Michael Moore's film Farenheit 9/11 was the first documentary ever to top the box office. This is amazing because it played on less than 900 screens, which is half the number of screen for many of the movies it competed against this weekend. Also, it broke the record for the highest grossing documentary of all time. The old record belonged to Moore's Bowling for Columbine. Columbine made 21.6 million during its entire theatrical run. Farenheit 9/11 made 21.8 on the opening weekend. That is astonishing to say the least.
This movie is obviously going to reach a larger audience than expected, and will reach many undecided voters, and probably many moderate conservatives. So, for those that felt that this movie would change no minds, think again, and, well, eat it.
The movie is going to be on double the screens by next week. This movie will probably make 50 million. And maybe with enough word-of-mouth advertising it could break 100 million dollars. Moore had this to say:
"These are mind-blowing numbers. All the predictions were that the movie would only speak to the choir, that it would only be for those who don't like Bush. I don't think that turned out to be true."
I have thought all day about what I wanted to say about this movie. I was left with such a powerful feeling of shame and disgust towards our government and our citizens about the Iraq war that I wanted to let some of my passion recede before I posted this message.
All and all the film was extremely powerful. Love Moore, or hate him, but you can not deny the power of the message. You can disagree with the message, even contest its reliability, but there is no question that it held power.
I think most of the arguments against the film have been rather baseless. Many people have been calling it dishonest without pointing to a single example. However, two examples that I heard cited were that Moore lied about the Saudis being questioned by the FBI when they and the Bin Ladens were flown out og the country on September 13th, and the other is that he lied about how many congressmen had children in the service. My response to the Saudi charter flight issue is that I don't remember him ever saying directly that they were not interviewed, though I do remember an FBI agent that Moore interviewed inferring that not all members were interviewed, which, by the way, happens to be a fact. And about the whole congressmen's children charge, well, he never said how many congressmen had children in the service, he said how many people had children serving in Iraq. So, I think both of those complaints are really very weak complaints.
Frankly, I would say that I did not find the first 2/3 of the picture to be as powerful as the Iraq portion. Mostly because I already knew all the Saudi-Bush stuff. However, I did think it started to play like an X-Files episode with the conspiracy music and Moore's gotcha narration.
The real important stuff in this movie was Iraq. There are certain images that are burnt into our minds regarding war. A girl running naked in the street, screaming because she has been burned by napalm. A buddhist monk setting himself ablaze on the streets of Vietnam. Well, I saw a picture in this film that has seered an impression on my mind that I will never forget. A very young Iraqi boy, maybe 3, screaming in absolute agony, having his head sewn back together like an infant Frankenstein. This is what we did, and not just to him, but to 17,000 Iraqis. Think about all the families, all the collective lives that we runied. 17,000 human beings, and for what? 17,000....... If you left this movie and you saw the American flag anywhere in sight, and your first inclination wasn't to turn from it in disgust, then you have no soul.
Today, I am ashamed to be an American. I am ashamed of our government. I am ashamed of our military. I am ashamed of our troops(that's right, I said it.). I am ashamed of my countrymen. But most of all I am ashamed that I did not do enough. I did not yell loud enough. None of us did.
Thanks to Michael Moore, and a lot of other liberals who are trying to force the American people to look closely into our collective heart of darkness, then maybe, just maybe, Bush will be thrown out of office. God help us if we don't.
I bought my ticket for the opening night of Farenheit 9/11 on Thursday. When I went back on Friday, two hours before the 9:00 showing, to buy a ticket for a friend, it was sold out. I got to the theater about half an hour before the show thinking that I could get a good seat. Instead I found myself waiting outside with about one hundred other filmgoers waiting to get a good seat, all of us with tickets already in our hands. The group that had just seen the movie began filing out and there was a somber buzz in the air. I heard one guy say, "It was smokescreen after smokescreen. Why didn't we hear about these connections before?" I heard a lot of other mutterings in the crowd, and it was interesting to see all the groups of people that had just seen the movie hanging out after the movie to discuss what they had seen. The looks on people's faces ranged from shock to anger to a look a look of new purpose.
