Now Watch This Lie
Saturday, Jul. 10, 2004 - 11:20 AM

I've been wondering ever since the F911 trailer about these. I was hoping (and was pretty sure) there were proper explainations. I just didn't expect them to be so interesting.

From Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11
Another Bush joke is presented as an obvious joke, although important context is missing. Near the end of the movie, Bush speaks to a tuxedoed audience. He says, �I call you the haves and the have-mores. Some call you the elite; I call you my base.� The joke follows several segments in which Bush is accused of having started the Iraq war in order to enrich business. As far the movie audience can tell, Bush is speaking to some unknown group of rich people. The speech actually comes from the October 19, 2000, Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner. The 2000 event was the 55th annual dinner, which raises money for Catholic hospital charities in New York City. Candidates Bush and Gore were the co-guests of honor at the event, where speakers traditionally make fun of themselves.

Gore joked, "The Al Smith Dinner represents a hallowed and important tradition, which I actually did invent." Lampooning his promise to put Social Security in a "lock box," Gore promised that he would put "Medicare in a walk-in closet," put NASA funding in a "hermetically sealed Ziploc bag" and would "always keep lettuce in the crisper." Mary Ann Poust, "Presidential hopefuls Gore and Bush mix humor and politics at Al Smith Dinner," Catholic New York, Oct. 26, 2000. So although Fahrenheit presents the joke as epitomizing Bush's selfishness, the joke really was part of Bush helping to raise $1.6 million for medical care for the poor. Although many a truth is said in jest, Bush's joke was no more revealing than was Gore's claim to have founded the dinner in 1946, two years before he was born.

[Moore response: Cites articles predicting that Bush would having trouble with Congress on Arctic drilling, campaign finance, and faith-based charity. Cites a California poll in which Bush's disapproval rating equaled his approval rating. Cites a couple additional polls, selecting Bush's worst results. No response on the distortion of the Alfred E. Smith Dinner.]

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The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that�s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course.

Christopher Hitchens, �Unfairenheit 9/11: The lies of Michael Moore,� Slate.com, June 21, 2004. (Some of Moore's defenders have denounced Hitchens as a member of the vast-right wing conspiracy. Hitchens, however, used the death of Ronald Reagan as an occasions to write a June 7 obituary calling Reagan "a cruel and stupid lizard." Hitchens also wrote a book and produced a movie, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, urging that Kissinger be tried for war crimes.)

By the way, the clip of Bush making a comment about terrorism, and then hitting a golf ball, is also taken out of context, at least partially:

Tuesday night on FNC�s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how �the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists.� But Wilson disclosed that �a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber.�

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