BW Online | An Issue Too Hot for Fahrenheit?

BW Online | An Issue Too Hot for Fahrenheit?: "It's hard not to be charmed by Michael Moore, the filmmaker whose anti-Bush documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 has been sweeping across the country like a summer forest fire in a drought of truth. He's fat and jolly, smart and sassy, a left-wing Falstaff who has become an overnight sensation in the most unlikely pockets of America.

His film, which attacks the war in Iraq as an invasion mounted under false pretenses, is said to be playing well near military bases. And as Moore told some 800 progressive groupies who gathered somewhat incongruously yesterday in the ballroom of a chain hotel in Cambridge, Mass., for a rally organized by the Campaign for America's Future, he's even making inroads in NASCAR land.

As the crowd hooted its approval, Moore addressed the press: "We need you to do your job. You do us no service...by looking the other way" or failing to ask a hard question for fear of being called un-American.

He was especially harsh on NBC. He called General Electric (GE ), parent of NBC, a "war profiteer" that has $600 million worth of contracts in Iraq. So, he suggested, it's hardly surprising that GE's "news entity" didn't tell the truth about the war. "You haven't just been embedded," he said again to the press, "you've been in bed with the wrong people.""



Ciro Scotti is a senior editor for BusinessWeek in New York

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