There are those that say only liberals, or Moore fans, will see this movie. Well, perhaps that is true but I'll bet there is a hign percentage of Moore fans that will see this movie who had previously planned to vote for Nader, like Moore did in 2000. Also, a lot of Moore fans, which means a lot of young people, probably didn't really plan to vote at all because Kerry hasn't really inspired the youth vote. I'll bet that most of those potential Nader, and non-voters will walk out of this movie eager to vote Bush out of office.
Remember, there are many Moore fans out there. So, for those that argue that say only like-minded people come to this movie, and it won't change minds. Well, think again. From the look on the faces of the people that just watched the movie, minds are changed.
And I haven't even made it into the theater, yet. It has been a long time since I have seen a movie feeling this level of excitement.
Stay tuned for my 'After the Movie' reaction.
Cheney went on the offensive yesterday(but then again when is he not on the offensive). He was on almost every news network trying to put the smack down on the New York Times for what he was calling irresponsible and lazy reporting for their editorial on the missing link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. In case you missed the NYT editorial it basically said that the administration should apologize for misleading the public into believing that there was a link. Well, Cheney still believes there was a link, but the NYT is not buying what he is selling, and it sounds to me like they might be pretty upset with the fact that he was going around calling them names in any and every microphone he could wrap his twisted mouth around. This is the NYT response from an editorial in tomorrow's edition:
"When it comes to 9/11, someone in the Bush administration has indeed drawn the connection to Iraq: the vice president. Mr. Cheney has repeatedly referred to reports that Mohamed Atta met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent. He told Tim Russert of NBC on Dec. 9, 2001, that this report has "been pretty well confirmed." If so, no one seems to have informed the C.I.A., the Czech government or the 9/11 commission, which said it did not appear to be true. Yet Mr. Cheney cited it, again, on Thursday night on CNBC."Mr. Cheney said he had lots of documents to prove his claims. We have heard that before, but Mr. Cheney always seems too pressed for time or too concerned about secrets to share them. Last September, Mr. Cheney's adviser, Mary Matalin, explained to The Washington Post that Mr. Cheney had access to lots of secret stuff. She said he had to 'tiptoe through the land mines of what's sayable and not sayable" to the public, but that "his job is to connect the dots.'
"The message, if we hear it properly, is that when it comes to this critical issue, the vice president is not prepared to offer any evidence beyond the flimsy-to-nonexistent arguments he has used in the past, but he wants us to trust him when he says there's more behind the screen. So far, when it comes to Iraq, blind faith in this administration has been a losing strategy."
Also, it looks like the NYT is not the only entity that is asking for evidence from the administration about this so called Iraq-Al Qaeda link. The 9/11 commission wants some answers as well.
"The commission's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, and its vice chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, said they wanted to see any additional information in the administration's possession after Mr. Cheney, in a television interview on Thursday, was asked whether he knew things about Iraq's links to terrorists that the commission did not know.""'Probably,' Mr. Cheney replied.
"Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton said that, in particular, they wanted any information available to back Mr. Cheney's suggestion that one of the hijackers might have met in Prague in April 2001 with an Iraqi intelligence agent, a meeting that the panel's staff believes did not take place. Mr. Cheney said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday that the administration had never been able to prove the meeting took place but was not able to disprove it either."
Well, somebody better start talking because I just took a web poll on an MSNBC website that shows that nearly 40% still believe that there is a link. No wonder the Republcans are still shoving these lies down are throats. It turns out most of the moron fringe in this country is still ready to eat it up.
Today is the official celebration of the fictional character Leopold Bloom's long day of Dublin exploration in James Joyce's quintessential magnum opus Ulysses. Ulysses happens to be one of those books that become a journey rather than a story, meaning that it is very difficult for people to make it to the end, myself included. I told myself recently that I was going to pick it up and try to knock out a few pages here and there and before I knew it I would have one of the great experimental visions under my belt. Well, I did that for about two weeks, and now it is sitting back at its dusty place on my bookshelf. Perhaps, Bloomsday will inspire me to pick it up once more. Perhaps not.
It is one of those books that writers talk about with such high regard, and as a book that forever changes their view of writing. My friend, Scott Rinehart has said as much himself about the novel. He is one of only two people I know who has tackled Joyce's epic. In a piece from Slate today, Jeffrey Euginides says this:
"One hundred years after Bloomsday, I can say without a doubt that Ulysses was the book, more than any other, that made me want to be a writer. It changed my life and removed the other possible lives I might have had."
