Bowling for Mooreverse

[Pekka]

IF he wanted to make the point of 'culture of fear', he would have done that and not bring most of the things in he brought. He wanted to point out bad guys, which didn't even take part in the spreading fear thing.

His way of driving a point is clever, he can make Jesus look bad and not actually blame them, but the audience is left with 'Jesus took uh jobs!'.

It's the association thing he drives in, with the wrong questions asked, and good editing, good choose of commentary in between, and the structure of the work, that makes it extremely well made propaganda. Why is it good propaganda? Most don't recognize it as one. F 9/11 was more transparent in that sense, but even that was master piece.

I think they differed some from Awful Truth. I liked that series. I think it was great series, good work done.. excellent. The Big One I feel was good.. Roger and Me was good I feel too.

BOwling for Mooreverse however, was good, but his new style was taking him to blame game, where he wants to make guilty by association, blur the lines of how things work in real life etc.

[Zevico]

No you look at the red light. You just are no good at all, where are your morals??

Either Pekka's having fun at your collective expense, or he's becoming another Fezzie.

[Pekka]

Either you took uh jobs or you smell like potato toes.

You choose.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse


It's not the sole cause. It's one of them.

See the post above this one.

Heston isn't just an opponent in the film, but Moore really did have a score to settle with him over the Colorado NRA rally immediately after Columbine.

He paid him back for that, but also got him to move the focus onto another issue he wanted to cover, namely the racial aspect of violence in the US (even when not a direct cause)

Before you get too sure about the "facts" in Bowling for Columbine take a look at this site:

http://www.hardylaw.net/Truth_About_Bowling.html

(from the link above)

2. NRA and the Reaction To Tragedy. A major theme in Bowling is that NRA is callous toward slayings. In order to make this theme fit the facts, however, Bowling repeatedly distorts the evidence.

A. Columbine Shooting/Denver NRA Meeting. Bowling portrays this with the following sequence:

Weeping children outside Columbine;

Cut to Charlton Heston holding a musket and proclaiming "I have only five words for you: 'from my cold, dead, hands'";

Cut to billboard advertising the meeting, while Moore intones "Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association;"

Cut to Heston (supposedly) continuing speech... "I have a message from the Mayor, Mr. Wellington Webb, the Mayor of Denver. He sent me this; it says 'don't come here. We don't want you here.' I say to the Mayor this is our country, as Americans we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!"

The portrayal is one of an arrogant protest in response to the deaths -- or, as one reviewer put it, "it seemed that Charlton Heston and others rushed to Littleton to hold rallies and demonstrations directly after the tragedy." The portrayal is in fact false.


Fact: The Denver event was not a demonstration relating to Columbine, but an annual meeting (see links below), whose place and date had been fixed years in advance.


Fact: At Denver, the NRA cancelled all events (normally several days of committee meetings, sporting events, dinners, and rallies) save the annual members' voting meeting -- that could not be cancelled because the state law governing nonprofits required that it be held. [No way to change location, since under NY law you have to give 10 days' advance notice of that to the members, there were upwards of 4,000,000 members -- and Columbine happened 11 days before the scheduled meeting.] As a newspaper reported:

In a letter to NRA members Wednesday, President Charlton Heston and the group's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, said all seminars, workshops, luncheons, exhibits by gun makers and other vendors, and festivities are canceled.

All that's left is a members' reception with Rep. J.C. Watts, R-Okla., and the annual meeting, set for 10 a.m. May 1 in the Colorado Convention Center.

Under its bylaws and New York state law, the NRA must hold an annual meeting.

The NRA convention April 30-May 2 was expected to draw 22,000 members and give the city a $17.9 million economic boost.

"But the tragedy in Littleton last Tuesday calls upon us to take steps, along with dozens of other planned public events, to modify our schedule to show our profound sympathy and respect for the families and communities in the Denver area in their time of great loss," Heston and LaPierre wrote.


Fact: Heston's "cold dead hands" speech, which leads off Moore's depiction of the Denver meeting, was not given at Denver after Columbine. It was given a year later in Charlotte, North Carolina, and was his gesture of gratitude upon his being given a handmade musket, at that annual meeting.

Fact: When Bowling continues on to the speech which Heston did give in Denver, it carefully edits it to change its theme.

Moore's fabrication here cannot be described by any polite term. It is a lie, a fraud, and a few other things. Carrying it out required a LOT of editing to mislead the viewer, as I will show below. I transcribed Heston's speech as Moore has it, and compared it to a news agency's transcript, color coding the passages. CLICK HERE for the comparison, with links to the original transcript.

Moore has actually taken audio of seven sentences, from five different parts of the speech, and a section given in a different speech entirely, and spliced them together. Each edit is cleverly covered by inserting a still or video footage for a few seconds.

