Two thoughts about F9/11

[WillyBrandt]

- Some genuine, good liberals are running away from F9/11, shunning it as though it were on the same plane as Rush Limbaugh. Not me--I embrace it totally, and thank heavens people can finally see how these creeps really are. Look, you don't have to think it's a perfect movie (what movie is? what opinion piece is? what news report is?) But this superior distancing, especially given all the crapulence in the media, is unreal. It reeks of both a lack of self-confidence--what will the kool kidz think--and an empty superiority to fiery, populist liberalism, as opposed to bloodless elite liberalism, removed from the visceral experience of regular folks.

- That old lady complaining about Halliburton was excellent. A salt of the earth type of woman--sharp, very impressive, and extremely effective and sympathetic in my view.

[ArtieBoy]

1. Good analysis

Yes, I see people who seem to fundamentally agree with it nitpicking this or that fact just so everyone will know they're "centered" and "analytical." If it's slanted, biased and somewhat extremist...GREAT! It's about time the other side had it's chance to be that way. We've been hearing Rush Limbaugh and seeing Ann Coulter on TV for over 10 years now.

I've seen it twice and may see it a third time this weekend.

[xray s]

2. I think Moore's work is nothing at all like Limbaugh's

Limbaugh farts his lies on the air and hopes the smell dissipates before you have time to really analyze them. That is the unique feature of the media he wallows in. No one sits and tapes his radio show and plays it back to check for mendacity.

Moore, on the other hand, puts his opinions and evidence to back them up on the big screen, on film (and soon on tape and DVD). You can watch, watch again, freeze frame, and fact check it all.

Moore has the guts to do this. Limbaugh doesn't.

[Zen]

3. I've seen it twice - thoroughly enjoyed it both times.

'Course I hate the Chimps guts and I knew he was destroying out country before F-911 - just reinforced what I already knew.

[PATRICK]

4. OK I finally saw it

And as stunning as the repressed stories pictures and revelations were(like seeing Lord of the Rings reduced but resplendent in a film) a single unifying element struck me full force.

it was a mirror held up to the entire nation. If Moore can be ridiculed or criticized the same could be said(in much greater degree) for all the common and elitist people paraded before us in the storms of crisis and bewilderment.

What sort of summed it up for me was that mother facing the walled in WH, all her emotions and experiences come to a head. "I thought I knew what this this country was about and I didn't." Two older ladies were seated quietly in front and it emphasized to me how many women their own age, Iraqi and American, were delivering the most powerful messages, the clearest, bitterest truths.

The affable vignettes about Oregon, the recruiters, the breast milk could not deflate this brutally candid mirror of moral mistakes, helplessness,
arrogance, faith in the wrong things, inability to deal with the power we delegated up then were deflected from admitting it had gone as bad as already rotted fruit we had forgot to turn over when shopping. Of mistakes whose deadly consequences were utterly predictable and out there but universally denied to the absolute breaking. People protesting part time in the usual kindly ineffectual ways that must make neocons snort and squeal when not infiltrating and beating on them. People who turn to God AFTER all the sh*t has gone down.

Surprisingly the least human of all was the shifty eyed, fake face cute talking Texas oil prez himself, a riveting figure of all that ignorance, all those dumbed down beliefs and ordinary flaws lost still in a few layers of fog even Moore couldn't penetrate.

The film was us in one grand sweep taken to the cleaners, led, not particularly seduced, into a naive hell of unknowing. Two surprises. The Bin Ladens all looked alike. Next: so did all the Americans- except perhaps for Bush. In the Passion of THE America, the WH staff was a consistent Pontius Pilate down to the last fold of the toga.

A film powerful beyond itself and difficult to judge for posterity, definitely more than the sum of any of its parts or ideas.