'Fahrenheit 9/11' Sets Documentary Record...but i dont think you should call it one.

[Weapon X]

Martin is the Liberal party. That's the bomb party. Bring booze, don't worry about the womeh, we gots. Bono will be performing, so don't be too late.

 

Yo, a lot of young people don't vote for stupid reasons.

 

Key3, remember that guy I told you about who was spouting off about the sponsorship scandal, yet knew nothing about it? Well, he calls me yesterday, and asks if there is a spot on the ballot for "I would like to not vote". From this, I gather that he knows it's his goddamn civic duty to vote, but he honestly thinks that all these politicians are no good snakes, and that if people don't vote, it will solve our problems. Geez, what a moron.

 

I talked to a bunch of people who didn't vote yesterday. Some of them are the type to start a family one day...the type that make a lot more money than me, hence pay a lot more taxes than me. It makes absolutely no sense.

 

Not to sound like some weed smoking, used clothing wearing, poliscience drop out, but the consumerism and the whole idea that reading is for nerds is ruining society. auurggghhhh! Shit, last week, my buddy's ex actually made fun of me because I said that I enjoy reading National Geographic. This isn't the first time someone has laughed at me for it. I need to make new friends.

 

Funny thing is, my old crackhead neighbour calls me yesterday, frantic, saying how he needs to catch the bus back to his old riding to vote. He has absolutely no idea what's going on at all, but he seemed desperate to vote. I'm sure he ended up picking Green after realizing that the Marijuana Party wasn't on the ballot.

[Weapon X]

Originally posted by <KEY3>

the scand had something to do with old guys under Chretien giving big advertising contracts to their buddies companies in montreal. Something like $100mil was spent 'without any benefit to canadians'. So Paul Martin got left that nasty bit of scandal to fight.

 

Yet no one ever mentions the 3 billion or so dollars that went missing under Harris' nose a few years ago. Or the privatization of the 407, or hell, Harris building a condo over spawning grounds of an endangered fish species in his hometown.

 

I'm telling you, I think someone from the Liberal party fucked all the daughters of the newspaper editors. It makes no sense why this shit was front page news *for so long, right before election time, and actually swayed voters to vote Conservative when their attitudes were Liberal.

[Guest]

yeah... I dont even want to get started on the 'common sence revolution'.

[seeking]

your election was swayed by 100 million dollars?! ha. how nice it must be to live such a simple life. haliburton stole almost $200million from us in one sitting, and we could care less. we got important shit to argue about, like blow jobs and whether or not max cleveland, a vietnam vet who lost 3 limbs in the war, actually 'cares' about the troops.

[Fugazi]

Originally posted by seeking

moore said 'most americans'...i am willing to bet that 95% of americans could not tell you who the PM of canada and the president of mexico are.

i know mexico is vicente fox, but i have no clue on canada. which is hillarious, considering i'm 10 minutes from it, and had dinner there last night.

 

 

 

so who won?

 

I'm guessing at least 95% of Americans don't care enough to remember who the Prime Minister of Canada and President of Mexico are. Or maybe that's just me...

[GeraloRivera]

Originally posted by ****10

"and finally, if your not in the army right now, why dont you go over? or do you just reap the benefits of living here and let other people die for your ideals?"

- GeraloRivera

I just found this thread so I apologize for the delayed response to this and I would like to say I am most certainly not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I have a problem with this statement. Isn't it basically the lifestyle of liberals that follow this (not going to war but reaping the benfits of them) Liberals for years have reaped the benefits of wars fought by brave Americans while liberals sat at home and ranted about how they are too "intellectual" to fight in them.

 

Again, I am not attacking anyone's beliefs, but I would really like to hear what everyone thinks of this.

I was talking about this war(not wars in the past)...i do not support this war so i would not fight in it. If it was an actual threat, like the nazis, i would have no problem fighting in it. In my statement i was asking if a person supported the war why wouldnt he go over there and prove his devotion to his country and its current administration?

