Do Americans understand the meaning of the word "lie." It appears to me that a lot of people out there don't. According to www.dictionary.com a lie is:
1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.
This seems like a pretty simple concept to me. But let's take a look at what people in the media are calling "lies" in response to Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9-11. I feel confident in commenting on this because I've seen the film twice and I also consider myself capable of some amount of logical thought.
Let's get an easy target out of the way first:
CBN.org (The Christian Broadcast Network). had a take on the film. In an article entitled Fahrenheit 9/11: Inaccuracies Being Ignored By Many" Sarah Pollak writes:
"Fahrenheit 9/11" has been highly criticized for a number of factual errors. One of the many problems critics have with the film is that Moore makes life look really good in Iraq before the American invasion.
Director Moore said, "I wanted to spend just 20 seconds so that the people in the United States could see what human beings look like in Iraq. Children flying kites, a kid getting his hair cut in a barber shop, a couple getting married, these were human beings."
Nowhere does Moore discuss Saddam Hussein's torture and political oppression of Iraqis, or the genocide of the Kurds.
Hmm. I guess what Pollak said is true. Moore did not show Saddam's regime torturing everyday Iraqis in that sequence. Certainly that was going on at the time. But the fact is that Moore did show real Iraqis living their lives before the US's invasion. Is it a lie? No, because it really happened. I believe the filmmaker was trying to say that most Iraqis are not all that different from most Americans. They don't spend their days burning American flags, chanting anti-American slogans or organizing terrorist cells. This is in contrast to the images of Iraq I remember seeing on the news before the war. Is it a complete picture? No. But that doesn't make it a lie. It's just a picture that wasn't shown (at least not much) before. I'm not convinced, that's not an inaccuracy. This reporter failed to use a single fact that would prove her point. Pollak goes on to report. "A theater owner in California is choosing to ignore the film's R-rating. He is letting in teenagers under 18 to watch the movie." This is probably just a simple mistake, but I'm pretty sure that people 17 years old and older are allowed to see R-rated films without a parent. So much for this reporter being careful about inaccuracies. (You know, I can't seem to find any articles on their website that criticized theater owners for allowing young people to see the R-rated Passion of the Christ. Who's biased?).
A journalist from PBS should be a less easy target for my leftist views, right? Gwen Ifill of PBS's Washington Week has also criticized the film's accuracy. She appeared on NBC News' Meet the Press on June 27, 2004 (transcript). She said
You know, I look at this movie as a journalist, and as a journalist I have this affection for facts and accuracy. And even though there are facts in this movie, on whole it's not accurate. Michael Moore is guilty of the same thing that he and a lot of Democrats say that the Republicans are guilty of, especially on the Iraq-9/11 connection, and that's--I call it guilt by juxtaposition. You put several facts out there then and say to the viewer, "How could this not be true?
However she doesn't really contest anything that was in the film. She doesn't point to any fact and provide evidence that those things didn't happen. You'd think that a journalist with "affection for facts and accuracy" would do that.
Hugh Hewitt (talk radio commenter) wrote a commentary entitled "Michael Moore: The Dems' David Duke" which appeared on the World Net Daily on June 30, 2004. He writes, "It is an anchor around John Kerry's neck as ordinary Americans not filled with self-loathing will despise Moore for his tranparent lies and not trust a political party that does not reject them." But he doesn't really offer any evidence of what these lies are. He does point to an article on The Hill which quotes former counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke as admitting that he approved the order to allow Bin Laden family members to leave the US while all other flights were grounded. (Clarke claims responsibility). However this article was based on an interview that was conducted after the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. So there was no deliberate misleading going on here either.
Richard Mullenax of Michnews.com wrote, "Despite the argument of the Black voters and certain congressmen, not one Democratic or Republican senator supported the accusation. Micheal Moore attempts to get sympathies from his audience rather than provide the facts" (Michael Moore's Un-Fair-enheit). I had an entirely different view of that footage. First of all it was shown immediately after a clip of Al Gore stating that he didn't agree with the Supreme Court's decision to declare Bush the winner, but that he had decided to accept it. The film then cut to Gore presiding over the joint session of Congress that certified the electoral vote. Gore followed the rules, he did his job. Al Gore was not Mr. "Sore Loserman" he was true to his word. I saw it differently than Mr. Mullenax did, so I'm sure others did as well.
I don't claim to be immune from propaganda nor do I claim to be the best critical thinker on Earth. I do however, know what a lie is. I honestly don't think I saw any lies in Fahrenheit 9-11
It's possible that some people might think that your definition number two (Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression) might apply to his film.
Posted by: imafern at July 1, 2004 10:08 AMI don't think that's very likely simply because I and so many other people were able to put things into perspective.
That said, I didn't find reports that tried to prove the second part of the definition either. They just said it was a "lie" as if repeating that statement would make it true.
Posted by: alycia at July 1, 2004 02:15 PM