Laugh at Liberals Archive for July, 2004
ANTICIPATION
BY BUCK EVINGER
I have to say that I was rather impressed with Teresa Heinz Kerry’s speech at the Democratic Party convention. I like her. She says what she thinks and screw you if you don’t like it. Of course, when you are a multi-millionaire you can do that. I like the fact that she told a reporter to shove it, as much as I like the fact that Dick Cheney told Sen. Patrick Leheay to go f**k himself.
With that being said, what I found most interesting about her speech was when she informed the party faithful and the other 3 people watching that if her husband was elected, global warming would be reversed. Cool. That makes me rest a little easier. (FYI. This past weekend the temperature at my house was a balmy 56 degrees at 8:00pm. That’s a record low for July. I guess the word is out.)
Apparently John Kerry is omnipotent and possesses god-like powers. Who knew? I’m hopeful that Kerry can put a few other things on his to do list. Here’s a start.
IF ELECTED JOHN KERRY WILL….
1. Reverse global warming.
2. Make dogs and cats like each other.
3. Reduce carbohydrates by 50%…in everything.
4. Make Viagra available in vending machines.
5. Lower gas prices.
6. Make rich people pay for what they’ve done to us…including his wife.
7. Stop grass from growing.(at least in my backyard…it’s tough to mow.)
8. Put a chicken in every pot, or for vegetarians, textured vegatable protein.
9. Fix potholes.
10. Make the sun set in the east. (This may adversely affect the tourism business in Key West but consider this….Sunset on the Jersey shore.)
Mrs. Heinz-Kerry also said her husband would finally banish the oppression of women and usher in the day “when women who have earned the right to be opinonated will be called smart and informed, just as men are.” Did I miss something? Are things that bad for women in America? Seeing as how the next Democratic contender for the presidency may very well be a woman, it looks like the cause of equal rights for women is doing just fine. And what’s that about opinionated women? Everybody has the right to be opinionated, but if your opinions are stupid and you deliver them in a ham-handed way, you also have the right to be ridiculed and called a moron. I guess what she was saying was, if I want to put on my bitch hat, you better say it looks nice.
Like I said before, I like this broad. She’s got moxy! She also has a chronic case of foot-in-mouth disease. Mark my words. It won’t belong before the smart, informed and opinionated Teresa Heinz-Kerry is sent to a place where no reporter and no microphone can reach her. To bad. I think she makes this race more interesting.
Isn’t Kerry a Senator?
Ok, I choked through parts of Jim, I mean John Kerry’s speech last night at the convention. When I was not staring at his remarkably rosy cheeks I was listening for him to say something about his many years in the U.S. Senate. I kept saying “Let me hear what you did in the Senate, the Senate John, the Senate!” And then it dawned on me….HE DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THE SENATE! He didn’t purpose one piece of legislation in the years he was there! Yet, we are to believe that he has all of the answers to all of the problems in America, I mean both Americas. By the way, I believe in a UNITED AMERICA Johnny! And you call President Bush a divider?! Anyway, where was I….oh yeah! What he did do in the Senate was to vote AGAINST every military spending bill, every new weapons system, every Intel spending bill and for every bill to cut the military and intelligence that was purposed by anyone! NOW he tells us that if elected he will add 40,000 more troops, spend money on the newest weapons systems and won’t hesitate to use our military!!! The saddest part id that there are 10’s of people who actually believe him! Yes, I know, there are millions of people who support him, but VERY few who actually believe that crap. They are so ashamed of being liberals, and are so aware that the majority of Americans are not, that they scoured the speeches to remove any mention of abortion, gun control, and the redistribution of wealth. Then they invited patrol boat crews and they’re skippers on stage because he couldn’t scrape together enough of his own crew that wanted to be seen with him. All this to try to convince the most gullible in this country that this Viet Nam war protester is a strong military man! Ok, I’m through. My wife doesn’t know I watched any of Kerry’s speech last night, so don’t tell her. She thinks I was outside watching a baseball game.
Yes John, Keep jobs for Americans!
Here are examples of John Kerry’s idea of reversing President Bush’s “outsourcing” jobs that Americans need…..