 

and about attacking peoples personal beliefs...if your getting that from one of my posts, i was saying not to attack a person because your ideas differ but argue the ideas.

[Guest KING BLING]

Originally posted by seeking

kerry is not a 'rich dude'

 

 

actually he is...

 

Sen. Kerry, like the last JFK from Massachusetts to serve as commander in chief, is also extremely wealthy. We estimate his family fortune at $525 million, which would make him, if elected, the third-richest president ever. But the key word is "family." The Kerry money comes from his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, who inherited it from her late husband, Sen. John Heinz III of the Heinz food family.

 

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest...xtra/P74989.asp

 

 

I

[Weapon X]

Originally posted by seeking

your election was swayed by 100 million dollars?! ha. how nice it must be to live such a simple life. haliburton stole almost $200million from us in one sitting, and we could care less. we got important shit to argue about, like blow jobs and whether or not max cleveland, a vietnam vet who lost 3 limbs in the war, actually 'cares' about the troops.

 

damn, way to put things in perspective.

[seeking]

kingbling,

yeah, i know all about his wife's money, but marrying into riches and growing up as a privledged rich kid are completely different things.

[GeraloRivera]

Anybody see the crankyankers that was just on? They had this guy call a party store in a middle eastern accent and this hick lady went off on him.

"america is bessed by god! god doesnt bless islam! go back to your own country!" i can understand why we come off as ignorant. the guy doing the prank said "hey, i from syria,we the good guys" funny yet sad.

[Poop Man Bob]

Another journalist's take on Hitchens' complaints about F9/11:

SHOVELING COAL FOR SATAN

Christopher Hitchens collects check from Microsoft, calls Moore a coward.

 

By Matt Taibbi

 

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental... Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.

—Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com, on Michael Moore

 

Well, that's rich, isn't it? Christopher Hitchens crawling out of a bottle long enough to denounce Michael Moore as a coward. I can't imagine anything more uplifting, except maybe a zoo baboon humping the foot of a medical school cadaver.

 

 

All journalists are cowards. Hitchens knows it, I know it, everybody in this business knows it. If there were any justice at all, every last goddamn one of us would be lowered, head-first, into a wood-chipper. Over Arizona. Shoot a nice red mist over the whole state, make it arable for a year or two. A year's worth of fava beans and endive for the children of Bangladesh: I dare anyone in our business to say that that wouldn't represent a better use of our rotting bodies than the actual fruits of our labor.

 

 

No one among us is going to throw that first stone, though. Not even Chris Hitchens, a man who makes a neat living completing advanced Highlights for Children exercises like the following: "Denounce a like-minded colleague, using the words 'Lugubrious' and 'Semienvious.'" Such is the pretense of modern journalism, that we are to be lectured on courage by a man who has had his intellectual face lifted so many times, he can't close his eyes without opening his mouth. By a man who, if the Soviets had won the Cold War, would be writing breathless features on Eduard Shevardnadze for three bucks a word in Komsomolskaya Vanity Fair ("Georgia on His Mind: Edik Speaks Out." Photos by Annie Liebowitz...).

 

 

Which is fine, good luck to him, mazel tov. Everybody's got to make a living. But let's not leave people confused out there. The idea that anyone in today's media is either courageous or cowardly on the basis of what they write or broadcast is ridiculous.

 

 

Hitchens, like me and everyone else out there publishing, lives in a professional world where the idea of courage is submitting nice words about George Bush to the Nation, or maybe a "Rethinking Welfare Reform" piece to the Wall Street Journal. What Hitchens calls courage is really a willingness to offend one's intellectual constituency, and what he really means by that is honesty—something very different from courage. It's a nice quality, honesty, and the pundit out there who has it and still manages to make a living is, I guess, to be applauded. But again, let's not confuse that with courage.

