Michael Moore: A Liar's Liar

[bart]

MICHAEL MOORE ADMITS DISNEY 'BAN' A STUNT

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Filmmaker and waste of oxygen Michael Moore has admitted that he lied about Disney recently refusing to distribute his film. Anyone surprised? I didn't think so. Turns out there was no recent decision on the part of Disney to not put out his partisan, Bush-bashing picture....he was told over a year ago it wasn't going to happen. So much for the cries of censorship. Think the media will retract their stories? Of course not.

Moore admitted during an interview with CNN that he knew a long time ago Disney wasn't going to release it. This after he wrote a letter to his supporters saying he only found out Monday. So, he lied. Nothing new here...Michael Moore has been lying for years. Will the mainstream media call him on it?

Disney should sue him after that little publicity stunt. Why does anyone take this guy seriously?

Reported by Neal Boortz

 

[I.P. Freley]

Michael Moore is nothing "moore" than a blathering windbag with the most naked of hatred for anything even remotely to the right, and the unfortunate ability to command attention to his views and his comically biased films.

He first rose to prominence, as I recall, with the movie "Roger and Me" in the late 80's (?). I saw the movie and was reasonably impressed by it... Until I did a little research and found that omissions of fact, exaggerations of story and fabrication of "truth" abounded and there were holes in the story big enough to drive a Peterbilt through.

Anything he's done since has thus become suspect in my eyes, and his performance at the Oscars last year (?) was one of the most pitiful things ever witnessed on television.

Even worse, IMHO, than the last episode of "Friends".

 

[Bandit60]

And Moore being a liar is a suprise to anyone?

 

[Midnight Mike]

MICHAEL MOORE is pure scum, what the hell is wrong with this guy & he is talking about running for congress! Well, I guess he fits right in, can not tell the truth if his life depended on it.

 

[ShawnC]

MICHAEL MOORE is pure scum, what the hell is wrong with this guy & he is talking about running for congress! Well, I guess he fits right in, can not tell the truth if his life depended on it.

I thought he was running to be the presdeint of the NRA.

 

[blueridge71]

And that's not all. It was recently revealed that his studio outsources to Canada!

(shaking head sadly) What about all those American film jobs lost?

 

[captainv]

both Disney and Moore are idiots. Moore for lying about Disney's decision and Disney for making it.

sad that moore made such a stunt. he doesn't need the publicity. i think his Oscar speech guaranteed he'd get plenty of press for his next film. controversy always attracts press coverage, and i don't think he'd have trouble finding a new distributor.

sad that disney favors censorship over free speech. just say you don't agree with his views and release it anyway. like people would cancel their vacations to Orlando over some little film? by letting the film out, Disney could at least make some money off it. they could use every cent.

of course Moore is biased - it sells tickets! let's give Rush a camera for a film on Kerry for balance. then disney can distribute both...

 

[:-)]

! let's give Rush a camera for a film on Kerry for balance. then disney can distribute both...

What has Rush Limbaugh ever lied about? A liar can't be balanced, a liar can only be exposed. Unless of course the liberal media refuses to report on his lies.

 

[ShawnC]

What has Rush Limbaugh ever lied about? A liar can't be balanced, a liar can only be exposed. Unless of course the liberal media refuses to report on his lies.

I'm a Republican, though he doesn't outright lie, or really distort the facts as much as Moore does. Rush is a Conservative stooge, he's fun to listen to every once in a while, but he gets tiresome.

The best talk show host on radio right now (well not counting Phil Hendrie) is Glenn Beck, the piece me did on abortion is a riot. He not only was able to make you think, and laugh, he did a great job mocking Al Franken and Air America in one piece.

 

[captainv]

>What has Rush Limbaugh ever lied about? A liar can't be balanced, a liar can only be exposed. Unless of course the liberal media refuses to report on his lies.

i would argue that both Rush and Michael Moore use facts, quotes, soundbites, or whatever that support their cause, and leave out that which doesn't.

they are both advocates on opposite ends of the spectrum. neither is duty-bound to tell the "truth," per se, they are paid to entertain us. and Rush, especially, is very good at what he does.

is every word that comes out of Rush's mouth the God's-honest truth? IMO, no more so than every word out of Moore's is a lie. i'd almost, almost compare it to the roles of opposing attorneys. as advocates, each side uses the facts to create the best possible scenario for his side.

i often compare political arguments to sports. I'm a Gator fan, and let's say you like the Seminoles. Give us both a sheet of facts about the two teams. Some of the data will favor my team, some will favor yours. We can both create a convincing argument (in our own minds anyway) as to why our respective teams will win. "truth" often relies heavily on your point of view.

 

[CatYaaak]

sad that disney favors censorship over free speech.

