Moore in eclipse on the Left Coast Posted by: McQ
on Saturday, March 05, 2005
Help lose an election and become a pariah. That seems to be the gist of an interesting and gossipy article in the SF Examiner by Kathleen Antrim concerning Michael Moore and Hollywood.
Quoting Moore's former agent, Douglas Urbanski, Antrim says it appears Moore is blamed by the Hollywood glitterati for energizing conservatives in enough numbers to defeat Kerry with his movie Farenheit 911 and they're not in a forgiving mood:
"He was at every Oscar party and screening," said Moore's former manager Douglas Urbanski, a critically acclaimed 25-year veteran of the entertainment industry most recently known for the movie "The Contender," starring Gary Oldman, Joan Allen and Jeff Bridges. "He took out full page ads, cut his hair, bathed and even wore a suit. [Moore was] very present around town."
But the Hollywood elite turned up their surgically sculpted noses at Moore's flick. Urbanski explained that Hollywood has had it with Moore. Many blame him for provoking conservative voters and contributing to John Kerry's defeat in the presidential election. He's become the No. 1 favorite target of leftists.
"In certain [Hollywood] circles he is a shutout," Urbanski said.
Perhaps the biggest news is he bathed, not that you could really tell. But Urbanski isn't done with Moore:
"Michael Moore makes a substantial living going into peoples' private lives. Sneaking up on them," Urbanski said. So Urbanski feels no compunction in talking about the only client he ever fired. In fact, he fired Moore with a 10-page letter.
"A more dishonest and demented person I have never met," Urbanski wrote me in an e-mail, "and I have known a few! And he is more money obsessed than any I have known, and that's saying a lot."
You could write this off as a disgruntled ex-manager, but don't forget, as the article points out, Urbanski fired Moore and not the other way around. He continues:
Urbanski believes that Moore hates America, hates capitalism and hates any normal concept of freedom and democracy. This seems odd, considering that if it weren't for America, freedom and capitalism Moore's brand of expression and capitalistic success would be impossible, if not illegal.
"Michael Moore could not withstand Michael Moore's scrutiny for more than 15 seconds," Urbanski said.
It also seems odd to see praise of America, freedom and capitalism in the SF Examiner, but that's another story. The point though, is quite true. Moore never understands that he'd stick his camera in the face of one member of the People's Republic of China's ruling body and ask one of his half-baked questions and it would be the last he ever did that too.
Urbanski then gets down to the nitty-gritty of what Moore is all about:
Urbanski has given some thought to Moore's methods. "Moore has an interesting racket. A Jesse Jackson-like shakedown. He figured out he could shake down his own type of thinker, his own constituency, for his own enrichment."
Throw red meat to those who hate Bush (or corporate America, or guns, etc) and they'll pay you to do it, whether what you say is true or not (just call it a documentary and the fish will come a calling).
Why is that so obvious to some and not to others? Why does Urbanski feel he needs to explain? Just look at the attendence figures for Farenheit 911 and you know.
The future? Antrim wonders if perhaps a scorned and shut-out Moore might not take his revenge on Hollywood with his camera:
History is known to be the best indicator of future behavior, so Hollywood should beware. Moore may turn his camera on them. Maybe he'll call the film, "Hell Hath No Fury Like a Narcissist Scorned."
OK, full disclosure: If Moore does that even I will go see that flick ... and laugh my rear off through the whole thing.
To make the shunning of Moore complete, Antrim, right there in front of God and liberal San Francisco, concludes:
Regardless, let's hope that the Democratic Party will be more discriminating of whom they seat with a former president like Jimmy Carter at their next convention. And hopefully we'll all wise up to snake-oil hucksters such as Moore, who will say or do anything to make a buck.
Wow ... the circle is complete and the "snake-oil huckster" is on the outside. One wonders why it took till now for the left to figure this guy out?
Because they lost, and now the left wants to blame him for it. The fact that they have turned on Moore now is enough to expose their lack of principle and their superficiality. The issue ought to have been whether what Michael Moore was saying were true, but instead the issue to them was whether it sold or not.
Is it any wonder that the more reasoned element of the electorate regards these people as anathema? If they don’t feel the need to regulate their heroes and their causes based on their conception of truth and accuracy, then why should we trust them with power and influence?
I’m glad you liked my article in The Examiner. Thank you for reading and taking the time to comment. This is a great blog. Please know that your thoughts and comments are always welcome (pro or con) with me. Keep up the great discussions. All my best--Kathleen
I couldn’t agree more with MaxedOutMama about the cynical left and the self-loathing suckers who follow it. But I’d like to point out that blaming "the left" might be in itself a form of self-hate (if you are one of us, of course). No, we’re not all the same and not everyone has disowned Michael Moore. There’s enough of us left who are still proud of Fahrenheit 9/11 and don’t regard losing as a sin. And we too are the left !
I’m still waiting for the right to condemn Bush for inviting Rush Limbaugh to the White House, seeing as how Michael Moore’s five minutes next to Jimmy Carter is such an outrage. I also think calling Antrim a liberal is laughable, seeing as how her poorly written novel (I bought it looking for something political to read - what a mistake) is a huge smear against Hillary Clinton.