 

 

Courage is a willingness to face real risks—your neck, or at the very least, your job. The journalist with courage would have threatened to resign rather than repeat George Bush's justifications for invasion before it began. I don't remember anyone resigning last winter. The journalist with courage would threaten to quit rather than do a magazine piece about an advertiser's product, his fad diet book or his magic-bullet baldness cure. It happens every day, and nobody ever quits over it.

 

 

If journalists had courage, they would form unions and refuse to work for any company that made decisions about editorial content based on the bottom line, on profit. Are there individual instances of reporters who quit over this issue? Sure, there are a few. Lowell Bergman walked out on 60 Minutes over this one. And there were those Fox TV reporters in Tampa, Jane Akre and Steve Wilson, who famously (and expensively, as it turned out) fell on their swords rather than broadcast a bunch of cuddly bullshit about the Monsanto corporation.

 

 

Yes, there are a few isolated vertebrates out there in our business. But it wasn't like the whole staff of WTVT in Tampa walked out in support of Akre and Wilson. Janitors stick up for each other. Steelworkers stick up for each other. Even camera operators and soundmen stick up for each other. But journalists just sit still in their cubicles with their eyebrows raised, waiting for it all to blow over, in those very rare instances when a colleague walks the plank.

 

 

I've been around journalists my entire life, since I was a little kid, and I haven't met more than five in three-plus decades who wouldn't literally shit from shame before daring to say that their job had anything to do with truth or informing the public. Everyone in the commercial media, and that includes Hitchens, knows what his real job is: feeding the monkey. We are professional space-fillers, frivolously tossing content-pebbles in an ever-widening canyon of demand, cranking out one silly pack-mule after another for toothpaste and sneaker ads to ride on straight into the brains of the stupefied public.

 

 

One friend I know describes working in the media as shoveling coal for Satan. That's about right. A worker in a tampon factory has dignity: He just uses his sweat to make a product, a useful product at that, and doesn't lie to himself about what he does. In this business we make commodities for sale and, for the benefit of our consciences and our egos, we call them ideas and truth. And then we go on the lecture circuit. But in 99 cases out of 100, the public has more to learn about humanity from the guy who makes tampons.

 

 

I'm off on this tangent because I'm enraged by the numerous attempts at verbose, pseudoliterary, "nuanced" criticism of Moore this week by the learned priests of our business. (And no, I'm not overlooking this newspaper.) Michael Moore may be an ass, and impossible to like as a public figure, and a little loose with the facts, and greedy, and a shameless panderer. But he wouldn't be necessary if even one percent of the rest of us had any balls at all.

 

 

If even one reporter had stood up during a pre-Iraq Bush press conference last year and shouted, "Bullshit!" it might have made a difference.

 

 

If even one network, instead of cheerily re-broadcasting Pentagon-generated aerial bomb footage, had risked its access to the government by saying to the Bush administration, "We're not covering the war unless we can shoot anything we want, without restrictions," that might have made a difference. It might have made this war look like what it is—pointless death and carnage that would have scared away every advertiser in the country—rather than a big fucking football game that you can sell Coke and Pepsi and Scott's Fertilizer to.

 

 

Where are the articles about the cowardice of those people? Hitchens in his piece accuses Moore of errors by omission: How come he isn't writing about the CNN producers who every day show us gung-ho Army desert rats instead of legless malcontents in the early stages of a lifelong morphine addiction?

 

 

Yeah, well, we don't write about those people, because they're just doing their jobs, whatever that means. For some reason, we in the media can forgive that. We just can't forgive it when someone does our jobs for us. Say what you want about Moore, but he picked himself up and did something, something approximating the role journalism is supposed to play. The rest of us—let's face it—are just souped-up shoe salesmen with lit degrees. Who should shut their mouths in the presence of real people.

 

Once he gets past his anti-Hitchens-foaming-at-the-mouth, he makes some damn good points.

[Fallout]

Not that my opinion is ever worth much anyway, but if you're going to read on, you'll get it anyway.