HEINZ WATTIE’S AUSTRALASIA - Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
HEINZ SINGAPORE PTE. LTD. - Republic of Singapore
HEINZ WATTIE’S LIMITED - Auckland, New Zealand
HEINZ JAPAN LTD - Tokyo, Japan
HEINZ-UFE LTD. - Guangzhou, People’s Republic of China
HEINZ COSCO - Qingdao, People’s Republic of China
HEINZ KOREA LTD. - Inchon, South Korea
HEINZ WIN CHANCE LTD. - Bangkok, Thailand
HEINZ INDIA PRIVATE LIMITED - Mumbai, India
PT HEINZ ABC INDONESIA - Jakarta, Indonesia
PT HEINZ SUPRAMA - Surabaya, Indonesia
HEINZ UFC PHILIPPINES - Manila, the Philippines
HEINZ HONG KONG LIMITED - Wanchai, Hong Kong
H. J. HEINZ (Botswana) (Proprietary) LTD. - Gaborone, Botswana
KGALAGADI SOAP INDUSTRIES (Pty) LTD. - Gaborone, Botswana
REFINED OIL PRODUCTS (Pty) LTD. - Gaborone, Botswana
OLIVINE INDUSTRIES (Private) LIMITED - Harare, Zimbabwe
CHEGUTU CANNERS (Pvt) LTD. - Chegutu, Zimbabwe
HEINZ SOUTH AFRICA (PTY) LTD. - Johannesburg, South Africa
HEINZ WELLINGTON’S (PTY) LTD. - Wellington, South Africa
HEINZ EUROPE - Hayes, Middlesex, England
H. J. HEINZ COMPANY LIMITED - Hayes Park, Hayes, Middlesex, England
H. J. HEINZ COMPANY LIMITED - Rovereto, Italy
H. J. HEINZ COMPANY LIMITED - Telford, England
JOHN WEST FOODS LIMITED - Liverpool, England
H. J. HEINZ FROZEN & CHILLED FOODS LIMITED - Hayes, Middlesex, England
H. J. HEINZ COMPANY (IRELAND) LIMITED - Dublin, Ireland
H.J. HEINZ COMPANY OF CANADA LTD - North York, Ontario, Canada
OMSTEAD FOODS LIMITED - Wheatley, Ontario, Canada
ALIMENTOS HEINZ C.A. - Caracas, Venezuela
DISTRIBUIDORA BANQUETE, S.A. - San Josi, Costa Rica
HEINZ ITALIA S.r.l. - Milan, Italy
FATTORIA SCALDASOLE, S.p.a. - Monguzzo, Italy
COPAIS FOOD AND BEVERAGE COMPANY, S.A. - Athens, Greece
HEINZ POLSKA Sp. Z.O.O. - Warsaw, Poland
PUDLISZKI S.A. - Pudliszki, Poland
WODZISLAW, S.A. - Wodzislaw, Poland
ETS. PAULET S.A. - Douarnenez, France
H. J. HEINZ FROZEN S.A.R.L. - Paris, France
HEINZ IBERICA S.A. - Madrid, Spain
IDAL (Industrias de Alimentacc, Lda.) - Lisbon, Portugal
MIEDZYCHOD S.A. - Miedzychod, Poland
HEINZ C.I.S. - Moscow, Russia
HEINZ GEORGIEVSK - Georgievsk, Russia
CAIRO FOOD INDUSTRIES SAE - Cairo, Egypt
HEINZ REMEDIA LIMITED - Tel Aviv, Israel
STAR-KIST FOOD DB’OR LIMITED - Haifa, Israel
H. J. HEINZ GMBH - Dm2 m3%ldorf, Germany
SONNEN BASSERMANN - Seesen, Germany
KONINKLIJKE DE RUIJTER BV - The Netherlands
HAK BV - The Netherlands
FOODMARK - The Netherlands
HONIG MERKARTIKELEN BV - The Netherlands
DRUKKERIJ DE GROENBOER - The Netherlands
H. J. HEINZ B.V - Elst, The Netherlands
H. J. HEINZ BELGIUM S.A. - Brussels, Belgium
SERV-A-PORTION - Turnhout, Belgium
Arimpex Industrie Alimentari S.R.L. - Rovereto, Italy
Comexo S.A. - Chateaurenard, France
HEINZ EUROPE - UK and IRELAND - Factories: Chorley, Fakenham, Grimsby,
Kendal, Kitt Green, Leaminton, Luton, Okehampton, Telford, Westwick
Maybe this is where he plans to find the millions of jobs in his first year!
