Dude, you crack me up.

Photoshop montage of Michael Moore as Humpty Dumpty, with hat tip to Tuck (Illustrations for Mother Goose in Prose by Maxfield Parrish)

"As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than 'the work of a slick ad exec,'" writes NPR host and "professional nice guy" (Jeff Jarvis's apt phrase) Scott Simon, quoting Pauline Kael's take on Michael Moore's first film, "Roger and Me," in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (availiable to subscribers only):

A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.

Forget about Kael's "slick ad execs." Moore's relationship to facts reminds us of the MSM. As we and the blogosphere are forever pointing out, big media have their narratives -- Bush Lied™ being the narrative of choice during this election season -- and use, twist or simply leave out facts to further the story they want to tell. Simon continues:

Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."

His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't . . .

But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.

Is the responsible Left (whassat?) beginning to see the light? It's being reported that Moore has become radioactive to Kerry & Company as they attempt to reposition themselves toward the center. Meanwhile, Moore continues to entertain delusions of grandeur. A soundbite from the Fleet Center yesterday:

The minute Kerry moves into the White House next January, I'll be turning my camera on him.

Careful, Michael. Have you forgotten that pride goeth before a fall?

Comments

[sherry]

that's funny! :P but doesn't Moore know that Kerry has his own hand held camera and he'd just reshoot the scences with "himself" of course playing the hero.