Moore’s persona sizzles amid ‘Fahrenheit’ flap

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

By Robert Denerstein
Scripps Howard News Service

In this corner, wearing the baseball cap and sporting what looks like a weeks worth of stubble, the heavyweight champion of big-screen populism: filmmaker Michael Moore.

And in the far corner, wearing pinstripes, mouse ears and carrying a ticket to Space Mountain, the challenger, Disney chief Michael Eisner.
OK, Moore and Eisner haven�t exactly climbed into the ring. But my bet is that at the moment, they�re not each other�s favorite people. Moreover, in the battle with Disney, gadfly Moore seems to be landing the best punches.

When the movie finally was shown recently at Cannes, it reportedly produced a 15-minute standing ovation, which might only confirm the obvious: At the moment, the French don’t love us.

Writing in the Village Voice, critic J. Hoberman said that the movie “is effective in undermining the Bush administration’s rationale for its invasion of Iraq, provocative in linking of the House of Bush to the House of bin Laden, and often devastating in its montage of official mistruths.”