Defensive Bowling

MIchael Moore, in his typically understated style, is launching an ongoing defense of his documentary, Bowling for Columbine.

Starting things off in a calm and reasoned fashion (“Michael Moore responds to the wacko attackos … How to Deal with the Lies and the Lying Liars When They Lie about “Bowling for Columbine”), he manages to paint himself as an innocent regular guy being attacked by Dark and Sinister — or else Disturbed and Irrational — Forces.

… organized groups going full blast trying to discredit me … knowingly making up lies … wound up in their anger and hatred … if I go after the Thief-in-Chief … then that is naturally going to send a few of his henchmen after me … you just don’t go after the NRA and its supporters and then not expect them to come back at you with both barrels … These are not nice people and they don’t play nice – that’s how they got to be so powerful … host of gun lobby groups … individual gun nuts … Orwellian-style venom … How do you handle people who say the Holocaust never happened or that monkeys fly? … right wing crazy …

But, of course, we know that Mike is just interested in the facts, not innuendo. “Those who object to the film’s political points are left with the choice of debating us on the issues in the film – or resorting to character assassination. They have chosen the latter. What a sad place to be.” Which is why he leaps there, head first. As if he weren’t there already.

Moore addresses three particular charges laid against him:

1. That the “open an account, get a gun” bit was rigged.
2. That the Lockheed Martin plant in Littleton, CO, isn’t an arms plant.
3. That the footage of Charlton Heston and the NRA meeting in Denver was actually from somewhere else.

Moore points to a number of articles that support what he’s saying, and I’m going to leave it to others to sort out the facts here. I will note that Moore shades things a bit (say it ain’t so!) though, by how he phrases the opposition’s charges:

“The Lockheed factory in Littleton, Colorado, has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction” is how Moore paraphrases his opponents. The criticism, in fact, is that the workers at the Lockheed plant were not part of some death cult, manufacturing then and there actual weaponry, in some sort of existential parallel to the killings by Dylan and Klebold — or, as Moore himself put it in the film:

So you don’t think our kids say to themselves, ‘Dad goes off to the factory every day, he builds missiles of mass destruction. What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?

But Moore elides over that distinction, noting that Lockheed Martin is a major arms manufacturer in general (begging the question of why we don’t see school shootings around other Lockheed Martin plants), that the Littleton facility used to manufacturer ICBM boosters in the 50s through 80s (or at least “instruments” thereof), but that it currently manufactures Titan IV boosters that, well, aren’t really used as ICBMs per se, but, um, are used to launch (oooh) spy satellites as well as communications satellites.

That Lockheed lets the occasional weather or TV satellite hitch a ride on one of its rockets should not distract anyone from Lockheed’s main mission and moneymaker in Littleton: to make instruments that help kill people. That two of Littleton’s children decided to engineer their own mass killing is what these guys and the Internet crazies don’t want to discuss.

Riiiiggghttt. Besides, it plays better this way.

There’s also some discussion about Bowling’s depiction of Charlton Heston’s NRA speech in Denver a few weeks later.

“The film depicts NRA president Charlton Heston giving a speech near Columbine; he actually gave it a year later and 900 miles away. The speech he did give is edited to make conciliatory statements sound like rudeness.”

Moore then quips that obviously he made the whole thing up, that Heston was never there, which is, of course, ridiculous. But, again, that misses the point of the criticism, that the film footage is all carefully and tortuously cut to make it look like Heston held a big rally on in the auditorium at Columbine HS, rather than at the previously scheduled (and significantly cut back) annual NRA convention in Denver. He makes it sound like Heston (and, thus, the NRA) were out to rub everyone’s noses in their presence, out to be particularly insulting and provocative — which a read of the speech transcript shows is not the case.

While Moore does include the full transcript of Heston’s speech on his site, a side-by-side with how it was actually cut into the film is illustrative.

Moore proudly proclaims that “every fact in my movie is true” (which is an odd way of putting it). He also note that it must all be true, because if it wasn’t, the NRA would have sued the snot out of them.

The sheer power and threat of the NRA is reason enough to strike fear in any movie studio or theater chain. The NRA will go after you without mercy if they think there’s half a chance of destroying you. That’s why we don’t have better gun laws in this country – every member of Congress is scared to death of them.

Well, no, unless Moore is talking about NRA Assassination Squads (which I’m sure will be discussed in his next flick), NRA law suits are unlikely to daunt any congressional candidate. What they are scare of is the political organizing power of the NRA, which, regardless of how you feel about the organization, is, I believe, legal. Sort of how democracy works, in fact.

Moore, who only seems to care for political activism when it’s his, also misses the point that trying to “shut Moore down” would be an expensive and iffy proposition — libel laws are difficult at the best of times — and would only give him more publicity than he already has, without actually doing anything about his message or his support. If I were the NRA, I wouldn’t have recommended it.

But it’s easier, I guess, to say that the NRA not suing him is proof that he’s telling the truth. Just has his not suing his critics is proof that they — uh, well, never mind.

I’m actually glad, though, if this is all bringing up the “documentary” facts in Bowling for Columbine for clearer debate. They deserve more examination. Reading this (and other pieces) by Moore demonstrates to me that, rhetorically, the guy’s a sleeze bucket. We’ll see, if he can be pinned down, how he actually deals with facts.

(via BoingBoing)