The Moore the Merrier
I don't want to give too much away here, but suffice it to say, my job is as an editor for a daily newspaper somewhere in America. My co-workers in the newsroom tend to be vocally anti-Bush, anti-War, and reverent of Michael Moore.
There's really only one reporter who is openly opposed to those views in his personal statements. I am, too, but I really try to keep my mouth shut at all times, especially since being threatened with disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, for a list of potential infractions that included expressing personal political opinions. Others, I am sure, disagree with the herd mentality of the newsroom elite, but without necessarily embracing the opposition view in any high degree.
Recently the talk did turn to F-9/11, and I was asked about it and I said I would not see it, because I did not care to put money in that man's pockets, but I had read extensively about it and I thought it was propaganda. I was told, "you need to see it before you express an opinion about it." I offered that I didn't need to drink cyanide to know it was poison, and I might even give a lecture about the chemical composition of cyanide and its effects on human anatomy without ever having tasted a drop of it.
OK, I wasn't that quick-thinking, but I did manage a comeback of sorts in that direction.
And I pointed out that most of F-9/11 was cobbled together from archival footage that anyone with access to Lexis-Nexis could go and find in its proper context. I pointed out the obvious example of the Bush quote about "some people call you the haves and have mores," etc., which was made at a charity fund-raiser dinner in which the custom is for the guest speakers to mock themselves (a self-roast), and during which Al Gore, the same evening, boasted about "inventing the Internet."
This is one of the favorite clips among my colleagues, however, and some of them did not take kindly to its deconstruction. It's the detail that perfectly encapsulates their contempt of Bush. It's the metaphor for all they feel about it. They won't let anyone take it away from them. So I got accused of relying on "right-wing Web sites" for my information, as though the truth of something has political "wings." If a right wing Web site says the sky is blue, must it be paisley instead? And believe me, if I could have found a "left wing" site that had any interest in fact-checking Moore, I gladly would have studied it.
But realizing that I probably had the goods, at least on that particular bit of propaganda, the loudest of the arguers shifted the debate to a familiar retreat position: equivalency. Moore may be a propagandist, but so are those voices of the right like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. They just balance each other out.
I disagreed, but not too strenuously, as I was feeling the employment sword of Damoclese dangling over my head again. Moore has far more reach than Coulter because he's an entertainer, a P.T. Barnum showman. He reaches into movie houses full of people who have not firmed up their beliefs by a lot of reading, and who can be galvanized into his worldview by his brilliant manipulation of images. My entire family is avowedly voting against Bush, and F-9/11 looms large in their decision; in some cases it is the sole justification.
But, like I said, I didn't push it. Yet today I remembered to do something I had meant to do back then. I went to the AP leaf desk, which stores the pictures the AP has moved to its affiliate newspapers for the last couple of days. I did a search for "Ann Coulter." There were no pictures. I did a search for "Rush Limbaugh." Two file photo headshots of him in connection with a story about his medical records being seized. I did a search for "Michael Moore," and even after weeding out the picture captions that only mentioned him, but did not show him, there were 31 pictures.
Many had to do with his tour of college. There are dozens or hundreds of speakers touring college campuses in any given week. Right-wing blowhard Sean Hannity is out there on a regular basis (search for "Hannity" = no hits). But everywhere Moore went, newspapers sent photographers, who took (generally) warm, fuzzy pictures of him beaming from the podium, shaking hands with students, raising his arm in some gesture of truth-dispensing certainty. When you see news photographers at work for long enough (21 years, in my case), you get to recognize when they're trying to make someone look good or trying to make someone look bad or just bored by the assignment and angling for an interesting shot. They were making him look like a saint.
And they all sent two or three versions of their artwork to the AP, and the AP moved them all on the wire for the benefit of the rest of the country.
As for us, Moore never got within 100 miles of here. Yet my newspaper shipped off a reporter to his nearest college town appearance anyhow -- it happened to be at my alma mater. They've never sent a photographer to that town before. Normally, they wouldn't budget travel expenses for the Second Coming, if it happened six feet over the county line.
[UPDATE: AP moved a batch more Moore pictures tonight, so the number now stands at 36.]
[UPDATE UPDATE: As of 11:30 p.m., 40 MM photos on the AP wire. Still none of Ann Coulter, though I'm sure they'd be easier on the eyes.]
