What's your opinion on Michael Moore?

[thecincykiddo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Let's go to "Bowling For Columbine" for an example, and the scene I described earlier, where he goes and tries all the front doors in a Canadian town to see if people leave them unlocked because they feel safer. Obviously, you can't show all the doors you try, that would be boring. But shouldn't you show a representative sample? How is it "compelling" to show only the unlocked doors, when nearly as many were locked? He respresenting this town as something it's not, otherwise known as lying.

[/ QUOTE ]

b/c he knows that his audience isn't so stupid to assume every door in Canada is unlocked. there's no point to show the locked doors, b/c we know they exist and that's just a waste of time. the fact that some of them are unlocked is more than enough to get the point across.

[ QUOTE ]
If Moore's job is to make a compelling film about a non-fiction topic, that's fine. But he's not doing that. He's making a fictional film about a non-fiction topic and pretending it's not fictional. That's not a point of view, that's fraud.

[/ QUOTE ]

um...not really. i wouldn't call his films fiction any more than i'd call Borat a documentary.

fraud's a pretty dangerous word to be throwing around so lightly.

[/ QUOTE ]


So, if I make a documentary about black people, and show them doing nothing but committing crime...thats not misleading?... because by your logic, everyone knows that not all blacks commit crime...right?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's an argument? What's the topic of the film? What is the question you are trying to raise? The discussion you are trying to generate or continue?

Depending upon what subject the filmmaker is exploring, there aren't many rules for "infotainment" or "edutainment" which is, essentially, the arena that Moore's films fall under; nor even, for that matter, for documentaries which take artistic license to give conext that isn't necessarily already "there" in the veritable shots by themselves.

If you're making a film that's meant to raise questions about violence in the black community, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to show images of whites committing crime, now would it?

One thing that most people, spoonfed and apt to believe whatever they are told by "authoritative sources," constantly overlook is that there aren't always two sides to an issue. That's completely misleading and contrary to the whole point of democracy.

Take global warming for instance. Sure, you can be "for" or "against" the existence of global warming as much as you can be for or against doing anything about it, but that doesn't mean that those are actual positions. Global warming either exists or it doesn't and no amount of voting is going to change that.

Likewise, with complicated issues like the kind that Moore tackles, the better approach is to raise awareness of a problem so that people engage with and take part in the discussion. Do research on their own to map out the problem.

How on earth can that be a bad thing?

[odellthurman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The contention that most major news outlets is liberal only makes sense if you're a raving neocon.

I can't imagine there's a self confessed liberal who is going to agree with that notion at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you cant honestly say that most of the major news media is obviously liberally biased, you are very ignorant on the subject or in denial, and do not read enough newspapers, or watch actual network news. There is really no debate on this topic.

[/ QUOTE ]

If the media is so liberal, why is the liberal media such a huge topic of discussion within the media? I can't turn on the radio, read a newspaper, or watch any sort or political discussion-type show for very long without seeing and hearing someone rant against the liberal media. I heard Hannity or O'Reilly talking the other day about Fox News' high ratings compared to other networks and how conservative books' were at the top of all of the bestseller lists.

At what point does the "liberal media" become nothing more than a boogeyman used by conservatives to deflect attention from their own failures? We are just coming out of a period of time where Republicans controlled the Presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court, and the majority of state governments. Surely all of those conservatives can stand up to Michael Moore and the "liberal media", can't they?

[MrMon]

Let's pretend. Say that Pryor and Sirio are over at Pryor's house, playing Xbox, when they decide to eat some cookies. Pryor's mom has just bought a large bag of cookies, so the boys decide to help themselves. Pryor has two cookies, Sirio eats the other 98. They then rerurn to playing Xbox, where Sirio then gets sick from the cookies and barfs all over the floor. Pryor knows he better clean up the mess, so he heads to the garage to look for the mop. Sirio heads to the kitchen to get a glass of water to get rid of the taste.

At just this time, Pryor's mom gets home and sees Sirio in the kitchen, along with the empty cookie bag. "What happened to all the cookies, Sirio?", asks Pryor's mom. "I was just getting a glass of water," replies Sirio. "Who ate all the cookies?", asks Pryor's mom again. "Pryor had some," replies Sirio. Pryor's mom now heads over to the playroom, where she sees the barf all over the floor. "Who was in here, Sirio?" "Pryor was in there playing Xbox," replies Sirio. "And where is Pryor now?" "Getting a mop to clean up the barf."

Just then, Pryor returns with the mop to clean up the mess. "Pryor, what did you do?" "Nothing Mom, I'm just cleaning up the mess." "Sirio said you had some cookies and were in here? Is that true?" "Yes, but I didn't do it, Sirio did." "Sirio, is this true." "Everything I have said so far is true, 100%." "Pryor, clean up this mess, and go to your room. You are grounded from now until you graduate from high school. Your father will beat your ass when he gets home."

So, should Pryor be mad? Everything Sirio said was true. He didn't lie, he just creatively edited the story. Where's the injustice?

