Does Michael Moore have feet of clay?
p2pnet news | movies:- Michael Moore is that ordinary guy from Michigan who set the Bush administration and the US pharmaceutical industry back on its heels. 
But what if …
… he has feet of clay? What if he has not just one, but a whole crowd of skeletons in his closet?
That’s what “two affable Canadian doc makers, self-professed lefties both,” ask.
What if Moore is a, “defensive man who manipulates evidence to suit his purposes, who can dish it out but can’t take it?” – as Deidre Swain puts it in Toronto’s Now magazine in a review of Manufacturing Dissent, a documentary of a documentary slated to open today.
Melnyk and Caine, “follow Moore for months during the 2004 presidential election, trying to interview him,” says the story. “Although he’s friendly to their faces, his handlers repeatedly forbid them to film him and even kick them out of one of the rallies he’s leading.”
The picture which comes through is that of a, “defensive man who manipulates evidence to suit his purposes, who can dish it out but can’t take it. During his (admittedly justified) live rant on CNN last week after the news net aired a story questioning Sicko’s accuracy, Moore said he rarely goes on taped shows for fear his responses will be edited (although he seems to have no problem omitting information from his films that doesn’t conform to his point of view.)”
People, “tell us we shouldn’t criticize Moore because, even if he gets things wrong, he’s getting the bigger issues right,” says Caine in an interview with Hour, going on:
And we agree he is. But when he gets things wrong or purposefully misleads people, to me that [can lead] to unravelling the entire larger message. [It] gives ammunition to the right to be able to say, “He got this, this and this wrong, so how can you believe the bigger message?” And I think in the end that hurts the left. It’s also sloppy.
Says Melnyk in the same interview:
Moore has said, “You can do anything you want in a doc, just tell the truth.” I believe that. And I thought he believed that. But when you make up entire scenes and say they happened when they haven’t, to me it’s crossing a line. So is taking people out of context. I think there is a covenant between the audience and the filmmaker and there’s a trust there that shouldn’t be broken. People come to see your documentary and they think you are telling the truth.
Adds Caine, “I understand speaking truth to power, but we were always asking with this film, ‘What if you aren’t speaking full truth to power? Only half-truths? Is it only half-effective? Or not at all, because it [tells] your opposition you aren’t engaging in valid arguments?’
“We have to argue around facts and truths today. We as news consumers are sick of being lied to – and I’m not pointing to Michael here. We are so routinely lied to and spun, and the truth is distorted and the media plays a crucial role in how our society will move forward.”
But “Caine and Melnyk show footage of Moore winning an Oscar for Bowling For Columbine, they travel to his hometown in Michigan, they show him inspiring young people to vote,” says Sun Media’s Liz Braun, going on:
The positive slips away quickly, however, and it isn’t long before people are telling the camera just why they don’t like him.
He didn’t pay his bills. He makes stuff up. He fails to give other people credit for their work. He’s just not a good guy. He may have inadvertently helped the Republican party. He actually had an interview with General Motors honcho Roger Smith for Roger & Me and left it out of the movie. He got rich. He got famous. He didn’t make his bed this morning.
And so on.
What we liked best about Manufacturing Dissent was how the documentary accuses Moore of some of the same manipulations it then employs — particularly some high dudgeon malarkey about getting turfed out of a Michael Moore event for bringing in a camera. Oh, never mind.
Manufacturing Dissent seems disingenuous at times and just plain stupid at others. It’s either an amateurish mess or else it’s a comedy, and the dissent in question is that being manufactured by Caine and Melnyk for Michael Moore’s amusement.
Either way, blech.
One thing is guaranteed, however: Manufacturing Dissent will be compulsory viewing by you know who at you know where.
Also See:
Now – Moore, please, July 19, 2007
Hour – Moore or less , June 21, 2007
Sun Media – Michael Moore ‘expose’ stupid, July 20, 2007
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July 20th, 2007 at 7:57 am
Lots of what-if’s. But, if you read this article, they don’t actually nail Moore for misrepresenting anything specific. The article just asks questions of ‘what if Moore was misleading people’, and never actually brings up anything specific. This is qualified as news? Garbage.
July 20th, 2007 at 9:55 am
thats what the 2nd story says. “Either way, blech.”
July 21st, 2007 at 5:46 am
a civilization of clay & iron
July 21st, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Yes, let’s critisize Michael instead of the institutions that deserve it (the government or the health care system). Way to get it wrong while still doing no investigative journalism of your own. Where’s the proof.
July 23rd, 2007 at 8:03 pm
I saw the movie last week.
The part which convinced me that Michael was telling the truth was the trip Michael and several victims of 9/11 in Ground Zero took to Cuba. The victims we treated with compassion and that “squared” with the treatment my mother and father received when they visited Cuba a couple of decades earlier.
In the early 1990’s I returned to Jackson, Michigan for a visit. When I arrived I had a cough and went to the hospital for medical treatment.
Here in Canada we have a National Health plan…. To add insult to injury I had to pay for a Wasserman test, and I had to wait quite a while for treatment.
Although I have both Canadian and American citizenships and my wife and son still live in Jackson, I doubt that I will return to the USA….