 

I don't know about the rest of the United States, especially since I always feel outcast and as if I'm standing alone in an empty field when it comes to society and my opinions, but I don't vote. Probably won’t for quite some time. Why? Because (1) I don't care enough to pay attention to what's going on in politics when over half of it is just what "they" want me to hear. If one source was completely true, unbiased and worthy of my time, I’d listen, form a valid opinion and head to the ballots. (2) However, because I don't know what's true and what's not, who's standing for what and who isn't, my vote shouldn't be cast, much less counted. I take responsibility and logically accept the fact that I just don’t give enough of a damn to do the research in order to vote. For example, look what happened in the last election. Who really won? Gore did? How did Bush take office then? He bought it? He cheated his way into it? Okay, so what. I didn’t vote, and it didn’t matter. As a matter of fact, it took me almost 4 whole days to hear what was going on. The only reason I knew we didn’t have a president yet was because I phoned my mother and happened to ask, “Hey, who’s our new president?” She replied “They don’t know.” You can imagine my reaction. (That’s how much of a bubble I live in) Many people from our generation are too naïve and ignorant to make a valid vote. Sure, a lot of people our age (18-25) know what’s going on, follow the news and do the research to stay on top, but not enough of them do it to the magnitude that they should [myself included]. So, the way I look at it, I figure I’ll just let the people who know what’s going on try to vote correctly, efficiently and effectly based on the knowledge outside of the common public’s eye. Do I care? Kind of. Do I care enough? Nope. Will it change my opinions or how much research I do or if I make it down to vote this time? Nope. Does voting matter? Hell yes it does. Am I educated enough to make it worth my time? Nope.

 

Some people don’t think it matters, others just don’t care. You’re both correct.

 

Moore is also right, Americans are blissfully ignorant. Fortunately, I’m smart enough to realize that and enjoy every fucking minute of it. But not so fortunately, when we’re attacked, declared war on, ambushed and battered after trying to play savoir and push a religion no one really cares about anymore anyway, I won’t be shaking my head wondering what happened.

 

 

 

Not calling any names (as if it’s not quite evident), but I have a real problem with use of “crackers” in an above post. I’ve treated all races equally my whole life, even as a child [my parents actually raised me well, unbelievably, and in America at that] and when I see bullshit like that being said something inside of me seriously weeps. So what if I’m a white guy in my 20s, that is childish bullshit. I can’t speak for the rest of my race but racism won’t end until everyone gets with the program. That attitude seems to run amok in America even today and I’m tired of it. Get over it, get out there and change the world after you get over your current attitude. No one hands you anything, no matter what color skin you have, so pave your own road and shut up until you're standing on top with the realization that you actually made a difference in your life and the lives of others.

 

Disclaimer: The last paragraph was not an attempt at patting myself on the back.

[Guest BROWNer]

Originally posted by Poop Man Bob

 

yowza!

[seeking]

ha, i had forgotten how completely out of hand hutchinsens article was till i just read that quote.

 

seeks/incredulous tone in place of facts or backing.

[Guest BROWNer]

..i love how you keep calling him 'hutchinsen'.

[ModelCitizen]

There was some movie I watched (I think it was "all the presidents men" with robert redford and dustin hoffman?) where a reporter is talking about how the truth is too plain a picture for people to have any interest in, too tedious or too boring -- something like that.

I agree.

I think what "the left" really needs is someone who can put an entertaining spin on that "boring" truth, be able to play the media like moore, and have the historical/political knowledge -- and right presentation of that knowedge -- to legitimize it all in front of pissy critics.

[KillWhitey]

crackers are crackers man, so your not a white racist? guess what homie, your 1 in 1000.

[seeking]

brown,

haha, when i read that last quote by him, i realized i had been getting his name wrong, but i felt that if i was to change now, i would be admitting defeat. i felt i would just keep moving forward in my ignorance, and pretend like i was right all along.