ANOTHER LYING LIAR AND THE LYING LIARS WHO HELP THEM LIE
Do you remember Joe Wilson? He was the guy who said that George Bush lied about Iraq trying to get radioactive material from Niger. He also said that someone in the Bush Whitehouse retaliated by revealing his wife’s name to journalist Robert Novak. That was a problem because his wife, Valarie Plame, was supposedly a top secret spy.
Well….The Senate Intelligence Committee report on intelligence failures associated with 9/11 has revealed that Joe Wilson is a liar. It seems that Wilson himself was hired by the CIA to investigate the Iraq/African uranium connection and actually filed a report with the CIA that supported the possibility that Iraq was, in fact, attempting to buy radioactive material from Niger. What’s even more comical? The report also reveals that it was Wilson’s wife, Plame, who actually recommended Wilson for the very high profile job of investigating the link. What all this means is, Wilson lied about the Iraq/Niger connection, not Bush, and Wilson’s wife outed herself because of her and her husbands personal involvement in the investigation.
When Wilson called Bush a liar he became the darling of the liberal media. He got a book deal and a position as a campaign advisor to Kerry. Life was all cherries. But, now that his claims have been proven false, where is the liberal media? They’re right on board with Wilson, where they always were. Wilson is getting the same pass that Michael Moore is getting for creating his treasonous tripe of a documentary.
To paraphrase another big fat liar, Al Franken, the lying liberal liars are getting protection from the lying liberal media and other lying liberal liars because that’s all they have. Lies. When the facts aren’t on their side, liberals lie. Write it down. Count on it.
Buck Evinger
LAL Administrator
STOP TOUCHING ME!
A little Too Touchy-Feely!
Long-faced guy, as some refer to him, finally found somebody to stand at the podium and give him an adoring look.
Heaven knows Teresa was never going to do it. Her attention rarely seems to light on her husband when she’s at a microphone with him.
It’s sort of mesmerizing, really. She’s unlike any other political wife I’ve ever seen - unscripted and ready to do as she likes, in her intriguing, world-weary way, even as her second husband introduced his running mate at her adored first husband’s 88-acre, $3.7 million “farm” in suburban Pittsburgh. The white-columned colonial mansion and swimming pool were out of sight and bales of hay strategically placed to give a populist touch.
She doesn’t gaze like Nancy or glare like Lee Hart or look appraisingly at her husband like Elizabeth Edwards. She doesn’t always seem to notice he’s there. When Mr. Kerry moves in for a nuzzle or a kiss, she sometimes makes a
little face.
She’s easily distracted, waving and mouthing “Hello” at the audience and languidly arranging her hair and the red-and-blue “John Kerry for President” scarves she designed.
She siphons attention from a husband who has a hard enough time getting it. Yesterday, she distracted the audience when she seemed to be trying to get young Jack Edwards to stop sucking his thumb. Sometimes she’ll laugh and smile in inappropriate places - she once chuckled while her husband
talked about curbing tax breaks for the rich.
Teresa has the air, as Chris Matthews noted, of an old-fashioned European movie star. She projects a quality like Marlene Dietrich or Jeanne Moreau, a sultry touch-me-and-you-die look with an accent to match: a rare political perfume of I don’t give a hoot, I’m worth a billion dollars and you’re not and he’s not and the Bushes are not; of I have four mansions and he doesn’t; of I’m so confident I can admit to using Botox and I can wear Chanel while my husband complains about manufacturing jobs’ going overseas.
Her detachment seems all the more appealing now that John Kerry can’t stop patting and grabbing his new pup, John Edwards. Mr. Edwards awkwardly reciprocates, sliding his arm around the big guy’s torso.
(But nothing was as painful as watching Mr. Kerry determinedly trying to cavort on the farm’s lawn with the adorable little Jack.)
The Bush officials have nicknamed Mr. Edwards “The Breck Girl” and it is already getting under the Boy King’s thin skin.
A NEW MATE, AND F**K ME!
By Buck Evinger
Finally! Kerry has a running mate. North Carolina Senator John Edwards, Kerry’s main primary opponent, is now the second man on the Democratic ticket. Kerry offered Edwards the position on the phone early Tuesday morning.
Now the Democrats are offering up two of the richest men in politics as the standard bearers for the “party of the people”. Of the two men who say they can do a better job of running the country than Bush and Cheney, one has been a senator for decades and never introduced a piece of legislation with his name on it, and the other’s only political experience is a single term in the senate. A seat he won by spending millions of dollars from his personal fortune.