There's really only one reporter who is openly opposed to those views in his personal statements. I am, too, but I really try to keep my mouth shut at all times, especially since being threatened with disciplinary action up to and including dismissal, for a list of potential infractions that included expressing personal political opinions. Others, I am sure, disagree with the herd mentality of the newsroom elite, but without necessarily embracing the opposition view in any high degree.
Recently the talk did turn to F-9/11, and I was asked about it and I said I would not see it, because I did not care to put money in that man's pockets, but I had read extensively about it and I thought it was propaganda. I was told, "you need to see it before you express an opinion about it." I offered that I didn't need to drink cyanide to know it was poison, and I might even give a lecture about the chemical composition of cyanide and its effects on human anatomy without ever having tasted a drop of it.
OK, I wasn't that quick-thinking, but I did manage a comeback of sorts in that direction.
And I pointed out that most of F-9/11 was cobbled together from archival footage that anyone with access to Lexis-Nexis could go and find in its proper context. I pointed out the obvious example of the Bush quote about "some people call you the haves and have mores," etc., which was made at a charity fund-raiser dinner in which the custom is for the guest speakers to mock themselves (a self-roast), and during which Al Gore, the same evening, boasted about "inventing the Internet."
This is one of the favorite clips among my colleagues, however, and some of them did not take kindly to its deconstruction. It's the detail that perfectly encapsulates their contempt of Bush. It's the metaphor for all they feel about it. They won't let anyone take it away from them. So I got accused of relying on "right-wing Web sites" for my information, as though the truth of something has political "wings." If a right wing Web site says the sky is blue, must it be paisley instead? And believe me, if I could have found a "left wing" site that had any interest in fact-checking Moore, I gladly would have studied it.
But realizing that I probably had the goods, at least on that particular bit of propaganda, the loudest of the arguers shifted the debate to a familiar retreat position: equivalency. Moore may be a propagandist, but so are those voices of the right like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. They just balance each other out.
I disagreed, but not too strenuously, as I was feeling the employment sword of Damoclese dangling over my head again. Moore has far more reach than Coulter because he's an entertainer, a P.T. Barnum showman. He reaches into movie houses full of people who have not firmed up their beliefs by a lot of reading, and who can be galvanized into his worldview by his brilliant manipulation of images. My entire family is avowedly voting against Bush, and F-9/11 looms large in their decision; in some cases it is the sole justification.
But, like I said, I didn't push it. Yet today I remembered to do something I had meant to do back then. I went to the AP leaf desk, which stores the pictures the AP has moved to its affiliate newspapers for the last couple of days. I did a search for "Ann Coulter." There were no pictures. I did a search for "Rush Limbaugh." Two file photo headshots of him in connection with a story about his medical records being seized. I did a search for "Michael Moore," and even after weeding out the picture captions that only mentioned him, but did not show him, there were 31 pictures.
Many had to do with his tour of college. There are dozens or hundreds of speakers touring college campuses in any given week. Right-wing blowhard Sean Hannity is out there on a regular basis (search for "Hannity" = no hits). But everywhere Moore went, newspapers sent photographers, who took (generally) warm, fuzzy pictures of him beaming from the podium, shaking hands with students, raising his arm in some gesture of truth-dispensing certainty. When you see news photographers at work for long enough (21 years, in my case), you get to recognize when they're trying to make someone look good or trying to make someone look bad or just bored by the assignment and angling for an interesting shot. They were making him look like a saint.
And they all sent two or three versions of their artwork to the AP, and the AP moved them all on the wire for the benefit of the rest of the country.
As for us, Moore never got within 100 miles of here. Yet my newspaper shipped off a reporter to his nearest college town appearance anyhow -- it happened to be at my alma mater. They've never sent a photographer to that town before. Normally, they wouldn't budget travel expenses for the Second Coming, if it happened six feet over the county line.
[UPDATE: AP moved a batch more Moore pictures tonight, so the number now stands at 36.]
[UPDATE UPDATE: As of 11:30 p.m., 40 MM photos on the AP wire. Still none of Ann Coulter, though I'm sure they'd be easier on the eyes.]
Labels: journalism, Michael Moore
