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******************************************************************
Thank You, Michael Moore
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Friday 25 June 2004
"The light at the end of the tunnel could be
the bulb in a film projector."
- Jeanette Castillo
Screens in Bartlett,
Chattanooga, Jackson, Knoxville and Memphis,
Tennessee will be showing it. Screens in Layton
and West Jordan, Utah will be showing it. If you
find yourself in Leawood, Merriam, Shawnee or
Wichita, Kansas, you can see it. The same goes
for Centerville, Fairfax and Abington, Virginia.
If you happen to be in Akron, Bexley, Dublin or
Elyria, Ohio, you're all set. Hoover, Montgomery
and Mobile, Alabama will not be left out.
Laramie, Wyoming? It's
there. Bozeman, Montana? Indeed. Should you call
home Grand Island, Lincoln or Omaha, Nebraska,
you have not been forgotten. The largest mall in
the country, the Mall of America in Bloomington,
Minnesota, will have it in its theater. If you
are a soldier at Camp Lejune or Fort Bragg, about
to be shipped to Iraq, you can see it in nearby
Fayetteville, North Carolina.
These towns, large and
small, along with towns large and small from sea
to shining sea and straight through the American
heartland, will begin screening Michael Moore's
documentary, 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' beginning at
12:01a.m. Friday morning, the 25th of June, 2004.
For the majority of people who will see this
movie, in those towns large and small, the
experience will be nothing short of a mind-bomb.
The Who once sang about
how the hypnotized never lie, but as we have
seen, people hypnotized by television and
deliberately enforced fear can certainly support
a war, and a President, which are fundamentally
at odds with basic American decency. In fact,
people hypnotized by television and deliberately
enforced fear will feed themselves into the meat
grinder with "God Bless America" on
their lips.
Michael Moore's film will
snap that hypnosis, but good. Those Americans who
believed what their President told them because
they saw it on the TV will, after less than two
hours in their local theater, look at both their
television and their President with doubt and
loathing when they walk from the darkness into
the bright light of day. There are millions of
Americans who believed what they were told -
about 9/11, about Iraq, about George W. Bush
himself - who will come into that bright light
with the realization that they have been lied to.
Speaking personally, none
of the data in this film surprised me. Having
spent every day of the last three years working
to expose as many Americans as possible to the
truth of the man they call President, Mr. Moore
was unlikely to explode any shells across my bow.
The connections between Bush, the Saudis, the
Carlyle Group and the 9/11 attacks were there.
The connections between Cheney and Halliburton
were there. The connections between Enron,
Unocal, natural gas pipelines, the war in
Afghanistan and a little-known country called
Turkmenistan were there. I enjoyed the fact that
Moore showed off unredacted copies of Bush's
military service record, allowing us to see the
parts of those documents which had been blacked
out. I found no fact, no assertion in this film
to question or doubt. I have done my homework,
and as was made painfully clear, Michael Moore
did his.
Most Americans don't know
about this stuff, and seeing it fully documented
and meticulously researched on the big screen
will be, to say the least, revelatory. Yes,
Virginia, there are billions of dollars to be
made off this Iraq war for Bush's friends. The
second door on the left is the recruiting office.
Sign on the line that is dotted, and be the first
kid on your block to die for the benefit of
Carlyle's stock options. Be sure to save your
pennies beforehand, however, because the Army
will dock your pay for the days you are dead.
It's policy, you see.
Mr. Moore put two daggers
into me with this film, the first of which had to
do with American soldiers. Trooper after trooper
spoke frankly for Moore's camera, condemning both
the war and the people who thrust them into it.
Several scenes graphically explained what happens
to a soldier's body when it is caught in an
explosion. The result is ruinous, and the cries
of the wounded and the dying will ring in my ears
forever.
The most wrenching scenes
in the film center around a woman named Lila, who
loves her country, loves her flag, and above all
loves her children whom she actively persuaded to
join the armed services. We learn that Lila has a
son in Iraq, and because of that, she despises
those protesting the invasion. We find out later
that her son was killed in Karbala on April 2nd,
when his Blackhawk helicopter was shot down. We
watch her read her son's last letter home, in
which he rages against Bush and the war. We last
see Lila standing at the gates of the White
House, tears boiling from her eyes, as she
discovers her true enemy, the one who took her
baby from her.
The other dagger Moore
put into me came during his montage of the media
coverage of the war. Journalist after journalist
is shown rhapsodizing Bush, his administration
and the war. Each and every one of them carried
forth that which we now know to be bald-faced
lies: That Iraq had WMDs, that Iraq was a threat,
that we had to go, and that everything is fine.
It was a slideshow of the nonsense Americans have
been spoon-fed for far too long.
If you doubt this, Sidney
Blumenthal's aggressive and effective actual
journalism, as found in his most recent report
titled 'Reality is Unraveling for Bush,' should
help you along. "Most of the media was on
the bandwagon or intimidated," writes
Blumenthal. "Cheney himself called the
president of the corporation that owned one of
the networks to complain about an errant
commentator. Political aides directed by Karl
Rove ceaselessly called editors and producers
with veiled threats about access that was not
granted in any case. The press would not bite the
hand that would not feed it."
With a single stroke,
Michael Moore has undone three years of poor,
slanted, biased, factually bereft, compromised
television journalism. This, in the end, is the
final greatness of 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Not only
will Americans get a sense of the depth of the
deception they have endured, but 'journalists'
all across the country will be forced to endure
the humiliation they so richly deserve.
I was privileged to see
this film in the company of three groups -
Military Families Speak Out, September 11
Families for Peaceful Tomorrows and Veterans for
Peace - which have stood against this disastrous
war from day one. Many in the theater had family
in Iraq, or had lost family in Iraq, or had lost
family on 9/11 and seen their beloved dead used
as an excuse for unwarranted war, and there was
not a dry eye in the house.
'Fahrenheit 9/11' is not
a victory for anyone. We the People should have
known better, We the People should have been
given the facts before sending 851 of our
children to die. We the People have been
betrayed, by our leaders and by a media that
profited, and profits still, from the daily sale
of lies. This film drove that horrid fact home
with a mallet, and it hurt.
I was reminded, as I
filed out with this company of heroes, of a
portion of Shakespeare's rendition of Henry's
speech before Agincourt:
He that outlives this day and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say, 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say, 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Many of us were not
hypnotized. Millions of us took to the streets in
this country and around the world, to try and
stop this madness before it was unleashed. The
people in that theater with me had done this, had
never stopped doing this, though their President
and their media named them traitor. They were
right. They were right. They were right.
Michael Moore has
unleashed a wolf within Mr. Bush's fences. There
is no getting around it. Perhaps, now that it is
far too late, we as a nation will wake up. On the
day of that awakening, those of us who never
stopped standing, never stopped marching, learned
to live without sleep, learned to live in a
nation that scorned truth for televised fantasy,
those patriots I was with tonight in that theater
can pause for breath. We can sit upon the grass
on a bright day, strip our sleeves, and show our
scars. ******************************************************************
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