of the NRA to introduce Heston. Is that misleading because it didn't happen at the Denver rally that then follows after the introduction? A more rational response to that scene is that Moore is deliberately inverting the slogans of the organization he's criticizing so as to criticize them. The scene is so famous that the fact that it is separated by a clear edit and part of Heston's introduction that only someone being deliberately obtuse would think this was meant to be misleading.

Or in Moore's own response:

"Um, yeah, that's right! I made it up! Heston never went there! He never said those things! Or.... The Truth: Heston took his NRA show to Denver and did and said exactly what we recounted. From the end of my narration setting up Heston's speech in Denver, with my words, "a big pro-gun rally," every word out of Charlton Heston's mouth was uttered right there in Denver, just 10 days after the Columbine tragedy. But don't take my word – read the transcript of his whole speech. Heston devotes the entire speech to challenging the Denver mayor and mocking the mayor's pleas that the NRA "don't come here." Far from deliberately editing the film to make Heston look worse, I chose to leave most of this out and not make Heston look as evil as he actually was. Why are these gun nuts upset that their brave NRA leader's words are in my film? You'd think they would be proud of the things he said. Except, when intercut with the words of a grieving father (whose son died at Columbine and happened to be speaking in a protest that same weekend Heston was at the convention center), suddenly Charlton Heston doesn't look so good does he? Especially to the people of Denver (and, the following year, to the people of Flint) who were still in shock over the tragedies when Heston showed up. As for the clip preceding the Denver speech, when Heston proclaims "from my cold dead hands," this appears as Heston is being introduced in narration. It is Heston's most well-recognized NRA image – hoisting the rifle overhead as he makes his proclamation, as he has done at virtually every political appearance on behalf of the NRA (before and since Columbine). I have merely re-broadcast an image supplied to us by a Denver TV station, an image which the NRA has itself crafted for the media, or, as one article put it, "the mantra of dedicated gun owners" which they "wear on T-shirts, stamp it on the outside of envelopes, e-mail it on the Internet and sometimes shout it over the phone.". Are they now embarrassed by this sick, repulsive image and the words that accompany it? I've also been accused of making up the gun homicide counts in the United States and various countries around the world. That is, like all the rest of this stuff, a bald-face lie. Every statistic in the film is true. They all come directly from the government. Here are the facts, right from the sources: The U.S. figure of 11,127 gun deaths comes from a report from the Center for Disease Control. Japan's gun deaths of 39 was provided by the National Police Agency of Japan; Germany: 381 gun deaths from Bundeskriminalamt (German FBI); Canada: 165 gun deaths from Statistics Canada, the governmental statistics agency; United Kingdom: 68 gun deaths, from the Centre for Crime and Justice studies in Britain; Australia: 65 gun deaths from the Australian Institute of Criminology; France: 255 gun deaths, from the International Journal of Epidemiology."

There are plenty of accusations levelled at Moore around the internet accusing him of deliberately making stuff up, except none of the accusations stick or hold up under closer investigation.

[MarkBastable]

How indefensible to feel self-righteous when commenting on the depredations of loathsome oligarchs. How dare he. Would all the left-wing activists and figures focus during their sparse air-time on remaining impotently cordial, not on telling the truth with passionate vim.

I don't think you should do sarcasm. You're too sincere a person to pull it off.

But even if you consider the self-righteousness justified, how do you feel about the unpleasantness, the smuggery and the arsedom?

[Mutatis-Mutandis]

Nah. I share his political views, more or less, but I dislike him nevertheless - because he's such an unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse. No machine needs to propagandise to make me think that. All that's necessary is to see him interviewed - the unpleasant, self-righteous, smug arse.

It's quite difficult, actually, to decide whether his unpleasant self-righteousness is more obnoxious than his smug arsedom, or whether, on the other hand, his arsely smugdom is even less appealing than the self-righteous unpleasantness.

This is pretty much my mindset, the I may not dislike Moore so vehemently. I agree with almost everything he says, it's the way he says it that is usually off-putting. Hell, even his voice is grating.

I'm curious about all these claims that Moore makes stuff up, or lies. Let's have some concrete examples.

I second this request.

[Mutie]

Another thing. Michael Moore is literally the "lord" of my neighborhood in the UK. In one of his 90s TV Nation episodes he looked up which was the cheapest lordship for sale in England and it was right here. Not just my town but my actual area. The joke was that he was expecting green rolling hills and a manor and its an industrial "factories and crowding" area. He even went to the pub to talk about the area with his new "subjects" (with some genuinely emotional stories of unemployment etc). I only found out a couple of years ago. I dunno if the lordship has expired by now or what.

[YesNo]

Another thing. Michael Moore is literally the "lord" of my neighborhood in the UK. In one of his 90s TV Nation episodes he looked up which was the cheapest lordship for sale in England and it was right here. Not just my town but my actual area. The joke was that he was expecting green rolling hills and a manor and its an industrial "factories and crowding" area. He even went to the pub to talk about the area with his new "subjects" (with some genuinely emotional stories of unemployment etc). I only found out a couple of years ago. I dunno if the lordship has expired by now or what.

How much does a lordship cost? I thought you had to be born into some royal family to get something like that.

Maybe he was planning to write a book about stupid white lords.