Throughout the Democratic primary, Edwards accused President Bush of creating “two America’s”, one for the privileged, like Kerry and Edwards, and one for everybody else. My question is, how would he know? Edwards went out of his way to talk about his humble beginnings, but he is far removed from his humble beginnings. Twenty years as a millionaire puts a lot of distance between you and coupon clipping.
Kerry’s rising fortunes are well documented and follow closely with the wealthy women with whom he chooses to associate.
The best that the Democratic party has to offer have no executive level political experience and offer nothing except negativism and contempt for the current president as their party platform. Things are looking better already.
****
I got an interesting email this morning. Here is the unedited text.
Subject: FUCK BUCK
I would just like to say that you disgust me. If anyone should be laughed at it should be you and all of the rest of the naive assholes that have anything to do with this website.
CLRoccio1953@aol.com
Brandon AZ
Thanks CL, for again demonstrating so eloquently that liberals have no ideas worthy of debate, only hate and contempt. It’s sad, really.
# # # #
I got another email this weekend. Here is the unedited text.
hello buck -
I just ran across your site on the web and if it is a joke then sorry.
However, if it is for real I must say this: your stomachs are full, you vacation often, and you probably have numerous homes - in other words you’re RICH. If I am wrong - sorry.
Is YOUR SON or DAUGHTER FIGHTING IN IRAQ ?
It is FAR better to be a bleeding - heart liberal than a :::::
BLEEDING - SOLDIER - CONSERVATIVE !!!
thank you -long live free speech!
gototype@yahoo.com
I’m not sure I understand what this means, but let me address a few facts. My stomach is full, but that is only because I eat to much. My last vacation was 4 days in Key West, last August. Other than that, I get about a week a year because I own my own business and when I’m not here, it’s not making money. I don’t own numerous homes. I’m not rich. I bust my ass every day to make ends meet. Rich is what John Kerry and John Edwards are. I don’t have any kids so, no, my son or daughter is not fighting in Iraq. Those are facts, just so you’ll know whom you’re dealing with, but it’s your last statement that, once again, proves another ultimate truth about liberals. You somehow think, in your twisted liberal mind, that it’s better to “feel my pain” than to help stop it. That’s perfect. That explains the liberal mind set to a tee. You would rather say you’re concerned about something, than actually do something about it. As for me, I’d rather have a bleeding soldier conservative watching my back.
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Thanks to all the liberals who find our site and feel compelled to write. We would, however, appreciate an actual exchange of ideas, rather just schoolyard name calling…..if that’s doable on your end?
LAL
FOR THOSE SEEKING SOME PROOF
THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN BY CHRISTOPHER HITHCENS AND POSTED ON THE SLATE WEB SITE.
Unfairenheit 9/11
The lies of Michael Moore.
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, at 12:26 PM PT
One of the many problems with the American left, and indeed of the American left, has been its image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring. How many times, in my old days at The Nation magazine, did I hear wistful and semienvious ruminations? Where was the radical Firing Line show? Who will be our Rush Limbaugh? I used privately to hope that the emphasis, if the comrades ever got around to it, would be on the first of those and not the second. But the meetings themselves were so mind-numbing and lugubrious that I thought the danger of success on either front was infinitely slight.
Nonetheless, it seems that an answer to this long-felt need is finally beginning to emerge. I exempt Al Franken’s unintentionally funny Air America network, to which I gave a couple of interviews in its early days. There, one could hear the reassuring noise of collapsing scenery and tripped-over wires and be reminded once again that correct politics and smooth media presentation are not even distant cousins. With Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, however, an entirely new note has been struck. Here we glimpse a possible fusion between the turgid routines of MoveOn.org and the filmic standards, if not exactly the filmic skills, of Sergei Eisenstein or Leni Riefenstahl.
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.
In late 2002, almost a year after the al-Qaida assault on American society, I had an onstage debate with Michael Moore at the Telluride Film Festival. In the course of this exchange, he stated his view that Osama Bin Laden should be considered innocent until proven guilty. This was, he said, the American way. The intervention in Afghanistan, he maintained, had been at least to that extent unjustified. Something—I cannot guess what, since we knew as much then as we do now—has since apparently persuaded Moore that Osama Bin Laden is as guilty as hell. Indeed, Osama is suddenly so guilty and so all-powerful that any other discussion of any other topic is a dangerous “distraction” from the fight against him. I believe that I understand the convenience of this late conversion.
