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Wisdom to know the difference

The release of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 calls upon the wisdom to know the difference between propaganda and documentary.

The movie gains its name from Ray Bradbury's science fiction Fahrenheit 451 in which the government's "firemen" use flamethrowers to burn books in an effort to suppress independent thought. In his film, Moore torches any civilized need to accurately represent the way things are. Under his direction, editing was done to change context and timelines so that, while what he displays may be "true", it perturbs the truth.

The film does display the violence of war and conveys that those who join the military "volunteer" more often in areas of high unemployment. But Moore is careful, in between those horrific, emotional facts, to strategically intersperse his propaganda in the hope that the audience will buy the sandwiched whole as fair and accurate. With inferences sprung from dubious evidence, he hopes the audience will leap the rest of the way on its own.

In his own churlish manner, Moore is reported to have hired lawyers to defend himself against scurrilous attacks -- which is to say he apparently has hired them to defend himself against the type of attacks he makes against the Bush administration in this film. Some irony there.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is propaganda, not documentary. This film is calumny. Those wish to remove President George W. Bush from office should be saddened because Moore implies that the end justifies the means -- that Bush is so bad that uncivil acts are acceptable to remove him. He's wrong. There is no difference between killing civilization with suicide bombs and killing it with fabrication.

Moore's film lacks honesty. Worse, his supporters make a judgment that it is okay to be dishonest if you believe your cause is just.

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