 

it's a trick i learned from my government. sweet, huh?!

[Guest imported_El Mamerro]

That's an awesome article by Taibbi, especially his takes on journalism. But it does absolutely zero to discredit the points Hitchens makes, other than personal lambasting (exactly what people complain is being done to Moore). Beyond the journalism observations, it's pretty much just a hissy fit against Hitchens' hissy fit, except Hitchens actually dealt with the work being criticized.

 

Seeks, it would be awesome if you joined over there... but there could be problems. They're really fucking prissy about arguments, there was this one time some lib guy started handing them all their asses in political discussions, and they got mad and went so far as to make a thread to force the guy to prove he was a cigar smoker (it's the cigaraficionado.com board) and was therefore justified to be there. He, of course, shut their mouths, it was pathetic. So if you join, and you get accused of trolling and are forced to prove your love of cigars, holler at me. It's awesome though, the board is politically the exact opposite of this one (being that it's mostly older, wealthy men): a majority of righties and a few lefties. Some are gasbags, some offer good discussion with plenty of good points... the latter is what I use to balance out the good stuff I read on this site.

[seeking]

mams,

what exact issues does hitchens bring up? because as far as i can remember, there was really nothing but extreme character assasination, and self rightesous chest pounding. i remember a whole lot of so-slanderous-it-almost-negates-it's-claim-as-journalism, but i dont remember him really questioning any of the 'facts' moore claims. yes he said moore was only giving one side, but did he bother to give the other sides, or did he just point fingers and alude that another side 'existed'? telling someone they are 'so' wrong, that they do not even warrant a response, in the middle of a 3000 word response, is generally proof positive that you have nothing to stand on. if something is really that erronious, it should be incredibly easy to debunk, right? and since this film is getting so much publicity, and moores claims are so serious, if he is really just telling blatant lies, you'd think someone would step forth and prove that. but again, thus far i have not seen a single article to do that. if one exists, for the 4th time, i would love to see it.

 

maybe i'll check out the board, but i think someplace like that might just annoy the hell out of me.

[mental invalid]

im printing it out now poops for smoke break reading at work...

 

 

but the title fucking kills it...hahaha...shoveling coal for satan...

 

 

a comment not on hitchens, but rather his style (and in the good ole fun of tearing someone to shreads)

 

this sentence i feel is a fun linguistical wonder to flow through, which is one of the reasons why i like to read him. i have only recently started reading what he puts out...im intrigued by what he says, but also how he says it:

 

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental...

 

hahaha...dem' fighting words!

[Guest imported_El Mamerro]

Haha, dude, you're gonna make me go back to that article, quote stuff and list it out for you. Fuck.

 

I'll do it later tonight, there's work to be done now.

[seeking]

to me it sounded like nothing but literary masturbation. dude was throwing out all his 10 cent words to give off an air of superiority and to show how much more intelligent he was than moore, who prides himself on being just your 'average' guy. personally i took it as being pathetic and desperate, as if there was a need to rely on 'big' words to confuse you into just assuming that since he knows about thesaurus.com, he must know everything about everything. and before you accuse me of just taking this position because it's in defense of moore, let me remind you that i've said the exact same thing in every instance that a situation like this has arisen, regardless of alliances. peacocking gets no love from me, no matter which side it comes from. it's unecessary and even counter productive in my oppinion. if you want to have a war of words with another journalist to prove who has a better mastery of language, by all means, pull out your dicks. but bringing a pollysylabic sword to a game of cards just makes you look stupid, as if you know right from the get-go that you can't beat your opponent at his own game. it's like the bombers vs. piecers debate to decide who is more 'real'. give moore 3000 words, and he'll give you ten reasons why you shouldnt vote for bush, and backing (even if its just one sided) on why. give this guy 3000 words and he'll give you a hand full of cum.

no thanks.

