The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward Justice (M.L. King Jr.)

[pegkerr]

minnehaha B recommended the following article to me, and I'd like to recommend it to you and get your reaction. I went back and re-read it after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11 which, yeah, you all should see.

Common Ground: Finding Our Way Back to the Enlightenment
by Thomas de Zengotita

It reads in part:

...deep political engagement is, if not unnatural, at least unusual. It takes something extra to influence people in this way to cause them to extend their sense of self to encompass multitudes of strangers...No matter how justifiable the emphasis on identity, no matter how empowering the turn to specifics of experience that go with being black or gay--that is in spite of all the undeniable gains we owe to identity politics, I want to argue that progressive politics is still, as a matter of fact rather than rhetoric, based on Enlightenment principles and has been all along. And I want to argue that progressives should acknowledge this basis explicitly and stand together on this foundation once more--or that'll be all she wrote. Time is not on our side.

Read more.

What did you think of Fahrenheit 9/11? Did it surprise you? Did you think it was effective? What didn't work? If you aren't going to see it because you refuse to see it, why not? (Other than to save eight and a half bucks, of course.)

Comments

[wilfulcait.livejournal.com]

Wow.

[metmamandy.livejournal.com]

I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was highly effective propaganda. Yeah, I'll admit it was propaganda, even though I'm incredibly anti-Bush. Moore certainly used material out of context and appealed to the viewers' emotions.

Of course, just because it was propaganda doesn't mean that it wasn't true. Though some of Moore's conjectures seem false to me (the bin Laden family leaving the country, for example, seems to me to be probably benign), he deserves kudos for finally challenging the Bush administration. One thing that I felt to be incredibly true about the movie was that the press really has turned a blind eye to the administration. Journalists haven't been doing the legwork to bring these things to light, and television reporters have let their shows be completely colored by bias. It's only now that the media is starting to get its act together and challenge Bush. I think the most important message of the movie, more than that Bush is an idiot, is that we the American people need to challenge more closely the information we receive from the media. If we don't carefully examine it, we run the risk of being duped into another war.

[/my two cents]

9/11 Impressions

[jbru.livejournal.com]

I learned a few things from the movie that I hadn't previously known. (John Ashcroft can sing?)

Overall, I liked that there was a minimum of Moore's typical "stunts." For me, the most effective part was the arc of the Flint, MI family that lost a son in the war. It looked initially, like he was profiling a person in support of the war as the mother told us about how she pulled herself up out of poverty and how the military is a good choice for people without other opportunities. Then to learn of their loss and see the impact it had on her was devastating.

I applaud Moore for bringing much of the reality of war to the film. While it was difficult to watch some of the sequences, I think it's important that we see them. Vietnam showed us the impact of showing this stuff on the evening news. We're currently getting such a sanitized version of the war that I'm sure most people aren't truly aware of what the war means to the soldiers on the ground.

I hope the film is effective in getting people to question their assumptions. Even if they reach different conclusions than I do, if they go look some things up or talk to someone else about the film and the events it portrays, that is a good thing.

I Enjoyed the Movie

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

There wasn't much in it that I found surprising, other than the clip of the Shrub apparently being honest (you, the one where he's talking to his base - the haves and the have-mores).

I certainly hope it's effective, although given how far journalists have fallen from the idea of practicing journalism, I have my doubts.

The bit that really didn't work for me was his bit at the end, ambushing congress critters.

[pinkfinity.livejournal.com]

I didn't learn much I didn't already know at least to a degree, because I read too much Salon magazine to miss the nuances. But there was one thing I did not like in the film, and that was the listing of the coalition of the willing. Yes, Morocco sending monkeys is silly, but soldiers from countries other than the US, including British and Polish soldiers, did die in the war, and not mentioning them, I feel, denigrates their ultimate contribution.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen it yet because I haven't had the time.

Benign?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Is it really that benign, if these people get a privilege that no one else in the U.S. got?

Re: Benign?

[metmamandy.livejournal.com]

I guess I mean that I can see why it was done - imagine the rage the bin Laden family would have faced. They legitimately could have been killed. Maybe it was because of oil interests, but I'll give the administration the benefit of the doubt on that one. There are plenty of other things that I won't let them off on, so I don't feel so bad.

Re: Benign?

[trinker.livejournal.com]

They could have been kept safe without getting them out of the country.

It's not like other people who were also in harm's way were protected in this manner.

[snippy]

How did they get a privilege that no one else got? According to the 9/11 commission's report, they left more than a week after the ban on flying was eased.

From that report:

No commercial planes, including chartered flights, were permitted to fly into, out of, or within the United States until September 13, 2001. After the airspace reopened, six chartered flights with 142 people, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. One flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. We have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flight.htm
In the two days immediately following the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, the U.S. government allowed bin Laden family members to fly within the country during a general ban on air travel: True.

Now, it's true that they didn't leave, but they were allowed to assemble in preparation for leaving. When even organ transplant flights were having trouble. The young members of the bin Laden clan were driven or flown under F.B.I. supervision to a secret assembly point in Texas and then to Washington from where they left the country on a private charter plane when airports reopened.

Tyler, Patrick E. "Fearing Harm, Bin Laden Kin Fled from U.S."

I note, however, that this is from the NYT, and it makes me wonder. Sad, that. I wish I didn't feel that way about the venerated Times.
The New York Times. 30 September 2001 (p. A1).)

Re: Benign?

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"...imagine the rage the bin Laden family would have)baced."$0D
$0D
Yep. Lops*of(hthap)walqkd)badad(qhap reee 3E)lak%resd(rownsi.kj)idkn/bku/nlhskw)thwmdss(abgufe $5@!5@$5@!3ERutaky$kw/ultneb'4

[mark356.livejournal.com]

I wasn't planning to see F9/11, because I can get mediocre documentaries from the library or on PBS for free, and although I adore popular things and popularity in general, as someone who hasn't followed F9/11 from the beginning and has less than nothing invested in the film, the popularity of F9/11 irritated me more than anything else. I'm all for seeing a movie mostly to be able to talk about it once in a while, but it seems ridiculous that the movie everyone's seeing even if they don't normally see movies is F9/11. Let me know if that didn't make sense.

In general, I think I agree with katemonkey's assessment of the film: Michael Moore makes ok parts of movies, but altogether, it was just too much. or not enough. or something. There were lots of aspects of it that were well-made, amusing, sharp, or informative to me; since I don't follow salon.com, I didn't know much about the oil pipeline or the ties between the Bin Ladens and the Bushes. But although he tried to paint a really comprehensive picture of the war by discussing every aspect of it, I often felt that he wasn't pulling his discussions of all of those aspects together clearly, as if he were putting a lot of strings out but not tying them together. The only thing that really pulls its statement together is Micheal Moore's rah-rah liberalism and sneering attitude towards other viewpoints, which as a liberal I have always found distasteful. The blatant partisanship of the film and its haphazardness devalue the movie muchly, even though it does have its points.

Btw, amaralen's review of F9/11 is great.