Scott Simon on Michael Moore

[muchacho]

The Wall Street Journal yesterday (just stay away from the noxious editorial page) there was an article from NPRs Scott Simon railing on Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9-11.

We've heard it before, fast and loose on the facts, fueled by innuendo and vaugarees...

I was just amazed that Simon would choose to dress down Moore in the WSJ. Why show the Liberal dirty Laundry in a publication popular with the right?

His points were well taken but I hold him accountable for his tactic for doing it.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

When Punchline Trumps Honesty
There's more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore.

BY SCOTT SIMON
Tuesday, July 27, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.

Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work of a slick ad exec."

<snip>

http://www.opinionjournal.com/la/?id=110005402

[0007]

1. There are some things ya just have to ignore and let the folks decide

The film speaks for it's self.

If your gonna be sucker be a quiet one Mr. Simple Simon.
Show class not your ass!

[Eric J in MN]

2. Unlike Scott Simon, I don't believe that

the hundreds of Saudis rushed out of the US in the days after Sept. 11 were thouroughly questioned, or that a significant percentage of the people killed during "shock and awe" were killed by Iraqi anti-aircraft fire.

[Wright Patman]

3. As I recall, Scott Simon

was, curiously for an NPR dude, in a pro-war, cheerleading mode a year and a half ago, swallowing any and all 'Saddam gonna nuke us all' scaremongering tactics from the White House and Pentagon in the buildup to the war crimes we are still witnessing to this day.

[Cocoa]

4. Scott Simon has got to be THE most annoying NPR person

and he has LOTS of competition.

The passage where he takes the Sept. Commission as gospel says it all about the problem with NPR:

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate.

[Cocoa]

5. and I like his use of the word "contaminating"

as if an argument that dissents from the government/NPR line is some kind of infection, and we need NPR to sterilize our news for us.

[Catfight]

6. Subversive writing, let's see....1) he never mentions any facts he's

disputing regarding FH911. 2) he refers to an old movie that "allegedly" had some facts slightly slanted, but not disputable. And thirdly) by grouping Michael Moore with known embellisher's only tells me that the neo-conservatives are very threatened by the truth.

Simon says, Go Fuck Yourself. He will go down in history as another puppet journalist in a very dangerous American time, while Moore will go down as a hero who dared to speak the truth in the true American way!

The Truth is going to set us FREE again!

[billbuckhead]

7. We need to give up on NPR

At least as it's presently staffed and configured. Neoconservative Propaganda Radio. Their proud tradition has degenerated into media warmongers and corporate whores.

[glitch]

8. I started to stop listening to NPR when Scott Simon

and Daniel Shorr spent 15 minutes trashing the Clintons over 'vandalgate'. It was so.. icky. No proof whatsover and these two biddies were going to town. Their credibility really suffered that day.

I had been getting disgusted with NPR all during the 2000 campaign and election coverage and these two were the last straw.
I listened a few more times after vandalgate was exposed, thinking I might hear an apology. When I didn't hear one I started looking on the net for alternative audio.

And boy was I glad I did! So, I guess I'll always be grateful to Scott and Dan for opening my eyes to what NPR had become.

[Cocoa]

10. here's Simon's "essay" on that thing that NEVER HAPPENED

how embarrassed he should be.

In fact, this "enduring image" wasn't left by Clinton, it was left by the Bush administration and their lackeys in the whore media, like Simon.

http://www.npr.org/programs/wesat/010127.whitehouse.html

Departing Democrats defamed computer keyboards of their `W' keys. It was a prank eight years ago. Outgoing Republicans had left Bush-Quayle stickers behind to grin at Democrats from desk drawers and computer terminals. But bumper stickers can be removed, ha-ha. At least some Clinton staffers also apparently glued filing cabinets shut, switched around the face plates on telephones and overturned desk chairs and tables. Ho-ho! Scores of keyboards have to be replaced, tee-hee. Lewd cartoons were left in computer printers. Yuck, yuck. And, finally, some of the staff who accompanied the Clintons to New York on their presidential 747 apparently absconded with some of the flatware and china assigned to the plane. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Part of the fun of a prank, after all, is enjoying the vision of making people laugh. Did the departing White House staffers think that vandalism is a laugh riot?

The small acts of destruction and theft somehow seem all of a piece with the Clintons' last moments in the White House, pardoning rich people with political links and accepting almost $200,000 worth of furnishings, silverware, china and a large-screen TV. The Clintons were calculating enough to accept the gifts in those few golden days between Senator Clinton's election and her oath of office, when Senate ethics laws would prohibit accepting such a trousseau of treasures.

Now there's nothing wrong with living large. But how much of the Clintons' new Robin Leach lifestyle is the American public supposed to support? Mr. Clinton is causing the government to rent an entire floor of office space in midtown Manhattan. Some other ex-presidents have settled for cheaper space, in capacious federal office buildings that are centrally located but not so near Carnegie Hall and The Russian Tea Room. Mr. Clinton's just signed a $3 million speech contract. The space American taxpayers are renting for him will presumably be used to make even more money. Senator Clinton signed an $8 million book contract just before being sworn to uphold the Senate ethics regulations. After so many years of public service, Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton are rich. Maybe they deserve to be. But they can also buy their own silverware, rather than accept gifts from people with the reason to seek favors. It is the enduring image the Clinton administration leaves with so many Americans, moments of brilliance, undermined by insistent immaturity.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. Talk about careless reporting

Scott Simon is wrong about the scene with the rap song. The soldier indeed starts singing it, but the soundtrack switches to the actual recorded version for the relevant footage.

He picks up on the dispute over whether the Saudis were spirited out of the country and ignores the overwhelming theme of the movie, which is the way the media have chosen NOT to report news that is readily available. (Does that hit a bit too close to home, Scott?)

[harper]

11. Last time I listened to him was about a year ago

He was reaming out some little boy who had been expelled from school for wearing an anti-Bush tee shirt. Simon kept going on about "showing respect for the office". It sounded to me like Scotty had gone over to the dark side so I quit listening to Weekend Edition.

Was Scotty ever embedded with the troops in either the Gulf war or Iraq? Seems to me he might have been.

[monchie]

12. Someone sent this piece of dishonest propaganda to me today...

And I responded by pointing out a few things, including these:

Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.

Uh, Glass, Blair and Kelly got fired for fabricating stories, for making stuff up. What did Moore make up?

All this accusation proves -- since it provides zero evidence that Moore fabricated any stories, as Glass, Blair and Kelly did -- is that the author of this piece, Scott Simon, is a thoroughly and utterly dishonest smear artist.

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth.

- snip -

Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't.

And then Simon fails to provide cold hard evidence that Moore a) ignored or misrepresented the truth; b) prefers innuendo to fact; c) edits with poetic license rather than accuracy; d) edits with poetic license rather than accuracy; or e) strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't.

In other words, this piece is just pure character assassination with no evidence to back up its smears against Moore.