Fahrenheit 9/11 makes the following points about Bin Laden and about Afghanistan, and makes them in this order:
1) The Bin Laden family (if not exactly Osama himself) had a close if convoluted business relationship with the Bush family, through the Carlyle Group.
2) Saudi capital in general is a very large element of foreign investment in the United States.
3) The Unocal company in Texas had been willing to discuss a gas pipeline across Afghanistan with the Taliban, as had other vested interests.
4) The Bush administration sent far too few ground troops to Afghanistan and thus allowed far too many Taliban and al-Qaida members to escape.
5) The Afghan government, in supporting the coalition in Iraq, was purely risible in that its non-army was purely American.
6) The American lives lost in Afghanistan have been wasted. (This I divine from the fact that this supposedly “antiwar” film is dedicated ruefully to all those killed there, as well as in Iraq.)
It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore’s direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush’s removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn’t even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore’s view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is “in” the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don’t think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn’t do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.
He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction. In a long and paranoid (and tedious) section at the opening of the film, he makes heavy innuendoes about the flights that took members of the Bin Laden family out of the country after Sept. 11. I banged on about this myself at the time and wrote a Nation column drawing attention to the groveling Larry King interview with the insufferable Prince Bandar, which Moore excerpts. However, recent developments have not been kind to our Mike. In the interval between Moore’s triumph at Cannes and the release of the film in the United States, the 9/11 commission has found nothing to complain of in the timing or arrangement of the flights. And Richard Clarke, Bush’s former chief of counterterrorism, has come forward to say that he, and he alone, took the responsibility for authorizing those Saudi departures. This might not matter so much to the ethos of Fahrenheit 9/11, except that—as you might expect—Clarke is presented throughout as the brow-furrowed ethical hero of the entire post-9/11 moment. And it does not seem very likely that, in his open admission about the Bin Laden family evacuation, Clarke is taking a fall, or a spear in the chest, for the Bush administration. So, that’s another bust for this windy and bloated cinematic “key to all mythologies.”
A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn’t he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him “relaxing at Camp David” shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say “shows,” even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won’t recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.
The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that’s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm. More interesting is the moment where Bush is shown frozen on his chair at the infant school in Florida, looking stunned and useless for seven whole minutes after the news of the second plane on 9/11. Many are those who say that he should have leaped from his stool, adopted a Russell Crowe stance, and gone to work. I could even wish that myself. But if he had done any such thing then (as he did with his “Let’s roll” and “dead or alive” remarks a month later), half the Michael Moore community would now be calling him a man who went to war on a hectic, crazed impulse. The other half would be saying what they already say—that he knew the attack was coming, was using it to cement himself in power, and couldn’t wait to get on with his coup. This is the line taken by Gore Vidal and by a scandalous recent book that also revives the charge of FDR’s collusion over Pearl Harbor. At least Moore’s film should put the shameful purveyors of that last theory back in their paranoid box.
But it won’t because it encourages their half-baked fantasies in so many other ways. We are introduced to Iraq, “a sovereign nation.” (In fact, Iraq’s “sovereignty” was heavily qualified by international sanctions, however questionable, which reflected its noncompliance with important U.N. resolutions.) In this peaceable kingdom, according to Moore’s flabbergasting choice of film shots, children are flying little kites, shoppers are smiling in the sunshine, and the gentle rhythms of life are undisturbed. Then—wham! From the night sky come the terror weapons of American imperialism. Watching the clips Moore uses, and recalling them well, I can recognize various Saddam palaces and military and police centers getting the treatment. But these sites are not identified as such. In fact, I don’t think Al Jazeera would, on a bad day, have transmitted anything so utterly propagandistic. You would also be led to think that the term “civilian casualty” had not even been in the Iraqi vocabulary until March 2003. I remember asking Moore at Telluride if he was or was not a pacifist. He would not give a straight answer then, and he doesn’t now, either. I’ll just say that the “insurgent” side is presented in this film as justifiably outraged, whereas the 30-year record of Baathist war crimes and repression and aggression is not mentioned once. (Actually, that’s not quite right. It is briefly mentioned but only, and smarmily, because of the bad period when Washington preferred Saddam to the likewise unmentioned Ayatollah Khomeini.)