[mental invalid]

"Not even Chris Hitchens, a man who makes a neat living completing advanced Highlights for Children exercises like the following: "Denounce a like-minded colleague, using the words 'Lugubrious' and 'Semienvious.'"

 

 

 

hahaha...totally...

 

and you know what seeks, masturbation is fun!

 

whether its to porn or its linguistical with words such as lugubrious (sad in an exaggerated way, i looked it up) or finding out what semienvious means. the way he posed it, i figured maybe i didnt understand what it means...i could not find it any dictionary, which leads me to believe that i was right and it means slightly envious...but my question is, is that grammatically correct? should it be hyphenated? i put the word into yahoo, and the first page was hitchens article which i found amusing...

 

anyways the point is, is that the exercise i just did, or using your sullied description, masturbation (as if its ever a bad thing) is fun, atleast for me.

 

i love language, and i love words...i love big words that are just overflowing with structure and movement...

 

he seemed a little too upset, when he wept openly over the loss of his favorite american idol star

 

he was lugubrious over the loss of his favorite american idol star

 

 

i like sentence B its shorter, less wordy, and lugubrious has a feel to it, that "little too upset" doesnt have...

 

and i think hitchens does it for twofold, he like to beat on his own chest and i think he enjoys language...

 

 

so lets all masturbate together...i used to banish and rally against what i assumed was, and im sure still is most times, intellectual snobbery, what about the common man! who is looking at for the common denominator!!

 

...but fuck it, pick up a dictionary if you dont know what the word means, you may just learn something and also be able to vocalize what you mean in a clearer fashion...

[mental invalid]

by the way on sundays, you can find me with a cup of coffee, a pack of smokes, william safires "on language" column and my dictionary...

[mental invalid]

but bringing a pollysylabic sword to a game of cards just makes you look stupid

 

 

maybe, but your use of pollysylabic crushes where using "big words" instead would not even be close...

 

thats sorta my point...

[seeking]

come on roe, you've read enough of my long winded diatribes to know that i too am a huge fan of words for the sake of words. i love being challanged with writing. i love reading books and finding words i'd never heard, or sentence structure that forces me to re-read something over and over because it doesnt initially make sense (joseph conrad has been fucking me up for weeks lately. salmon rushdie did the same). what i don't love though, is people using big words in an improper context or when it defeats the purpose. if moore prided himself on his literary prowess and presented himself as jesse jackson, or don king, then i would view hitchens response as perfectly fitting, but it is not the case. moore goes out of his way to simplify things (arguably sometimes to a fault), so hitchens reply just looks ridiculous in comparison. it's overkill x's 1000, which is what makes it masturbation. it's not 'real', it's a simulation of events. it's an overcompensation, to make up for an inability to use the proper words.

 

oh, and as far as pollysylabic, yes, in that context it was far more effective, but only because i was writing it to you, and i know you would understand it. if i was trying to explain the same context to tease, it would not have held the same weight.

[Guest BROWNer]

yes, words are the shit.

this little gem thanks to mamerro(from tesser's

thread): "axonometric perspectives"..hahaha.

 

anyhow..watch this(go to recent programs, click the bush/blair press briefing). unbelievable.

[seeking]

the woman from farenheit 911 was just on al franken show...

 

it fucking sucks to be sitting at your desk, with headphones on, trying not to cry while you listen to someone talking about losing their child.

[mental invalid]

Originally posted by seeking

come on roe, you've read enough of my long winded diatribes

 

 

no! you!? you must jest...haha..some may say that your are the hitchens of 12oz...;)

 

i dont know, i see it more of just who hitchens is...but i see your point, and i knew we see eye to eye, i was more speaking out into space, proclaiming my love for long laborious linguistics..

 

 

 

Originally posted by seeking oh, and as far as pollysylabic, yes, in that context it was far more effective, but only because i was writing it to you, and i know you would understand it. if i was trying to explain the same context to tease, it would not have held the same weight.

 

hahaha....true, but is tease reading vanity fair?