First, right after the weeping victims, Moore puts on Heston's "I have only five words for you . . . cold dead hands" statement, making it seem directed at them. As noted above, it's actually a thank-you speech given a year later in North Carolina.

Moore then has an interlude -- a visual of a billboard and his narration. This is vital. He can't go directly to Heston's real Denver speech. If he did that, you might ask why Heston in mid-speech changed from a purple tie and lavender shirt to a white shirt and red tie, and the background draperies went from maroon to blue. Moore has to separate the two segments.

Moore's second edit (covered by splicing in a pan shot of the crowd) deletes Heston's announcement that NRA has in fact cancelled most of its meeting:

"As you know, we've cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands. As your president, I apologize for that."

Moore then cuts to Heston noting that Denver's mayor asked NRA not to come, and shows Heston replying "I said to the Mayor: As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don't come here? We're already here!" as if in defiance.

Actually, Moore put an edit right in the middle of the first sentence, and another at its end! Heston really said (with reference his own WWII vet status) "I said to the mayor, well, my reply to the mayor is, I volunteered for the war they wanted me to attend when I was 18 years old. Since then, I've run small errands for my country, from Nigeria to Vietnam. I know many of you here in this room could say the same thing."

Moore cuts it after "I said to the Mayor" and attaches a sentence from the end of the next paragraph: "As Americans, we're free to travel wherever we want in our broad land." He hides the deletion by cutting to footage of protestors and a photo of the Mayor before going back and showing Heston.

Moore has Heston then triumphantly announce "Don't come here? We're already here!" Actually, that sentence is clipped from a segment five paragraphs farther on in the speech. Again, Moore uses an editing trick to cover the doctoring, switching to a pan shot of the audience as Heston's (edited) voice continues.

What Heston said there was:

"NRA members are in city hall, Fort Carson, NORAD, the Air Force Academy and the Olympic Training Center. And yes, NRA members are surely among the police and fire and SWAT team heroes who risked their lives to rescue the students at Columbine.

Don't come here? We're already here. This community is our home. Every community in America is our home. We are a 128-year-old fixture of mainstream America. The Second Amendment ethic of lawful, responsible firearm ownership spans the broadest cross section of American life imaginable.

So, we have the same right as all other citizens to be here. To help shoulder the grief and share our sorrow and to offer our respectful, reassured voice to the national discourse that has erupted around this tragedy."

"NRA members are, above all, Americans. That means that whatever our differences, we are respectful of one another and we stand united, especially in adversity."

[vomitus]

Well, one of my peeves about the movie is the cartoon, linking the NRA to the KKK. Was it the KKK? Anyway, in the same year that the KKK had federal legislation against it, the NRA was formed (literally true). However, the viewer is left with no other reason for that happening than the legislation against the KKK actually lead to the formation of the NRA.

Nothing is further from the truth. The NRA and the KKK had been at odds since the NRA's inception because the NRA put guns in the hands of the blacks. The NRA was originally founded to improve the marksmanship of soldiers. The NRA and KKK have absolutely nothing to do with each other and were in fact enemies.

[DinoDoc]

So he really is a lying tub of lard.

[Bereta_Eder]

in a country where cartoons are superheroes that their creators make them save people from the street crimes... well it's not looking good

[child of Thor]

The most useful thing that Michael Moore does is raise the question.
I dont often agree with the way in which he does it, or the conclusions he makes you feel are right. But i cant take away from the fact that in most of his works(even going back to his pre-film days, when he liked exposing corporate sleeze and wrong doing), he makes you think. He makes you question. Important stuff in a democracy imho.
So i cant hate the guy, even if he reminds me of jabba the hutt

I guess the NRA is an easy target. After all its got its roots in white supremacy and other political murkiness. He(Michael Moore) goes for easy targets.

[Pekka]

Yes you can hate him Thor, and if you can't, I can help you..

[Bereta_Eder]

the only contribution i can say moore did to my knwoledge was that chapter in stupid white men where he discribed the relationship between white and black amuricans. i havent thought of the things he wrote and i had not read them anywhere else.

apart from that, nothing really new.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Pekka
Yes you can hate him Thor, and if you can't, I can help you..

I dont know Pekka, he often champions the David over the Goliath. Culturaly its very endearing to us british(celts in particular)

[Pekka]

He is the Flobiath. He'll eat your kids if you give him the chance.. he also shoots live fetuses straight into his vains and hates freedom.

[DinoDoc]

And he lost a farting contest to Peter Griffin.

http://www.devilducky.com/media/36028/

[child of Thor]

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Seeker
Americans don't actually lock their doors when they are still inside the house do they?

It depends on where you live. Most people lock their doors when they are in and away from home. Just common sense, since you don't want anyone walking in. Where I grew up, though, we left our doors unlocked. That was a long time ago though.