‘Fahrenheit’ is fiction, not fact

Let’s stipulate this from the beginning: On one level, President George W. Bush and company richly deserve the unfair, distorted and highly partisan treatment they receive in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Moore is doing to Bush no more and no less than what the right-wing demagogues did to Bill Clinton and others they have considered insufficiently dedicated to their causes.

But that doesn’t make it right.

As I left the movie theater (and it was nearly filled), I felt as if I had just sat through a two-hour-plus campaign commercial. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is not a documentary that attempts to present real events in an objective and factual manner. It’s a work of political propaganda. And I’m frankly wary of film critics who rave about the movie because it happens to coincide with their political predilections. It’s downright tedious in parts and could have been cut by 50 percent.

I’m not suggesting that people don’t go see this piece of propaganda or that Moore doesn’t have a perfect right to have put it together. In the political arena, free speech is as much about the right to be wrong, unfair, distorted and even untruthful as it is to be objective. Let it all hang out and let the people judge, as John Milton might have said. But Moore also shouldn’t be taken at face value with his outrageous assertions unchallenged or his opinions taken as fact because he uses a popular medium, movies, and presents his opinions as if they were a documentary.

At the heart of Moore’s movie is the contention that Bush not only displayed bad judgment in invading Iraq or that the administration has not done an effective job of fighting the war on terrorism; it is that Bush has been somehow motivated to do what he has done because of long-standing ties between the Bush family and the Saudi royal family.

Moore is questioning Bush’s very patriotism, suggesting he and his father are more motivated by their business ties with the royal family than protecting the nation’s vital interests. Moore doesn’t make his case through a careful compilation of facts, but rather through broad, gross assertions that suggest some kind of grand conspiracy. The undertone of his work is that there is some key piece of information that will tie all of the Bush administration’s behavior together. But, of course, he never can document his case; only drop a hint there, an insinuation here, and a wink and a nod, as if we all understand what the game is.

What bothers me is that some liberal Democrats want to take Moore at face value. I understand that many liberals have been looking for their version of Rush Limbaugh or The Wall Street Journal editorial page. It’s comforting to listen to or read somebody who affirms your beliefs day after day, no matter what the facts might suggest. To the degree that Moore can help motivate the liberal base of the Democratic Party, fine.

But liberals ought not to fall into the same trap that the right wing has in recent years, the hatred and venom and ideological thinking that leads to the politics of personal destruction. I don’t much care for many of the policies of the Bush administration or the manner in which it has carried out U.S. foreign policy: unilaterally and arrogantly. But I don’t question Bush’s belief that he is trying to do the right thing for the country. Or, for that matter, that trying to deal with terrorism isn’t a devilishly difficult task in which the policy options are not all black-and-white, good-and-bad.

If people are flocking to the movie because they believe he is going to unlock the mystery of why Bush chose to invade Iraq unilaterally, they ought to be warned that Moore is dealing in fiction, not fact. Better to suffer through the Bob Woodward book or a much better-written one by Richard Clarke. But if they want to go to a lefty pep rally, then Moore is the ticket.