Disney can't be guilty of "cencorship", since censorship is a government dictate, with force of law behind it. You may as well say that parents are guilty of "censorship" if they don't let their teenage kids say "f@%k" the dinner table.

Protection of "free speech" is just that...Using your inherent Right to voice your opinion without the GOVERNMENT throwing you in prison for it. The Bill of Rights are instructions to the Governement, limiting it's power ("Congress shall pass no law...."), and the "Free Speech"provision was meant to stop Congress from enacting laws that created political crimes.

"Free speech" does NOT, however, mean that the government or (especially) businesses have to provide a podium and microphone to someone excercising that Right.

Sanctimonious, ignorant chin-dribblers like Michael Moore don't know enough about this country, the nature of Rights, or why those protections are in place to understand this difference. His world-view and grasp of history are sophmoric at best, and his diatribes (on screen and off) are completely devoid of anything approaching insight or original thought, and amount to nothing more than a whiny brat stamping his foot demanding that the world listen to his regurgitated tripe.

 

[bart]

i would argue that both Rush and Michael Moore use facts, quotes, soundbites, or whatever that support their cause, and leave out that which doesn't.

And you would be right...

HOWEVER, I would argue that Rush doesn't flat out lie. Michael Moore just makes up "facts" and "statistics" and PASSES THEM OFF as the truth in his so-called "documentaries", knowing full well that he is misleading his audience.

Disney is exercising their right of free speech by NOT distributing something they know to be an outright fabrication. Funny that free speech becomes protected when a lying liberal is subjected to the rigors of the marketplace when they are selling ideas. Michael is totally free to speak out all he wants.

Michael Moore has NO constitutional right whatsoever to have a movie distributed by Disney, if he does, then I have a film I want distributed titled "My Wife is a Lesbian, the Story of an American President". After all, under the constitution as you understand it, it is my fundamental right of free speech to have my film distributed.

Along the same line, everyone get ready for the howls when Air America finishes disintegrating. It will be evil corporations abridging liberal free speech. The bottom line is that the majority of Americans are conservative, and know that liberal's ideas do not work when applied in the real world, so they are not buying.

Since noone buys their ideas, it must be that their free speech rights are being infringed, beacause their ideas are SO GOOD! Right? Isn't that the way it works, or am I missing something here?

 

[MW44]

Bart-
Careful what you say there. You just stated that Disney refused to distribute his film because they know it's an outright fabrication. Give me a break. Are you friends with the top execs at Disney, do they keep you informed of their decisions?

A couple of your qoutes:

"HOWEVER, I would argue that Rush doesn't flat out lie. Michael Moore just makes up "facts" and "statistics" and PASSES THEM OFF as the truth in his so-called "documentaries", knowing full well that he is misleading his audience."

"Disney is exercising their right of free speech by NOT distributing something they know to be an outright fabrication."

Bart I don't know why anybody takes you seriously. You just did exactly what you accuse Moore of doing. You seem to have all this insider knowledge of what goes on at Disney and pass it off as fact. Did Disney publicly state that they are going to refrain from distributing this movie because it is full of lies? Or are you just making sh#t up? The article I read said that Disney's official statement was that they did not want to release a partisan movie. They did NOT state that it was a fabrication or was full of lies.

 

[captainv]

CatYaaak, bart,

i concede Disney can't be guilty of censorship unless Moore's film never comes out. and we can pretty much all agree that it will. i'm just disappointed that they're scared off by the content. so Moore's anti-Bush, so what? now if they said they would lose money on the film...

i mean, look at your local Barnes & Noble. you've got books covering every possible viewpoint: pro/anti Bush, pro/anti Kerry, anti/anti Clinton, , O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Franken. they all find an audience, even if some of them are less than fair and balanced. the publishing houses aren't scared off by the viewpoints of the authors, so why is Disney?

CatYaaak, i disagree that censorship can only come from the government. my dictionary defines a censor as "a person authorized to review books, letters, films, etc., to remove any material deemed 'harmful...' "

goverments would be the most common source of censorship, but certainly churches, corporations and even individuals do their share. i'm sure film critics, for example, would accuse the MPAA for giving (or threatening to give) the dreaded NC-17 rating, essentially the kiss of death to a film's success. what was the film years ago - "Henry and June"? Skinemax late at night has a lot more naked people but yet the film was deemed too graphic to be rated R. Blockbuster has offered sanitized "family" versions of films for years, there's some company that goes through and cuts swear words and graphic scenes, much to the director's dismay. and you bet parents are censors, but kids don't have the rights that adults do, so that's ok.

 

[AxisVDP]

For some reason all my friends are liberal, and they always push me to watch that stupid Bowling for Columbine. I watched parts of it one night because it was on T.V. and I had nothing better to do. It was some of the worst arguments I've ever seen. Moore went to Lockheed Martin and began insinuating that they are responsible for Columbine. Then they just showed a bunch of stupid video clips that were so obviously edited in favor of Moore that I just turned the T.V. off.