The film shows CBS and CNN calling Florida for Al Gore. According to the narrator, "Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy….All of a sudden the other networks said, ’Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’"
We then see NBC anchor Tom Brokaw stating, "All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. It was our mistake."
Moore thus creates the false impression that the networks withdrew their claim about Gore winning Florida when they heard that Fox said that Bush won Florida.
In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.
At 10:00 p.m., which networks took the lead in retracting the premature Florida win for Gore? They were CNN and CBS, not Fox. (The two networks were using a shared Decision Team.) See Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, "CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations" (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)
In fact, Fox did not retract its claim that Gore had won Florida until 2 a.m.—four hours after other networks had withdrawn the call.
One of the (actually, now up to 59) "deceits" in F911 was the contention that "the Saudi elite own seven percent of America". In fact, aside from pretty well making up the numbers, their total investment in the US wouldn’t even begin to approach 7%. In fact, their total investment in the US amounts to only about 7% of total foreign investment.
As far as I know, I was the one that first discovered that particular gem of blatant misinformation. Kopel added it after I pointed him toward this post I put up in July of ’04.
If you need more, consider this: Michael Moore claimed a "war room" and a promise to bring suit against anybody who claimed his movie was inaccurate. I’ve hear a myriad of such claims. You hear of any lawsuits?
"Veritas odit moras / Truth hates delay, " Seneca’s Oedipus, July 20, 2004
Upon hearing his Oscar acceptance speech, a rather large part of the select Hollywood crowd booed Michel Moore at open stage. And with similar contempt have been treated most of those in the minority opposing/questioning the War in Iraq. All these were taking place while the official politicians and mainstream media were going along.
Now that Mr. More set out to give a fuller version of his position, people from several quarters are quick to hold him at higher standards than the current executive has ever been subject to. The saddest part, as Mr. Moore concedes, is that while such treatment is understandable from career politicians it becomes way out of place when coming from the anchors in the official (oops, I meant mainstream) media. Indeed, one can only shriek at the viciousness with which the likes of Matt Lauer &CO are attacking "Fahrenheit 9/11" and, worse yet, Mr. Moore himself.
Anyway, coming to the Fahrenheit 9/11, pity on those who needed Mr. Moore’s movie to open their eyes to what has happened for all this time. Pity for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it should have been the jobs of the elected (and not only aspiring) political opposition and the mainstream media to question this administration’s rationale for going to war. Secondly, Moore does only a partial and somehow biased job—and there is plenty of reasonable critique addressing this at Amazon.com —at untangling the reasons for the war. Overplaying the emotional card with the poor Flint MI mother or somehow justifying the War on presidential family ties or oil interests seems a little myopic/naive. As a film-maker, Moore passes; As a historian/documentarian he fails; As a pamphleteer he passes with flying colors! Henceforth, the four star rating.
Now, I would like to pose to you, the reader, the following question: How will Moore’s movie change the political debate in this country? For it is clear that taking things out of context of what has been the "civil" bounds and using them with an electoral goal may poison for good the future political debate. Indeed, if the non-written agreement around transmissible material is broken, as in the case of Mr. Wolfowitz’s licking his comb or Mr. Bush’s driving a golf ball, the hell may break loose. In any event, nothing prevents the current administration’s backers from bankrolling a similar project directed at their political opponents. So, is this yet another first step in an arms race whose result has not necessarily been more responsive/responsible politicians? Then, as consequence, the cynics or the uninvolved citizenry may well fall back on the same arguments, "they all do it, it’s all a scam anyway," for not making the most of the wonderful democratic machine at work in America. Let’s only hope that the most effect of Mr. Moore’s movie will be indeed the mobilization to vote of the 50% segment of uninvolved citizenry.
As a side note, there is no need to bring back the memory of Mr. Clinton for his consciousness cannot be all clear after Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Sudan, etc. In Mr. Clinton’s defense one can only invoke "it was the economy stupid!" and not the litany of relative and partial metrics.
As a second side note, here’s Mr. Moore’s acceptance speech: "Whoa. On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I’d like to thank the Academy for this. I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to - they’re here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you. And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up. Thank you very much."
To sum it all up, beyond laughter or despair, this movie should mark a moment of sobriety about the current and future states of the affairs of the realm. Provided that the electorate and the politicians do their jobs, (on November and in Congressional Comissions/Committees, respectively), Fahrenheit 9/11 will remain just a talented pamphleteer’s opus and not some bad omen for things to come. And only then the biggest failure of all, the American Media Establishment, will not afford not to take notice.
It’s a rather contrived moral equivalence between Rush Limbaugh, who’s
a gaseous windbag and clown, and a man who spreads holocaust
revisionism and pro-fascist hate propaganda like Michael Moore. That
dog won’t hunt. To do the moral equivalent, Republicans would have to
put David Duke up on stage and treat him like a hero.
But then, I would expect such shallow comparisons from a pampered
suburbanite poser who habitually lies about people he disagrees with
(and about himself).