That this—his pro-American moment—was the worst Moore could possibly say of Saddam’s depravity is further suggested by some astonishing falsifications. Moore asserts that Iraq under Saddam had never attacked or killed or even threatened (his words) any American. I never quite know whether Moore is as ignorant as he looks, or even if that would be humanly possible. Baghdad was for years the official, undisguised home address of Abu Nidal, then the most-wanted gangster in the world, who had been sentenced to death even by the PLO and had blown up airports in Vienna* and Rome. Baghdad was the safe house for the man whose “operation” murdered Leon Klinghoffer. Saddam boasted publicly of his financial sponsorship of suicide bombers in Israel. (Quite a few Americans of all denominations walk the streets of Jerusalem.) In 1991, a large number of Western hostages were taken by the hideous Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and held in terrible conditions for a long time. After that same invasion was repelled—Saddam having killed quite a few Americans and Egyptians and Syrians and Brits in the meantime and having threatened to kill many more—the Iraqi secret police were caught trying to murder former President Bush during his visit to Kuwait. Never mind whether his son should take that personally. (Though why should he not?) Should you and I not resent any foreign dictatorship that attempts to kill one of our retired chief executives? (President Clinton certainly took it that way: He ordered the destruction by cruise missiles of the Baathist “security” headquarters.) Iraqi forces fired, every day, for 10 years, on the aircraft that patrolled the no-fly zones and staved off further genocide in the north and south of the country. In 1993, a certain Mr. Yasin helped mix the chemicals for the bomb at the World Trade Center and then skipped to Iraq, where he remained a guest of the state until the overthrow of Saddam. In 2001, Saddam’s regime was the only one in the region that openly celebrated the attacks on New York and Washington and described them as just the beginning of a larger revenge. Its official media regularly spewed out a stream of anti-Semitic incitement. I think one might describe that as “threatening,” even if one was narrow enough to think that anti-Semitism only menaces Jews. And it was after, and not before, the 9/11 attacks that Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi moved from Afghanistan to Baghdad and began to plan his now very open and lethal design for a holy and ethnic civil war. On Dec. 1, 2003, the New York Times reported—and the David Kay report had established—that Saddam had been secretly negotiating with the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il in a series of secret meetings in Syria, as late as the spring of 2003, to buy a North Korean missile system, and missile-production system, right off the shelf. (This attempt was not uncovered until after the fall of Baghdad, the coalition’s presence having meanwhile put an end to the negotiations.)
Thus, in spite of the film’s loaded bias against the work of the mind, you can grasp even while watching it that Michael Moore has just said, in so many words, the one thing that no reflective or informed person can possibly believe: that Saddam Hussein was no problem. No problem at all. Now look again at the facts I have cited above. If these things had been allowed to happen under any other administration, you can be sure that Moore and others would now glibly be accusing the president of ignoring, or of having ignored, some fairly unmistakable “warnings.”
The same “let’s have it both ways” opportunism infects his treatment of another very serious subject, namely domestic counterterrorist policy. From being accused of overlooking too many warnings—not exactly an original point—the administration is now lavishly taunted for issuing too many. (Would there not have been “fear” if the harbingers of 9/11 had been taken seriously?) We are shown some American civilians who have had absurd encounters with idiotic “security” staff. (Have you ever met anyone who can’t tell such a story?) Then we are immediately shown underfunded police departments that don’t have the means or the manpower to do any stop-and-search: a power suddenly demanded by Moore on their behalf that we know by definition would at least lead to some ridiculous interrogations. Finally, Moore complains that there isn’t enough intrusion and confiscation at airports and says that it is appalling that every air traveler is not forcibly relieved of all matches and lighters. (Cue mood music for sinister influence of Big Tobacco.) So—he wants even more pocket-rummaging by airport officials? Uh, no, not exactly. But by this stage, who’s counting? Moore is having it three ways and asserting everything and nothing. Again—simply not serious.