 

[Tim47SIP]

Which President?

"My Wife is a Lesbian, the Story of an American President"


If you were talking about Clinton, then you have a GREAT movie!

I think Disney walked away from this film over a year ago because of the easily seen direction that Moore was moving concerning his political agenda. He is out to destroy with propoganda and Disney did not want to be attached to that label. If Moore was known for his unbiased or at least truthful reporting, then there really would have never been a problem. It is kind of like Kennedy directing an "I Love Bush" film. How do you think that one would come out?

 

[pilotyip]

What NRA?

"I thought he was running to be the presdeint of the NRA".

What would he have to do with the Naval Reserve Association?

 

[sqwkvfr]

For some reason all my friends are liberal, and they always push me to watch that stupid Bowling for Columbine. I watched parts of it one night because it was on T.V. and I had nothing better to do. It was some of the worst arguments I've ever seen. Moore went to Lockheed Martin and began insinuating that they are responsible for Columbine. Then they just showed a bunch of stupid video clips that were so obviously edited in favor of Moore that I just turned the T.V. off.

Do you mean the Lockheed-Martin factory that Moore insinuated was building weapons when, in fact, that factory builds launch vehicles for the space program?

 

[ifly4food]

Show of hands:

How many of you up there bashing Moore can honestly say you've seen the movie "Bowling for Colombine"? Or any other of his works?

Why does Moore scare you so much that you feel the need to publicly slander him?
If he's truly the liar you profess, then the general public must already know that. Why would you feel the need to put this out, especially on an AVIATION FORUM?

Or maybe the truth just cuts the the core of your mindless conservative agenda.

Think outside the box, and think for yourself, not what the Conservative Right (Limbaugh, etc) tell you to think.

 

[sqwkvfr]

"Every fact in the film is true. Absolutely every fact in the film is true. And anybody who says otherwise is committing an act of libel."

-Michael Moore, responding to a question about reported innacuracies in his films "Roger and Me" and "Bowling for Columbine"

Well, lets just see what kind of distortions we can find in Moore's body of work:


1. When "Bowling for Columbine" was released in theaters, it featured a 1988 Bush-Quayle ad called "Revolving Doors," which criticized a prison furlough program in operation when Michael Dukakis was governor of Massachusetts. Though Horton was furloughed under the program in question, the ad did not explicitly mention him, unlike the more famous ad aired by the National Security Political Action Committee, which had close ties to Bush media advisor Roger Ailes.

But because this part of "Bowling" attempted to show how portrayals of black men are used to promote fear in the public, Moore inserted the caption "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." into the ad, using a text style nearly identical to the ad's original captions. A casual viewer would assume that the text was part of the original ad. The caption is used to support Moore's statement, which runs over the sequence, that "whether you're a psychotic killer or running for president of the United States, the one thing you can always count on is white America's fear of the black man."

However, according to the archived video of the ad linked above, media reports and interviews with a high-level Dukakis official and political experts, the caption did not appear in the original ad. Moreover, it was incorrect -- Horton raped a woman while on furlough, but he did not commit murder.

In a tacit acknowledgment that the caption was both phony and factually incorrect, Moore has altered the text in the DVD version. The caption now reads "Willie Horton released. Then rapes a woman." Clearly, every "fact" in the film was not true, and critics who pointed out the alteration of the Horton ad (among other things) were not committing libel.



2. The DVD also contains further proof of Moore's tendency to stretch and distort the facts. Hardy has criticized Moore for claiming that the plaque at the US Air Force Academy near a B-52 on display "proudly proclaims that the plane killed Vietnamese people on Christmas Eve of 1972. It was the largest bombing campaign of the Vietnam War." This phrasing insinuates that the plaque praises the bombing of civilians. It actually says the B-52 "shot down a MIG northeast of Hanoi" on that date. The plaque does celebrate "the men and women of the Strategic Air Command who flew and maintained the B-52D throughout its 26 year history in the command," including "Aircraft 55,003, with over 15,000 flying hours," which presumably included bombing runs over Vietnam such as the one on Christmas Eve, but it does not "proudly" proclaim that it was used to kill Vietnamese civilians. According to Ebert, Moore's response to this criticism was as follows: "I was making a point about the carpet bombing of Vietnam during the 1972 Christmas offensive. I did not say exactly what the plaque said but was paraphrasing."


3. The DVD captures Moore exaggerating this still further, saying during a speech at the University of Denver on February 26, 2003 that the B-52 participated in the massive Christmas Eve bombing campaign. "And they've got a plaque on there proudly proclaiming that this bomber, this B-52, killed thousands upon thousands of Vietnamese -- innocent civilians." In both cases, his representation of the plaque is dishonest.


