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Thursday, June 17th, 2004
Zero Degrees Celsius
SACRAMENTO/SAN DIEGO/SAN FRANCISCO) – Michael Moore’s propaganda flick “Fahrenheit 9/11” is getting a chilly reception from skeptical movie theater operators. A month ago Moore and his partners, Lions Gate Films and IFC Films, had claimed that more than 1,000 movie theaters would be showing his anti-war ‘documentary.’ Soon thereafter they claimed “around” 1,000 theaters would pick up the film. Then that number changed to 700. In the last few days that number had dropped again to “at least 500.” As of today, a review of the film’s website http://www.f911tix.com showed that only 417 theaters would show the film – and most of those are poorly attended “art house” theaters. The organization Move America Forward (website: www.MoveAmericaForward.org) has asked Americans who find the film’s intention of undermining the war on terrorism to be offensive and unpatriotic to contact movie theater operators and register their dissatisfaction with any theaters who push anti-war propaganda as family entertainment. “Michael Moore has made it clear that this film is nothing more than an attempt to undermine support for the war on terrorism, and movie theater operators have made it clear they wish to have no part in Moore’s anti-military propaganda,” said Howard Kaloogian, Chairman of Move America Forward. “This movie is about as popular as ice in Antarctica, and movie theaters are giving Michael Moore’s ‘bash America’ flick a chilly reception” said Kaloogian. Move America Forward has viewed footage of the movie and reviewed transcripts from portions of the films. Several misleading and inaccurate assertions in the film have already been documented. Among them: + Moore asserts that in the days immediately following the September 11th attacks President Bush whisked Osama Bin Laden’s family out of the country. Moore’s contention is that this was done because Bush and Osama Bin Laden enjoyed a secret alliance. This is wholly untrue. In reality Osama Bin Laden’s relatives long ago disavowed Osama Bin Laden, and cut off ties to him because of their profound disgust with his violent acts of terrorism. Also, it was not President Bush, but terrorism czar Richard Clarke (hardly a fan of President Bush) who approved the order to allow the Bin Laden relatives to leave out of fear for their safety from some Americans who would confuse them as being allied with Osama Bin Laden. On May 26, 2004 Clarke told The Hill newspaper, “I take responsibility for it. I don’t think it was a mistake, and I’d do it again.” + Moore tried to paint congressmen who voted for the war as hypocrites because he contended their own family members were not being sent to fight in the war on terrorism. Moore ambushed Congressman Mark Kennedy of Minnesota and asked if Congressman Kennedy would help him recruit more people from families of members of Congress to participate in the war on terror. Congressman Kennedy told Moore that he has two nephews in the military, one who has just been deployed in the Army National Guard and would be headed to Afghanistan in the next month. Moore cut Kennedy’s response from the film and instead packaged the segment to suggest that Kennedy and other Members of Congress were unwilling to have their own family members serve in the war on terrorism. This prompted Congressman Kennedy to tell the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “It’s representative of the fact that Michael Moore doesn’t always give the whole story, and he’s a master of the misleading.”
+ Moore says his film supports the troops but then bragged to the London-based newspaper The Guardian that he had snuck film crews into Iraq to document improper acts committed by soldiers. He then gushed: “Half the movie is about Iraq – we were able to get film crews embedded with American troops without them knowing it was Michael Moore. They are totally f***ed.” Last week Moore told the San Francisco Chronicle that he was proud of the fact that his film showed our troops as “dazed and confused” and paralyzed with a Vietnam-like syndrome.
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