[NoahSD]

I hate him because I think he's incredibly stupid but he happens to share my point of view.

I think that people who are stupid enough to think he's making a decent argument are also the kind of people who are stupid enough to think various other arguments for the opposite point of view are decent--i.e., the kind of people who just choose one view on an issue and stick to it no matter how stupid. I think lots of people who are smart enough to actually think about politics and tend to be more conservative than Michael Moore might accidentally assume that all there is to liberal politics is the Michael Moore, uneducated sympathy-style logic--so I think he ends up hurting more than he helps.

Edit: Maybe I'll read this whole thread later, but just read the first reply and feel the need to justify what I wrote a bit since El D's a really smart guy who clearly disagrees with me here.

In Bowling for Columbine, throughout the movie Moore's blaming the gun violence problem on tons of stuff. He blames it on K-mart (or some other similar store.. maybe Walmart or something) for selling bullets, the government for not outlawing guns, the media/hollywood/video game industry for encouraging violence, etc, etc, etc. Obviously none of this is substantiated by facts (I'm not disagreeing with this stuff, just saying that he doesn't make a case for it).

Then, he does perhaps the most retarded thing he could possibly do. He throws this sequence into the film in which he says something like "So why does America have this problem so much worse than other countries?" And then he repeats all of these arguments--"Is it because of the availability of guns?"--and shoots them down one by one--"No, Canada has many more guns and less gun violence". He threw in some statistics to justify these claims, and many of them were really silly like "Canada has way more guns per person but way less shootings per year" (as opposed to the relevant statistic, shootings per person per year).

So, to recap, he blamed gun violence on many different things without justifying his reasoning, he then completely contradicted himself, and tried to justify his reasoning in that but failed miserably.


Also, a good chunk of his movies is composed of scenes of him putting people (like gun company people or senators or security guards in the lobby of some corporate office) in incredibly awkward situations and showing that they get uncomfortable and don't know what to say--which really isn't interesting at all and really isn't far off from calling somebody a stupid doody head.

[Soulman]

[ QUOTE ]
I think that people who are stupid enough to think he's making a decent argument are also the kind of people who are stupid enough to think various other arguments for the opposite point of view are decent--i.e., the kind of people who just choose one view on an issue and stick to it no matter how stupid. I think lots of people who are smart enough to actually think about politics and tend to be more conservative than Michael Moore might accidentally assume that all there is to liberal politics is the Michael Moore, uneducated sympathy-style logic--so I think he ends up hurting more than he helps.

[/ QUOTE ]
This sounds exactly like the stupid people you first describe.

[pryor15]

since when am i 12 years old?

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MrMon]

[ QUOTE ]
since when am i 12 years old?

[img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

Artistic license.

[NoahSD]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think that people who are stupid enough to think he's making a decent argument are also the kind of people who are stupid enough to think various other arguments for the opposite point of view are decent--i.e., the kind of people who just choose one view on an issue and stick to it no matter how stupid. I think lots of people who are smart enough to actually think about politics and tend to be more conservative than Michael Moore might accidentally assume that all there is to liberal politics is the Michael Moore, uneducated sympathy-style logic--so I think he ends up hurting more than he helps.

[/ QUOTE ]
This sounds exactly like the stupid people you first describe.

[/ QUOTE ]

I dunno. I think it's pretty hard for anyone, no matter how smart, to come up with a totally new way of looking at a political issue on their own. And, I think a smart conservative person would be much less likely to take the time to find some better thought out reasoning after being bombarded with Michael Moore and various other idiot liberals like Lou Dobbs.

[NoahSD]

[ QUOTE ]

My big problem with Moore is that he very frequently is correct on some larger point but he gets the details wrong or is very misleading on them. Take Fahrenheit 9/11. One of the early scenes he either says or very strongly implies that a bunch of Saudis including bin Laden family members were allowed to fly out of the country while all flights were grounded. In reality they were apparently able to fly around within the country so that when they once again allowed all flights they could leave right away. Either way, this treatment is directly a problem and symbolically bad in terms of often giving Saudi Arabia such positive treatment when their country is a large part of the problem. So basically in this spot the truth is actually pretty damning. Telling it and not saying or implying that it was just a little bit worse than that is terrible. His arguments would be better served if he got the details correct on these types of things.


[/ QUOTE ]

This is a really great point. I realize that people get the details wrong a ton when they have debates (I'm sure I got a ton wrong in my tirade a few posts up), but when he makes a movie and presumably edits and fact checks and stuff and still manages to get easy crap like that wrong, it really hurts his credibility. More importantly, it hurts the credibility of all liberals by proxy.

[Pudge714]

What news sources outside of Fox to people believe have a conservative bias?
What news sources to people feel are reasonably objective?

I could make a documentary about a school shooting in Canada. Than wander around Canada trying to open doors film all the locked doors, wander around US trying to open doors film all the open doors and conclude and conclude the exact opposite Moore did. It wouldn't be particularly hard either, except for people potentially getting mad because I invaded there privacy/trespasses.