Hot under the collar

August 3, 2004 · Filed Under Politics 

Well, this is my first blog ever! So, what will I write about?

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this weekend and it has really dominated my thoughts for the last few days. While I don’t agree with many of Bush’s policies and I don’t agree with the way he’s handled the war in Iraq, I didn’t like this film and had to really struggle to not get up and walk out.

Why, you ask? I think Bush has done enough wrong that there is no need to state statistics out of context. As a statistician, this is really one of my biggest pet peeves. Maybe I’m too much of an idealist, but if you’re going to accuse someone of lying and misleading, I think you should not do this yourself.

Moore states in the movie that Saudi Arabia has invested over $1.3 billion in the US and also talks about how leading Republicans have invested in the defense industry and sit on boards of companies. I don’t believe for one second that Saudi Arabia is investing significantly more in the US than the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Israel, Japan, or any number of other countries are investing. I also don’t believe that leading Democrats aren’t investing in the defense industry. I think there has probably been special treatment given by the current administration to the Saudis, but I don’t think it is ANY different than the Clinton, Bush Sr, or Reagan administrations.

I also don’t like cheap attempts to humiliate people. The film begins with slow motion footage of leading Republicans being prepared for interviews (make up application, hair styling, etc). What message is this supposed to send? Are we supposed to actually believe that Democrats don’t wear makeup for TV, but Republican do? A similar montage could just as easily been put together of top Democrats, or anyone on TV for that matter.

I didn’t find any “new” information about Iraq, but maybe this is because I live in Germany and the German media (not to mention most of Europe) is highly critical of the war. Perhaps there are things that are reported here that are not reported by the US media, I can’t comment on that.

It also irritated me that when listing the countries making up the Coalition of the Willing, only very small countries like Morocco and Iceland were listed. One, isn’t this insulting to those countries, like, you don’t mean squat to us, ha ha. Two, while I agree this whole “Coalition of the Willing” is close to laughable, there were pretty big countries in it, like Japan, South Korea, Poland, Spain, Italy, and the UK. They are (or were) not contributing as much to the war as the US, but they were the 6 biggest countries in the coalition when the war began, and they were not mentioned. Maybe it would have been more effective to discuss how almost all of these countries had a majority of the population against their involvement in the war. Wouldn’t this have as much impact without being deceptive?

Moore also spends at least 15 minutes following the mother of a fallen soldier around and then less than 5 minutes on a montage of fallen Iraqis. Of course she [the mother] is in pain and so are all Americans, but this is self-centeredness on a grand scale and it is probably one of the biggest things Europeans criticize Americans for. Living in Europe has really changed the way I view things, and the message it sent me was that American deaths mean more than Iraqi deaths. Yes, there are plenty of insurgents that are fighting, but for every dead US soldier, dozens of COMPLETELY INNOCENT Iraqis have been killed. In addition to the American mother, why not follow an Iraqi mother around? The German and British media have many specials doing just that, documenting surviving family members trying (and failing) to receive compensation from the Coalition, compensation which is “technically” available.

Moore also makes the point that America is being kept in a state of fear by the Bush administration, using terror alerts and news reports on safe rooms as examples. While terror alerts are controlled by the government, suggesting that the government is forcing the preparedness reports on local news about stocking up on water and building safe rooms is ridiculous, I think. The media knows that fear gets ratings. The network news must compete with the cable news channels and the cable channels need 24 hours of programming. I think most of this state of fear is the media and not Bush. The same arguments were made against the media by Moore in Bowling for Columbine, and this was for the most part describing the state of the media during Clinton’s presidency.

Overall, I thought that a film could be made with the same message and just as much impact without including the embarrassing images and using statistics out of context. Bush has really damaged world opinion of the US and burned a lot of bridges in Europe. Maybe this film is only intended for an American audience, but I was embarrassed by it. For foreigners, I think it painted no better picture of Americans than Bush does. After all the media hype, I really expected more from Moore.

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2 Responses to “Hot under the collar”

  1. The Movie Meme | an american expat in deutschland on November 11th, 2007 9:54 pm

    […] a movie? I don’t think so, but I almost walked out of Fahrenheit 9/11. I figured if I wanted to condemn it, I had to watch the whole thing, so I […]

  2. 30 second reviews | an american expat in deutschland on March 14th, 2008 3:02 pm

    […] - It did not piss me off like Fahrenheit 9-11, but I was really frightened about returning to the US after seeing this movie.  Then I remembered […]

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