4. Contrary to the title of the film, the two boys who committed the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., did not bowl the morning before the shooting. Although early news reports did state that they had attended a bowling class in the morning, police told Lyons it's simply not true.


5. This is similar to Moore's continued repetition of the lie that the U.S. gave millions of dollars in aid ($43 million last year and $245 million in total) to the Taliban government of Afghanistan when, in fact, that aid consisted of food aid and food security programs administered by the U.N. and non-governmental agencies to relieve a famine.


6. The film makes reference to "weapons of mass destruction" being manufactured in Littleton, questioning whether there is a connection between that activity and the Columbine shooting. In fact, the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton makes space launch vehicles for TV satellites.


7. The scene in a bank in Michigan that that opens the film was staged. Customers who open long-term CDs at the bank actually have to go to a gun store to pick up the weapon after a background check. Yet the film clearly indicates that the bank itself stores and hands out guns to customers and Moore even jokes as he walks out, "Here's my first question: do you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns at a bank?"


8. He tells the story of a young boy who shot and killed a classmate after his mother was forced to leave him with her brother while she took a job, a tragedy Moore blamed on the requirements of a Michigan welfare-to-work program. But he fails to mention that her brother kept drugs and guns in his home and, according to previous article for the Weekly Standard's website by Matt Labash, his home was "a crack house, where guns were often traded for drugs."


9. He edited and distorted Charlton Heston's speech given to NRA members.


10. Moore quotes a New Yorker piece on page 4 of his book noting that "Once the FAA permitted overseas flights [after 9-11], the jet [with the Bin Ladens] flew to Europe." (Other reports have added credence to this version of events). But Moore writes on page 20 that "while thousands were stranded and could not fly, if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in U.S. history, you got a free trip to gay Paree!" In addition, a September 20, 2001 Boston Globe article notes that the Bin Ladens apparently chartered their own plane - they did not get a "free trip" as Moore suggests.


11. Moore twists around the order of Attorney General John Ashcroft's claims in a Senate hearing in December 2001. Slamming Ashcroft for refusing to give the FBI permission to examine records of background checks for gun purchases by suspected terrorists, Moore writes "The Senate (and the public) only found out about Ashcroft's orders to stop the search for terrorists' gun files until December 2001, when Ashcroft not only proudly admitted to doing this in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, but went on to attack anyone who would question his actions to protect the hijackers' gun rights. He told the panel that critics of his anti-terror practices were 'providing ammunition to America's enemies... To those who would scare peace-loving people with phantoms of 'lost liberty,' my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." Ashcroft actually made the statement (which we condemned at the time) in his opening remarks, well before he addressed the issue of gun checks. Moore's framing makes it appear as though Ashcroft's controversial statement was made with direct reference to the issue of checking firearms records.


12. Moore uses fake quotes as chapter headings, implying that Bush (or administration officials) said things they never said. The most problematic is "#3 Whopper with Bacon: 'Iraq has ties to Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda!'" (page 53) He quotes Bush repeatedly stating that "We know [Saddam] has ties to Al Qaeda" - but provides no source suggesting the administration tied Saddam to Bin Laden personally.


13. Moore repeats a well-debunked myth about Democratic presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark. he writes that "Clark has said that he received phone calls on September 11 and in the weeks after from people at 'think tanks' and from people within the White House telling him to use his position as a pundit for CNN to 'connect' September 11 to Saddam Hussein." Yet, as we have demonstrated, despite a somewhat ambiguous statement on "Meet the Press" last June, Clark has been consistent in his claim that it was a member of a think tank who contacted him, not the White House. A recent report in the Toronto Star identified the source of the call as a member of a Middle Eastern think tank based in Montreal. Moore also makes a second mistake in pluralizng the single call Clark has always referred to into "calls."


14. Moore claims that the U.S. "oversaw the assassination of [Congo leader Patrice] Lumumba" in 1961. However, according to a July, 2000 US News & World Report article, Lumumba was actually killed by Belgian operatives.


15. Moore misrepresents US contributions to the United Nations oil-for-food program in Iraq as "trade." He writes, "There were claims that the French were only opposing war to get economic benefits out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq. In fact, it was the Americans who were making a killing. In 2001, the U.S. was Iraq's leading trading partner, consuming more than 40 percent of Iraq's oil exports. That's $6 billion in trade with the Iraqi dictator." Most of the money, however, was used to purchase food and other UN-approved humanitarian aid; the rest went to pay war reparations and adminisratuve fees for the program.



Now, this is the condensed version...but I think that it's more than enough to demonstrate who the 'mindless' followers are.

For the record, I'm sad to say that I did buy the movie (why should I support someone who thinks money is such an insignificant thing?) and I see it now for what it is.....pure propoganda and a poor attempt at brainwashing....In most cases, that is.