Where Michael Moore Went Wrong

[queerbychoice]

Robert Jensen's critique of Fahrenheit 9/11 for being conservative and racist is enough all by itself to justify reading counterpunchrss regularly. Go read it.

In other news, my little baby brother turned 24 years old today and I must now go see him and give him presents.

Oh, and July 3rd was the third anniversary of my LiveJournal's birth. See, that was back when I was still 24 myself and genderfree and not yet out to my parents and had only kissed two people in my life instead of four. But I'm still just as strange! At least, I hope I'm still just as strange. One's strangeness would be a terrible thing to accidentally misplace. *checks* Yes, I think it's all here intact. Excellent.

Comments

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The review doesn't claim that Morocco doesn't do such a thing. The review just takes issue with summarizing the existences of Morocco and many other countries with a few stereotyped images, including but not limited to that one. The fact that Morocco's military uses monkeys doesn't really inherently mean anything about their military's weakness, so it's an odd thing to mention. I mean, the U.S. could start using monkeys tomorrow and it certainly wouldn't instantly render our military weak. So Moore could provide far more actually relevant information if he said something like "Morrocco's military contains only 20 soldiers"; but instead he chooses to just point out that it contains monkeys and he fails to tell us how few soldiers it contains, apparently expecting us to just bizarrely and incorrectly conclude that adding monkeys to any military automatically renders it weak.

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

maybe the "monkey unit" is the only unit morocco sent to the "war"?
my point is, the last thing we need is to polarize the left. progressive ideas have already been labeled treasonous and unpatriotic, if not terorrist. i don't like to see the left squabble about how mainstream certain views are and how compromising others are. if we're ever going to topple the conservative machine that is ripping apart everything this country is supposed to stand for, we have to stop sectionalizing our views, whereby we are all rendered powerless

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I couldn't possibly disagree more strongly. Telling people to only voice leftist views if they're the specific leftist views that are the current leftist party line already is what renders them powerless. Critique of the left by the left is what enables problems within the left to be fixed or improved, and without it, the left party line would be nothing but a sort of variant blind patriotism - unthinking adherence to the left party line isn't any less unthinking than unthinking adherence to anybody else's party line.

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

Well put. Back in the early 80s, I was living in a household of Communists. I was dismayed that their discussions didn't include issues of feminism, race, or homophobia. When I brought up feminism, I was told that "women's issues" would be addressed after the revolution.

Ironically, all these "progressive" men could never bring themselves to clean the damn toilets. Guess who cleaned the toilets? I suppose they'd start after the revolution.

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

but they aren't just critiquing (sp?), they're flat out alienating. i read that, and as someone who supports wholeheartedly the "mainstream" anti-war momevment, i felt like it was combative and, as president bush might say, a "divider." i don't feel like this sort of internal squabble fixes anything, i feel like it just makes us segmented and powerless. i feel like while the points were quite valid, to decry moore as a conservative, practically branding him a traitor among liberals, the constructiveness is lost. hypothetically, if martin luther king jr. were shot down (figuratively) because he was, say, anti-asian, early on in his political activism, where would he have gone? the point is, moore is trying to do something good, and while criticism is appreciated, it shouldn't be used to exclude moore from the liberal ideology he holds because of minor parts of his movie.
at least, that's what i feel like was going on here.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I think it would be entirely reasonable for Malcolm X to have called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. excessively centrist, or for W.E.B. DuBois to have complained about Booker T. Washington's supposed civil rights advocacy being hopelessly inadequate. When people aren't speaking for you, you have to speak up for yourself and call them out on not saying the things that matter to you. I just don't see that as being a problem. I also do not see any likelihood of Moore's career being shattered by it, nor of Booker T. Washington's or Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s careers being destroyed by criticism from the people further left in their movements. The majority of the population is behind the more centrist, popular voices, not the leftist critiques of them, and if the leftists critique the popular voices for not being leftist enough, that just improves the discourse by getting the real leftist voices heard when they wouldn't have been heard if they hadn't spoken up about not being adequately represented by the centrist-leftists.

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

But every single right-wing pundit is going to latch on to this squabbling and say "look, the liberals don't even know what they stand for" and try to make us look like inept morons, while they stand united behind the flag and jesus and the patriot act and whatever else they rally behind at any given time. the voice and critique is appreciated, the divisive manner in which it is expressed is not.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

The fact that right-wingers think that the existence of multiple differing non-right-wing opinions somehow makes all of those opinions wrong doesn't make anyone but the right-wingers who think such a ridiculous thing look like morons.

[cheeser1.livejournal.com]

to you maybe, but "america" will "stand behind" the "united" force of "morality"
if you know what i mean

[rhekarid.livejournal.com]

I remember seeing those images when I saw the movie with you...and I also remember Conan O'Brian using the same images many months earlier, in a "making fun of the coalition" bit. I realize that the fact he used them is more important than whether they originated with him, but a negative critique of anything is going to be biased in some way. Really, ANYthing will be biased in some way. There are always many factors to be considered that aren't readily apparent.