Neocon Tory MP Michael Gove, recently voted New MP to Watch, is picking a fight with American polemicist and leftie filmmaker Michael Moore. So incensed was Gove by Moore’s anti-Bush movie ‘Fahrenheit 9-11’ he is publishing his own book in the summer titled ‘Centrigrade 7-7’. Get it? I’m told the title was the idea of veteran publishing magnate Lord Weidenfeld, whose eponymous publishing house will be bringing the book out a week before the first anniversary of the 7-7 bombings.This is the last of my stories from today's Independent on Sunday diary column. See below for the rest.
If you ask me Moore is perhaps one of the most vile, self obsessed figures in contemporary American politics, I’d even go as far to say that he was worse than Ann Coulter.
ReplyDeleteMoore’s simply a self publicist with a political agenda which he never allows to be hostage to the “facts”.
In “roger and me” events where placed wildly out of context or simply omitted so as to support Moore’s argument that “GM is bad” and as a result Big business are bad and clearly that mean Republicans (in this case Rondal Reagan) are bad.
“bowling for columbine” seemed an excellent documentary (and indeed shocking) when you first watch it but when you discover the same editing, the massaging of the subject to fit an ideological agenda and the down right lies which typified “roger and me” its simply a rather weakly argued editorial.
Finally Fahrenheit 9/11 went above and beyond the splurge of Moore’s earlier work not only was it crudely edited to suite Moore agenda… in the famous scene where he asks congressmen to sign their children up for the army you never realised that in reality a number of those he confronted did indeed have children fighting in Iraq and had themselves fought in other conflicts… Perhaps most laughable is where in the film Moore (by way of illustrating life in Sadam Hussein’s Iraq) shows a scene of contented Iraqi children playing in a playground.
Moore is entitled to editorialise as much as he likes… but to dress it up as “fact” or “documentary” is simply deceitful and he gets away with it because he plays to the convictions of the huge Liberal lobby in Hollywood.
Anyone who’s working to expose Moore for the egotistical phoney he is should be welcomed… and when its one of our best new parliamentarians its even more heartening.
CentRigrade? I don't get it?! Are you *sure* it's not centigrade?
ReplyDelete"If you ask me Moore is perhaps one of the most vile, self obsessed figures in contemporary American politics,...."
ReplyDeleteGood job nobody did, otherwise I bet you would fill a column full of self opinionated crap.
Interesting that you don’t offer a defence of Moore’s puerile work, simply criticising my post for my own criticism of Moore… if you’re able I would dearly like to hear what you have to say in defence of Moore and more importantly how he is anything other than a egotistical propagandist?
ReplyDeleteThe thing that irritates me about Moore so much is that he isn't an idiot (I'm not totally convinced that Ann Coulter isn't an idiot, for example). Despite this, and despite the fact he would be able to make a coherent argument, he deliberately and cleverly cuts corners to appeal to prejudices and to present incorrect arguments.
ReplyDeleteWhat a silly title. Surely the point of Fahrenheit 9-11 is that it is a pastiche of Fahrenheit 451?
ReplyDeleteMoore is a vile, ugly little man, who typically of vile, ugly little men, seeks to spread his bile. Anonymous is right - his political agenda rarely has anything to do with the facts. He is the archtype American leftie, who is even more poisonous than the British left, except for perhaps, Howard Pinter.
ReplyDelete