[billl]

I think that, once the focus turns to the more annoying aspects of Michael Moore and his movies, etc., it's easy to get carried away and be a little unfair. At least it is for me--I remember once seeing something he did, and sort of habitually scoffing at his relentlessly schlubby everyman appearance and the particular grandstanding ironic gesture or whatever it was that he was doing. But then I stopped and thought it over, and the more I thought about it, the less I was able to find a good reason to be scoffing at it, it was effective and relevant satire--his rather tired presence notwithstanding. Sorry I can't remember what it was (and I don't mean to imply that he's always in the right, this was just one particular case), but that's where my opinion of him eventually settled: I should be careful to not go overboard in my dismissal of him, on account of his style obscuring his substance, or the attention-grabbing aspect of his role as a public rhetorician.

Still, he is quite often way too full of himself. It's like he's taken his stance for the everyman, and then (near paradoxically) let a resulting sense of self-importance work to his great discredit. For me, here's the best, and most succinct example, of what I'm talking about. He takes a perfectly valid standpoint, and pours his energy into presenting a case that deserves to be made (no matter how much one might agree or disagree with it), giving voice to some of those who have suffered--and then markets the thing like this:



Look at the size of that folded burial flag in relation to Moore's head, and how he's cradling it in his hands. Whose idea was that?

[Pierre Menard]

I agree with all OrphanPip has said. I think the dislike we see for Michael Moore materializing here is in large part due to the massive ideological propoganda machine which tries to chew him up at every opportunity.

You aren't seriously doing the 'noble left-wing intellectual beaten down by larger forces' line are you? My god...

Especially considering a number of posters have given well-thought out views on why they dislike him.

[Darcy88]

You aren't seriously doing the 'noble left-wing intellectual beaten down by larger forces' line are you? My god...

Especially considering a number of posters have given well-thought out views on why they dislike him.

Yes, and then OrphanPip proceeded to obliterate any of the seemingly substantive charges laid against the man. None have so far responded.

And yeah, noble left-wing intellectuals often do get beat down by larger forces. What planet are you living on my friend? Look at Chris Hedges. The man won a Pulitzer prize and less than a year later was given an ultimatum by his employer the New York Times to either shut his mouth about the Iraq war or get canned. Look at Dan Rather and I.F Stone.

[JuniperWoolf]

This is pretty much my mindset, the I may not dislike Moore so vehemently. I agree with almost everything he says, it's the way he says it that is usually off-putting. Hell, even his voice is grating.

His voice is the worst, especially when he's trying to sound sympathetic. His political stance means nothing to me, I just don't like him.

And the style of the cartoon from Bowling for Columbine doesn't even look like South Park, apart from being cheap because it was done on low budget. And Moore didn't ask Stone and Parker to make a cartoon for his film, after the fact they felt the cartoon looked too much like South Park, even though nothing about their involvement with the cartoon is mentioned in the film, nor is it in any way implied that they were involved with it. It's a stupid complaint.

He put it directly following an interview with Matt Stone. I thought they did it, a lot of people did. That's what Moore does, he doesn't overtly lie but he does those stupid tricks in the editing process. Also, I think they do look similar and not just in quality, especially the color tones used and the whole giant heads thing:



Check out that lime green and those massive eyes. It resembles South Park more than any other cartoon I can think of off the top of my head, and due to where it's situated in the film it's vague resemblance is enough. He obviously can't say they did it in the credits, but he doesn't have to for a million or so people to make that assumption.

In relation, I don't buy Parker and Stone's "equal opportunity offenders" bull****, it's a disingenuous handwaving effort to avoid criticism.

I don't like republicans or democrats either, they're on opposite sides but they're still both ridiculous. It's not too outlandish a concept to make fun of both. Parker and Stone call themselves "equal oppertunity offenders," but they don't attack at random, the views espoused throughout their various projects are consistant and seem to genuinely represent their beliefs. It's true that they don't openly offer their support very often, but I don't think it's that they're afraid of criticism (given their history), it seems more likely that they just don't want to be anyone's poster boys as that would limit them professionally.

[Darcy88]

I would have put the cartoon at that spot too. The climax of the movie I think was when Moore and the kids injured at Columbine got K-mart to cease its sale of bullets for automatic weapons (I think, am pretty sure but not certain). I'm all for gun rights, but ammunition for automatic weapons is most likely going to be used by either criminals or crazy ****s, and so I applaud Moore for doing what he did. Why Parker and Stone would refuse to lend a hand in the movie I don't know. I doubt composing a one minute cartoon would have taken much effort, and there was a truthful and satirical quality to the cartoon reminiscent of the very best of South Park. Whether the man is smug or self-righteous, his films contain a righteous message, his "cause" is one that is worthy and often ignored, and so I forgive him the self-righteousness and smugness. Or would people prefer there be no left-leaning voice in the American mainstream besides the Msnbc Obama butt-kissers who act like zombiacal members of the democratic party cult.

I think we're used to people we see on television being either beautiful or possessed of noteworthy credentials. We'll listen to someone with a pretty face or nice hair or with a Harvard Phd, but when some fat poorly dressed dude who isn't a professor or scholar comes on lecturing us we do not accept it.

[Mutie]

I really enjoyed that letters from the iraq soldiers book, It was a great chance to hear from them and their experience, really good read. It had a less annoying cover here in the UK with a more neutral photo IIRC.