Circling back to where we began, why did Moore’s evil Saudis not join “the Coalition of the Willing”? Why instead did they force the United States to switch its regional military headquarters to Qatar? If the Bush family and the al-Saud dynasty live in each other’s pockets, as is alleged in a sort of vulgar sub-Brechtian scene with Arab headdresses replacing top hats, then how come the most reactionary regime in the region has been powerless to stop Bush from demolishing its clone in Kabul and its buffer regime in Baghdad? The Saudis hate, as they did in 1991, the idea that Iraq’s recuperated oil industry might challenge their near-monopoly. They fear the liberation of the Shiite Muslims they so despise. To make these elementary points is to collapse the whole pathetic edifice of the film’s “theory.” Perhaps Moore prefers the pro-Saudi Kissinger/Scowcroft plan for the Middle East, where stability trumps every other consideration and where one dare not upset the local house of cards, or killing-field of Kurds? This would be a strange position for a purported radical. Then again, perhaps he does not take this conservative line because his real pitch is not to any audience member with a serious interest in foreign policy. It is to the provincial isolationist.
I have already said that Moore’s film has the staunch courage to mock Bush for his verbal infelicity. Yet it’s much, much braver than that. From Fahrenheit 9/11 you can glean even more astounding and hidden disclosures, such as the capitalist nature of American society, the existence of Eisenhower’s “military-industrial complex,” and the use of “spin” in the presentation of our politicians. It’s high time someone had the nerve to point this out. There’s more. Poor people often volunteer to join the army, and some of them are duskier than others. Betcha didn’t know that. Back in Flint, Mich., Moore feels on safe ground. There are no martyred rabbits this time. Instead, it’s the poor and black who shoulder the packs and rifles and march away. I won’t dwell on the fact that black Americans have fought for almost a century and a half, from insisting on their right to join the U.S. Army and fight in the Civil War to the right to have a desegregated Army that set the pace for post-1945 civil rights. I’ll merely ask this: In the film, Moore says loudly and repeatedly that not enough troops were sent to garrison Afghanistan and Iraq. (This is now a favorite cleverness of those who were, in the first place, against sending any soldiers at all.) Well, where does he think those needful heroes and heroines would have come from? Does he favor a draft—the most statist and oppressive solution? Does he think that only hapless and gullible proles sign up for the Marines? Does he think—as he seems to suggest—that parents can “send” their children, as he stupidly asks elected members of Congress to do? Would he have abandoned Gettysburg because the Union allowed civilians to pay proxies to serve in their place? Would he have supported the antidraft (and very antiblack) riots against Lincoln in New York? After a point, one realizes that it’s a waste of time asking him questions of this sort. It would be too much like taking him seriously. He’ll just try anything once and see if it floats or flies or gets a cheer.
Indeed, Moore’s affected and ostentatious concern for black America is one of the most suspect ingredients of his pitch package. In a recent interview, he yelled that if the hijacked civilians of 9/11 had been black, they would have fought back, unlike the stupid and presumably cowardly white men and women (and children). Never mind for now how many black passengers were on those planes—we happen to know what Moore does not care to mention: that Todd Beamer and a few of his co-passengers, shouting “Let’s roll,” rammed the hijackers with a trolley, fought them tooth and nail, and helped bring down a United Airlines plane, in Pennsylvania, that was speeding toward either the White House or the Capitol. There are no words for real, impromptu bravery like that, which helped save our republic from worse than actually befell. The Pennsylvania drama also reminds one of the self-evident fact that this war is not fought only “overseas” or in uniform, but is being brought to our cities. Yet Moore is a silly and shady man who does not recognize courage of any sort even when he sees it because he cannot summon it in himself. To him, easy applause, in front of credulous audiences, is everything.
Moore has announced that he won’t even appear on TV shows where he might face hostile questioning. I notice from the New York Times of June 20 that he has pompously established a rapid response team, and a fact-checking staff, and some tough lawyers, to bulwark himself against attack. He’ll sue, Moore says, if anyone insults him or his pet. Some right-wing hack groups, I gather, are planning to bring pressure on their local movie theaters to drop the film. How dumb or thuggish do you have to be in order to counter one form of stupidity and cowardice with another? By all means go and see this terrible film, and take your friends, and if the fools in the audience strike up one cry, in favor of surrender or defeat, feel free to join in the conversation.
However, I think we can agree that the film is so flat-out phony that “fact-checking” is beside the point. And as for the scary lawyers—get a life, or maybe see me in court. But I offer this, to Moore and to his rapid response rabble. Any time, Michael my boy. Let’s redo Telluride. Any show. Any place. Any platform. Let’s see what you’re made of.
