MICHAEL MOORE LIED
 

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Conten...4/127ujhuf.asp

Michael Moore and Me
From the May 31, 2004 issue: An encounter with the Cannes man.
by Fred Barnes
05/31/2004, Volume 009, Issue 36

A FEW YEARS AGO Michael Moore, who's now promoting an anti-President Bush movie entitled Fahrenheit 9/11, announced he'd gotten the goods on me, indeed hung me out to dry on my own words. It was in his first bestselling book, Stupid White Men. Moore wrote he'd once been "forced" to listen to my comments on a TV chat show, The McLaughlin Group. I had whined "on and on about the sorry state of American education," Moore said, and wound up by bellowing: "These kids don't even know what The Iliad and The Odyssey are!"

Moore's interest was piqued, so the next day he said he called me. "Fred," he quoted himself as saying, "tell me what The Iliad and The Odyssey are." I started "hemming and hawing," Moore wrote. And then I said, according to Moore: "Well, they're . . . uh . . . you know . . . uh . . . okay, fine, you got me--I don't know what they're about. Happy now?" He'd smoked me out as a fraud, or maybe worse.

The only problem is none of this is true. It never happened. Moore is a liar. He made it up. It's a fabrication on two levels. One, I've never met Moore or even talked to him on the phone. And, two, I read both The Iliad and The Odyssey in my first year at the University of Virginia. Just for the record, I'd learned what they were about even before college. Like everyone else my age, I
got my classical education from the big screen. I saw the Iliad movie called Helen of Troy and while I forget the name of the Odyssey film, I think it starred Kirk Douglas as Odysseus.

So why didn't I scream bloody murder when the book came out in 2001? I didn't learn about the phony anecdote until it was brought to my attention by Alan Wolfe, who was reviewing Moore's book for the New Republic. He asked, by email, if the story were true. I said no, not a word of it, and Wolfe quoted me as saying that. That was enough, I thought. After all, who would take a shrill, lying lefty like Moore seriously?

More people than I thought. Moore's new movie attacking Bush was given a 20-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival. Moore has described the movie as breaking new ground and revealing new facts, but the accounts by reviewers suggest it merely provides the standard left-wing, conspiratorial critique of the president. Reviewer Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, who gave Moore's previous movie Bowling for Columbine four stars, said the anti-Bush film would be news only "if you spent the last three years hiding in a cave in Afghanistan." Still, I suppose it's not surprising they loved it in France.

In publicizing the movie, Moore has been up to his old dishonest tricks. Just before the screening at Cannes, he charged that Disney had told him "officially" the day before that it would not distribute Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore said this was an attempt to kill the film. He indicated a newspaper article had the correct explanation of Disney's decision: "According to today's New York Times, it might 'endanger' millions of dollars of tax breaks Disney receives from the state of Florida because the film will 'anger' the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush."

Well I, for one, will be boycotting his movie, if it ever gets released. :posh

jus for my curiosity, is there anyone on this board who doesn't already think moore is a giant goon? in general i mean.

I really don't know who I hate more Ultra liberals or ultra conservatives. >:

I hate ultra conservatives more, because they will stomp all over you instead of just taking your wallet.

Oh no, ultra-liberals will go PC-Nazi all over your ass if you disagree with them.

Anyone who bases their life on an -ism is the type of person I try to steer clear of.

jesus was an ultra-liberal

I prefer ultra-conservatives.

Just not the hardcore Christian kind.

Moore is just Rush Limbaugh's liberal counterpart. I don't like demogaugery of any kind, period.

Ignorant statements like that show why you should be cooking a steak dinner instead of talking politics with the adults.

ignorant statements like that show why you should be mopping floors and cleaning toilets instead of talking politics with the adults.

Cosmo, you SO beat me to it.

I don't think Moore is bozo at all, I rather like him. I think he's funny, and I think he's one of a teeny tiny fraction of people out there who will take on the issues he does in a format that is entertaining enough to make or bestselling books, profitable movies and standing ovations at film festivals. Is he strident? Sure. Does he exagerate? I guess. I've never looked to him to dispense Gospel truth. I think his behavior is nowhere near as on the fringe as Limbaugh, Savage, or Coulter who doesn't even have the decency to admit she's entertainment and does pass herself off as dispensing truths. Then there's Hannity whos so commited to the idea he's the real deal he tried to sue Al Franken.

I haven't seen "Bowling", but I thought both "Roger and me" "Pets or Meat" and his short lived television show were excellent. I think it's a ferocious double standard to hate this guy. Folks who don't like his movies shouldn't see them. I occasionally find fault with some of the ultra right blowhards I've mentioned and then feel constrained to actually go and read some of their bile and I encourage anyone to do the same with whatever irritates them, but no one requires me to do it.

Canadian Connections
 

:) - Michael Moore can sing the entire Canadian national anthem.

:lol - Pres. Moron, then as presidential candidate was once led to believe that Canadian PM Jean Poutine supported him.

yes. moore is a big goon for putting a camera on people and let them discredit themselves with their own words.


you guys should really watch his movies and read his books before pretending to have anything intelligent to say about the matter.

:meat Enjoy your dinner dear...the bitter almond taste? Oh don't worry about that, it's my new recipe.

I think it more on the level of "talking" about mainstream politics in an internet forum with a bunch of forum junkies (or vets).

:lol you'll have to come right out and tell the idiot that you poisoned the steak, he won't get it otherwise...:lol

See, Vinth, bitter almond is the characteristic taste of Arsenic, which is poisonous. That means it's something that if you ate you'd die from it.
So Jeanette i cooking a steak for you with poison in it so that when you eat it you'll die, which I think we can all agree is a funny thought. Because you're such a horrible person.


Those whacky Japanese.

You mean Arsenic has a bitter taste and is poison? Oh man, I would have never known that! Besides, thanks to George Bush rolling back the water treatment standards Clinton signed into law a week before he left office, I have a tolerance for it.

I'm suprised that you havent sat down at the dinner table, admitted to your family that you are a utter failure, and blown your brains out of the back of your head. I figured it would be any day now....

P.S. Cosmo, try having value to this board before you insult me. Quit hanging off the dingleberries of people better than you.

Say, Vince, I'm going to be in St. Louis this weekend. I was wondering if maybe you could re-enact that scene where you defended your family with a weapon? I mean, since you can't bring yourself to talk about it, I thought maybe a re-enactment might be therapeutic for you and informative for me. Then when I got back here, I could let everyone know you're the real deal, and not a pathologically lying chickenshit pussy coward.

Of course, if you're busy, I understand. I'm sure you're probably tied up with updating your website.

Those whacky Japanese

he probably just beat a stray dog with a rubber dildo for shitting on his lawn.

St. Louis Mills. Sunday. 3 pm. In front of the movie theater. Tall white guy wearing a Warren Moon Vikings throwback jersey. Wear lip gloss because I don't want your lips chaffing my dick after you get done sucking it.

Are you going to have a cast assembled for the re-enactment?

Say, if your that eager for guys to blow you, why don't you ask those whacky Japanese! They'll probably give you some souvenier photos for your massive gay scrapbook.