Agree or not, Fahrenheit 911 provokes a noisy response

Timberjay Newspapers Online: "Perhaps the biggest surprise about Michael Moore's controversial new movie, Fahrenheit 911, is that it contains little new information. Moore has been accused by critics of rewriting history, yet most of the key points in his two hour-long jab at President George W. Bush are matters of public record - albeit part of a record that has received remarkably little attention in the mainstream U.S. media.
What Moore does with devastating effectiveness is to connect the dots to create a historical picture that Americans should find deeply disturbing.
History is always subject to interpretation - historians piece together collections of sometimes disparate facts to paint a portrait of a time or event. Some historians do a better job than others, but in every case, the biases of the historian inevitably color their portrayal. Moore doesn't claim objectivity in his latest documentary. His biases are readily apparent, and he takes some liberties with the facts along the way. In other words, he has fit right in with the current level of political debate in the U.S. in the age of Bush.
For the most part, much of Moore's interpretation of the past four years is well within the mainstream, at least within Democratic circles. He's critical of the 2000 Florida election, he questions Bush's competence, and suggests that Bush owes virtually all of his success to his name, rather than his lackluster work ethic. As usual with the impish Moore, he has quite a bit of fun at the president's expense. "

By Marshall Helmberger
timberjay