Some people soothingly say that one should relax about all this. It’s only a movie. No biggie. It’s no worse than the tomfoolery of Oliver Stone. It’s kick-ass entertainment. It might even help get out “the youth vote.” Yeah, well, I have myself written and presented about a dozen low-budget made-for-TV documentaries, on subjects as various as Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton and the Cyprus crisis, and I also helped produce a slightly more polished one on Henry Kissinger that was shown in movie theaters. So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a “POV” or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your “narrative” a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don’t even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. At no point does Michael Moore make the smallest effort to be objective. At no moment does he pass up the chance of a cheap sneer or a jeer. He pitilessly focuses his camera, for minutes after he should have turned it off, on a distraught and bereaved mother whose grief we have already shared. (But then, this is the guy who thought it so clever and amusing to catch Charlton Heston, in Bowling for Columbine, at the onset of his senile dementia.) Such courage.
Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from 1984 and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless, and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (…) is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban, and the Baath Party and that the war against jihad is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following:
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …
And that’s just from Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it’s highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It’s also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.
If Michael Moore had had his way, Slobodan Milosevic would still be the big man in a starved and tyrannical Serbia. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been cleansed and annexed. If Michael Moore had been listened to, Afghanistan would still be under Taliban rule, and Kuwait would have remained part of Iraq. And Iraq itself would still be the personal property of a psychopathic crime family, bargaining covertly with the slave state of North Korea for WMD. You might hope that a retrospective awareness of this kind would induce a little modesty. To the contrary, it is employed to pump air into one of the great sagging blimps of our sorry, mediocre, celeb-rotten culture. Rock the vote, indeed.
Correction, June 22, 2004: This piece originally referred to terrorist attacks by Abu Nidal’s group on the Munich and Rome airports. The 1985 attacks occurred at the Rome and Vienna airports. (Return to the corrected sentence.)
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair. His latest book, Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, is out in paperback.
Photograph of Michael Moore by Pascal Guyot/Agence France-Presse. Stills from Fahrenheit 9/11 © 2004 Lions Gate Films. All Rights Reserved.Photograph of Michael Moore on the Slate home page by Eric Gaillard/Reuters.
MICHAEL MOORE IS A TRAITOR
By Buck Evinger
Michael Moore is a traitor! It’s that plain and simple. His movie, Fahrenheit 911, is an act of treason during a time of war. If the movie was a legitimate presentation of facts or even a presentation designed to promote a particular view, it would be only that, a movie. Instead, Fahrenheit 911 is propaganda. It is lie after lie, presented as truth, with the express purpose of causing harm to the war effort, the civillian commanders who are directing it and, by proxy, the nation.
Liberals of Moore’s ilk have wined, without reason, that their patriotism is being question just because they are speaking out about the war on terror. Thanks to Moore, that questioning is now legitimized. It is the duty of every American to question the patriotism of individuals, like Moore, who expend tremendous effort and money, to spread lies and hate for America, around the world.
And make no mistake, that’s exactly what this film is doing. Recently, the AP ran a story about Fahrenheit 911 being the first western documentary ever allowed mass viewing distribution in China. Now why do you suppose a country like China, with intrests contrary to our own, would be so welcoming to a video that was so misleading and so damaging to American interests? Why would terrorists organizations, like Hezbollah, offer support in distributing the film to muslims around the middle east?
The reason why is we have a traitor in our midst, and he is working in collusion with our enemies to help hasten our defeat. That traitor is Michael Moore, a man, who by his actions, motivated by his hate, will be responsible for the death of American soldiers and muslim innocents.
We are at war against a new and difficult enemy. They have spies on our soil and willing allies throughout the world. Our own citizens our divided over how best to fight the war, and that is not a bad thing. There have been differing opinions on how we prosecuted every war we ever fought. What cannot be tolerated or left unchallenged during a time of war is out and out opposition designed to aid the enemy.
The selective editing, the outright lies and even the marketing presentation for the movie are a direct call to action against our sworn enemies and an attempt to falsely pursuade those opposed only to methods, that there is deceipt and evil being perpetrated by the President of the United States.
Ladies and Gentlemen, if you don’t think the election this November is the most important election in our nations history, you are not paying attention. Without a single shot fired, the citizens of this nation, you and your neighbors, can deal a crushing blow to our enemies, both within and without. All you have to do is vote for George Bush. An overwhelming victory by Bush this November will slap Moore and his kind in the face and show the world that the American people are standing together to win this war on terror, no matter what. The future of the world is in the balance.
