Truth amid Moore's propaganda
/The Boston Herald
BEVERLY BECKHAM
No one I know goes to the movies anymore. My father says he can't sit that long. My daughter says she can't deal with the crowds. My friends say they haven't the time. My neighbors say they can't remember the last movie they saw. Even the guy who came to inject pellets into one of my trees last week said it has been years since he's been to a movie.
I tell them they need to see ``Fahrenheit 9/11.''
``It's nothing but propaganda,'' a stranger says. ``I read about it and I wouldn't waste my time.''
Michael Moore's documentary is, indeed, propaganda. It's facts and footage cut and pasted to make the point that George W. Bush has led us into a war we didn't need to fight.
But never mind how things are arranged. Facts are facts. And pictures don't lie. And when you see on the big screen with your own eyes, the President of the United States sitting in a Florida classroom, with fear and bewilderment in his eyes, reading to children for seven long minutes on the morning of Sept. 11, after the second plane hit the World Trade Center, after being told, ``America is under attack,'' you cringe.
The leader of the free world does nothing. He is immobilized. And because a camera was running - a teacher's? Someone's - it's history.
You can take away the voiceover from this footage. You can take away Moore's sarcasm. You can take away the pop music and the clips from ``Dragnet'' and all of Moore's signature antics.
You can take away everything from this entire documentary and you'd still have the pictures.
And the pictures all by themselves are damning.
There's the president looking like a lost boy instead of a leader.
There's the president, later, in the middle of the war on terrorism, feigning seriousness for the camera, then turning back to his golf game, unaware that another camera is running and recording his smile. And his swing.
There's the president addressing his rich friends at a black tie dinner, ``This is an impressive crowd,'' he tells them. ``The haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base.''
Alone this is bad. But it's worse when juxtaposed next to footage of Baghdad burning and children dying and American soldiers, most of them kids, fighting. Poor kids, not the rich people's kids, coming home without arms or legs. Coming home in boxes.
Film - live action caught on camera - is this president's hemlock.
Critics contend that Moore hasn't said anything new. That everyone knows everything you see up on the big screen.
But seeing is believing. Seeing the contested election again. Florida's chads. Bush's proclivity for play, not work. The terror warnings before Sept. 11. The special treatment of the Saudis. The plans for war. The escalation of fear. The bombings. The bloodshed. The erosion of freedom at home.
There's an old book, ``Johnny Got His Gun,'' by Dalton Trumbo. It's about a soldier in World War I. It's as hard to read as Moore's film is to watch. Both break your heart because both say the same thing: We grow our youth for war. Over and over. One generation after another.
Moore confronts members of Congress. He tries to get them to sign up their kids to fight in Iraq. But most kids of the well-to-do are not fighting. They're in school. They're in the boardrooms. A revelation? No. But a fact. The rich get rich and the poor get killed.
As of Monday there have been 972 coalition deaths in this war against a country that never attacked us: 854 Americans, 60 Britons, six Bulgarians, one Dane, one Dutch, one Estonian, one Hungarian, 18 Italians, one Latvian, six Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and six Ukrainians. And more than 5,200 U.S. troops have been wounded.
You can log on to http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2003/iraq/forces/casualties/ and see pictures of the soldiers who died and read their names and ages and where they came from.
Then you might want to see Moore's film.