"When I was younger, I always thought that Joyce would be the most influential writer of the 20th century. Now it seems to me that Proust is. More books bear his mark than Joyce's. Maybe the question for writers right now is whether to follow the Proust-Romantic route or depart from it."
Vs. 
As you can see I have posted a link to buy my novel, In the Satchel, On the Train, Selling Dreams to Nancy. The book is available now for pre-order. It won't officially be available until August 3. However, if you order a copy now there is a substantial discount in price($10-even), not to mention free shipping. Also, if I get word on the copies being ready before August 3, then I will make sure that they are sent early to all who pre-ordered a copy.
O.K, enough of the salesman shtick for today. I just thought I would explain the new links in my sidebar.
Visit the Corba Press site. There should be further information about the book posted in the days and weeks ahead, both on the Corba site and this site. So, be prepared for many more shameless plugs.
I decided to start this blog in October 2003 in response to a conversation I had with my wife about Fox News(or as I have grown accustomed to calling it Faux News). I was ranting about how ridiculously conservative they are, and how you would have to be a drooling moron to think otherwise. I remember saying to my wife, "Why doesn't somebody do something about it?" Well, my little response to that was this blog. It is the best that I can do. I write this blog, I sign petitions, I write letters to my Congressmen and Senators, and I will vote for John Kerry in the Fall. So, i am somebody who is doing something about it.
However, I have also learned that this blog has helped turn me into a political junkie, which has not been good for me personally.
So, now here is my dilemma. I do not want to stop writing in this blog but.....I have to start to change the subject a bit. So, after this entry I am changing the platform of this weblog. Now, does that mean that I will be abandoning politics or political commentary? No. It just means that I am going to make a serious attempt to back up away from the filter of politics and write my blog from there.
This means that I will write about a range of different subjects that are important to me.
But before I make the final shift from the world of politics to the world of the ecclectic I felt I should really hand it to Faux News once more, to come full circle, if you will.
So, here is an interesting piece from a Pew Research Center survey that was performed on journalists across the country:
"Most national and local journalists do not believe any national news organization is 'especially liberal' in its news coverage…By contrast, solid majorities of both national and local journalists say there is an organization that they think is especially conservative—and for most the organization that comes to mind is Fox News Channel."
Faux News, Indeed.
Ken Auletta, a media critic, has a piece in this week's New Yorker entitled, 'Big Bird Flies Right.' It seems that the Bushies may be using their power over government funding to push PBS and NPR to the right. In today's Daily Progress Report from The Center for American Progress, they use the upcoming programs hosted by Tucker Carlson(a conservative formerly of CNN's Crossfire) and Paul Gigot(the conservative editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page) as evidence for this supposed right- leaning shift. Neither of these shows are on the air yet, so I am reticent to judge the content of their programs.
However, as an avid viewer/listener and supporter of my local PBS and NPR stations, I have been happy with the current programming. As far as I'm concerned, you can't get better news than The Newshour with Jim Lehrer. And don't even get me started on NPR's prgramming. I am sure I would listen all day if I didn't have other things to do.
I have to say, having watched and listened to our government supported(and largely viewer supported) stations as often as I have this past year, this whole accusation is as much a product of paranoia as the supposed 'liberal media bias.'
This from today's Progress Report:
"A report by Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) shows among partisan sources interviewed on or reporting for NPR, 'Republicans outnumbered Democrats by more than 3 to 2 (61 percent to 38 percent).' In addition, during the month surveyed, "individual Republicans were NPR's most popular sources overall, taking the top seven spots in frequency of appearance."
So what if the Republicans got more air time on NPR? Maybe it is because they had a lot of explaning to do during FAIR's month long review period. Maybe, those numbers from the study wouldn't seem so damning if they were put in context.
As for the New Yorker piece and the future of PBS/NPR, well, I guess we'll have to wait and see. It certainly is believable that thet Bushies would manipulate public funds to push a radically right leaning agenda. Still, I am not convinced that they will be in office long enough to have a serious impact. So, let's just say I am not ready to panic just because PBS hired a couple of conservatives to host their own shows. I think that is a getting a little too twitchy with your panic button.
Is it just me or does UN Special Envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, look curiously similar to Dr. Strangelove?
I don't know. Maybe, it's just me.