RE: [DMCForum] Time for a new political discussion...

["Dave Stragand" <dave.stragand@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Moore Taking Lumps on Internet and in Film
By David Thibault
CNSNews.com Managing Editor
May 17, 2004

(CNSNews.com) - Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore is increasingly being
vilified on Internet sites that accuse him of using "doublespeak and
falsehood" to make anti-American documentaries. And while Moore has gotten
rich satirizing big business, the gun industry and now the Bush
administration's war on terrorism in documentaries, he is about to see the
same effort directed at him.

Moore is the target of a documentary currently being filmed by Minnesota's
Mike Wilson and two partners called Michael Moore Hates America . 

"The ideology that Michael Moore uses and the vision that he's created of
the country [is] we're all sort of doomed to a life of poverty and a lack of
success," Wilson told CNSNews.com on Monday, the same day Moore's latest
documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11 was being screened at the Cannes Film Festival
in France. 

"My whole experience says that look - the American dream is alive and well
and if you work hard and you persevere and stick it out, you can make it,"
Wilson said. 

Michael Moore Hates America is Wilson's first feature film. Wilson will be
on camera and narrate portions of the documentary using techniques similar
to those used by Moore when he ridiculed Roger Smith, the former chairman of
General Motors, in Roger and Me and Charlton Heston, the former president of
the National Rifle Association, in Bowling for Columbine . The latter sought
to depict America's gun culture and used the massacre of students at
Colorado's Columbine High School as its backdrop.

"We're using a documentary to show how a documentary filmmaker can be
manipulative ... Michael Moore is going to take Charlton Heston out of
context. He's going to take President Bush out of context. He's going to
take the kids he interviewed from Columbine out of context, to his own end,"
Wilson said.

So far, at least, Moore has not consented to be interviewed by Wilson, even
after a year of requests. The two men did have a confrontation when Wilson
showed up at one of Moore's book signings.

"When I walked up and challenged [Moore] at the University of Minnesota
during the Q and A session on his book tour, he started screaming at me,
'You hate America. People like you hate America. Everything I do is because
I love this country,' Wilson recalled after the October 2003 encounter with
the famous left-wing filmmaker. The incident ended with Wilson being booed
by 7,000 people, he said.

However, Wilson may get the last laugh.

"We did film the whole thing so it will be in the film. So, I guess in a
sense he did give us something probably more valuable than if he actually
sat down with us," Wilson said.

An increasing number of websites also take Moore to task for using his films
to express his political ideology. They include MooreWatch.com
<http://www.moorewatch.com/> , BowlingForTruth.com
<http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/>  and MooreLies.com
<http://www.moorelies.com/> . Wilson's project also has an accompanying
website called MichaelMooreHatesAmerica.com
<http://www.michaelmoorehatesamerica.com/index.html> . 

Moore's documentaries, Wilson's website alleges, "are full of venom and
hatred, invented facts and inaccuracies, yet he's been rewarded with
Hollywood's highest honor." 

In fact, Bowling for Columbine won the Academy Award for best documentary
for 2002, a fact Moore points out on his own website, MichaelMoore.com
<http://www.michaelmoore.com/> .

He also displays two clips from Fahrenheit 9/11 while assailing journalists
who have criticized the film.

A Wall Street Journal review, based on a synopsis of Fahrenheit 9/11 ,
prompted Moore to write the following: "What would you expect from the WSJ,
the biggest pro-business, pro-war paper in the country." 

On another section of his website, Moore lays out his anti-Bush ideology in
his typical tongue-in-cheek manner.

"We're putting up this reminder right now -- half a year before the election
-- so that we don't have a repeat of the 2000 election. See four years ago a
lot of people, it seems, simply didn't know that some guys were trying to
fill a job vacancy in Washington, D.C. In fact, the guy who won that
election only managed to get a quarter of the people in this country to vote
for him. And the guy who actually took the job, well, he got even LESS
votes!" Moore's website declares.



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