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Moore can rely on them not to point out that the reaction or ‘backlash‘ against his Fahrenheit 9/11 film goes far beyond Republican loyalists. To name but three Democrat-oriented media figures commonly accessed on the internet- Roger Simon, Jeff Jarvis and Christopher Hitchens. I don’t know about Hitchens and Simon, but Jarvis doesn’t plan on voting for Bush- yet he flays Moore’s film; absolutely flays it.
Simon, a novelist, liberal on just about everything bar Islamofascism, says ‘What bothers is me is that the public is going to swallow this kind of propaganda which, although it is miles below Riefenstahl aesthetically, is nearly her equal in factual distortion’
Reasonable concerns, I’d have thought, from people with liberal credentials, yet the Beeb prefer to say that it’s only Republicans or ‘supporters of President George Bush’ who have ‘few kind words’ to say about Moore. The worst judgement they can find to quote from a liberal source is that Moore’s argument is ‘imperfect‘. The worst technical critique point that Moore sometimes ‘relies on Leni Riefenstahl-style sensationalism’. So, imperfect in argument and sometimes sensationalistic? Sounds like the National Front describing Mein Kampf.
Another interesting fact about the BBC’s reporting here are the quotes they leave out from the sources they use. For instance, A.O. Scott, the Washington Times critic mentioned by the Beeb praising Moore lavishly (and also featuring in Moore’s commercials for the film), also described Fahrenheit 9/11 as ‘an angry polemic’… ‘rashly overstated’ among other unflattering terms. The website Moorelies reviews the reviews and concludes ‘with Fahrenheit 9/11, even the.. ardent fans of Moore’s message are coming to consensus that the methods he employs are to be mistrusted- at best.’ – which is roughly the opposite perspective offered by the Beeb report, where the critics are the partisan ones, not the admirers, and suspect techniques are a glitch in an otherwise top hole film.
(ps. I have a slightly more speculative post on this at my blog if you’re interested)
Update: ABC ask a few tricky questions of Michael Moore (via A.S. ); Jeff Jarvis appears on CNN to discuss Fahrenheit 9/11.