I am not going to get in the Fahrenheit pissing match but I heard an interesting interview on the radio this morning. I will grant that it was on the Pat Gray show, a show not exactly known for its subjective perspectives, but the interview was with a member of Mayor White’s mayoral office, and the incident he was talking about was during the reign of Lee Brown. Dude was interviewed by a documentary maker about the death penalty. I won’t go into all of the details but it turns out it was a MM documentary that was aired on Bravo, a show called The Angry Truth or something like that. Anyway apparently Moore had hired people to be having a celebratory barbeque outside the penitentiary in Huntsville, drinking beer and yucking it up while an execution was taking place. Moore was portraying Texans as being animals. He hired freaking extras to film a documentary. How quaint.
"The Angry Truth" was a comedy show Michael Moore did for the Comedy Channel. Calling it a documentary is like calling George W. Bush honest!
Considering I've talked to people who went to Sam who admitted to doing the same thing, I don't see a problem here. I had a fellow student in my criminology class ask the professor if we could have the day off to celebrate the Karla Faye Tucker killing. Some Texans are animals.
Okay, I saw the movie Saturday. Here is my non-politically biased review... The movie was fantastic. This coming from a guy who dislikes Moore and thought "Bowling for Columbine" was complete trash. I thought this was very well done and overall was a fine piece of film. However, here are some of the problems I saw with it: 1. To criticize Bush for continuing to read to schoolchildren while the WTC was being attacked was uncalled for. I thought Bush handled the situation just fine, by not showing signs of panic or fear in front of the children. Instead, I think his aides dropped the ball by not coming up with an excuse to get him out of there to address the matters at hand. Bush was put in a horrible position and he handled it the best anyone could ask of a man. 2. I thought the time spent on the soldier in Iraq and his mom was too much. I was much, much, much more interested in the innocent civilian footage from Iraqi bombings, and the clips of the dead bodies. You could see the hatred and anger in their eyes towards America as their loved ones died around them. It is this kind of response that the average American needs to see, to understand why we are hated in many parts of the world. As for the American soldier, not to sound cruel, but it was his decision to enter the military. When you volunteer to enter the military, you run the risk of seeing action. I felt more pity for the innocent civilians in Iraq, who did nothing to bring on their deaths, than the soldiers who willingly decided to enter the armed forces and risk seeing action. Don't get me wrong, our soldiers are brave and courageous, but they had a choice. The innocent Iraqi civilians had no choice in their deaths. If Moore had played this angle up more, it would have made the film better. Overall, I think this is a great film that everyone should see.
Well, I was just saying, and I've seen reviews say the same thing, that the ideas he has and the way he tries to prove them are pretty much the same as what you'd see Jon Stewart doing every night.
If you saw the "Daily Show" interview, I think you'd be glad to hear that Stewart brought that up - that Moore uses editing, etc., to achieve his goals... kind of like Stewart's show. Moore's response was something like, "you are the master" and bowing towards Stewart. Pretty funny. Jon Stewart is the anchorman who asks the toughest questions on TV today. That's a sad, sad comment on the media.
I agree Bush shouldn't have jumped up and panicked the kids, but he should have been sharp enough to figure a way to get immediately get out of that room without causing a commotion. The commander in chief needs to be available to make immediate decisions when the nation is under attack. Can you imagine FDR waiting 7 + minutes to address the attack on Pearl Harbor?
Well, maybe I'm stupid, but it took me a lot longer than 7 minutes to understand the seriousness of the situation, and I didn't fully understand the damage until I got to a TV. Furthermore, I didn't even realize it was a terrorist attack until the second plane hit...I just thought it was a FREAK accident. You're right about FDR, but 9/11 was a slightly different situation than having another country's military bomb you. Can anyone tell me what exactly the President was told or how it was worded?
Actually, before he even sat down with the kids, the first tower had already been struck. I'm sure at the time, he was thinking accident. The part where he sits for 7 minutes is when they tell him that a 2nd plane hit the WTC. You don't really know since all you can see is an aid come up to him and whisper in his ear. Bush nods his head and you can see from the look on his face that something very serious has just been told to him.
A month earlier, he received intelligence that terrorists were interested in planes and NYC. Upon hearing a plane hit the WTC, which is just not any building, but one that had been hit before, he comes off with a "bad pilot" riff. Bush is a pilot and he should have known that any pilot would have found a way to ditch the plane in some less destructive manner then running it into a building. None of these connections were made by him or his staff. After he spends 7 minutes with the kids, he still hangs out in the school for about 30 minutes. This, after Card tells him "We're under attack." Call me stupid, but I would think at that time a President might want to get to a place where he has better communications, better protection, and DOES NOT ENDANGER SCHOOLCHILDREN if he is a target. That's just me though. The big question is whether Cheney made up the noise about AF1 being a target to give Bush an excuse for his indecision or whether he made it up in order to keep Bush from actually making decisions.
Yup, look what happened in the last couple of weeks to our current and former Presidents when faced with tough questioning.
My father just called. He just got back from seeing this movie. Asked me if i had seen it. I haven't. He said he was amazed. Said he realized that it was probably full of half-truths, and certainly only told one side of the story...but that he still came away with a feeling that Iraq was all about special interests and that this administration has let us down, big time. My father has always been of the mind set that we should have Osama by now. And this reinforced some of his fears in that regard. He ran off some interesting tidbits from the movie...his first comment was about the 7 minutes. About how lost Bush looked. Said I should see it, even if i take it witha grain of salt.
who's voted a straight Republican ticket for as long as I've been alive. it was interesting to hear this from him.
I don't think it's very fair to criticize Bush for those seven minutes, personally. Of course, what bugs me about it is if it had been Clinton and he waited, he'd probably have been impeached by now. But I won't criticize Bush for it.
