Fahrenheit 9/11

We saw Michael Moore's movie this afternoon, but I'm not quite ready to post about it yet. As a person who studies rhetoric I am aware of the fact that the film was biased. Hell, isn't everything. Moore doesn't like George W. Bush (or his allegedly shady business dealings, or his family, or his friends) and that can account for the extended periods of time that were focused on the looks of confusion that he has become so famous for in some circles as well as the wording in some of his (Moore's) statements. I have seen some blog posts that accuse Moore of dishonesty, but I wonder if he was so much being dishonest or just putting his own rhetorical slant on things. He would say things like "X is essentially Y" which to the savvy moviegoer means that X is not exactly Y, but Moore is equating it to that for his own purposes.

At the same time that Moore is biased in his views (aren't we all) the fact remain the facts. The facts are not something that I want to argue here because whether or not I believe in the existence of ethereal weapons of mass destruction is not the real issue. I have to say that Moore did what he set out to do. He set out to upset the American public. I know that he did it in order to elicit some kind of political action from a population that has become more and more inactive, but I also wonder if he went too far.

*****SPOILERS********


Moore doesn't show us the crashing into and burning of the WTC, but rather blacks out the screen and gives us audio of the crashes, the screams, and the chaos that followed. It was heart wrenching. At the same time that he "spares" us from these horrors he does subject us to images of burned, mutilated, and murdered Middle Eastern children and women. Are these people less deserving of the respect that Moor showed to the victims of the WTC? What about the graphic injuries and deaths of American soldiers? I sit here and think about my friends and colleagues who have children serving overseas and I am OVERWHELMED with sadness. I pray to all that is good and/or holy that they NEVER decide to go and see this film while their children are still deployed or maybe even after. I start to tear up again in the way that I did in the movie theater. I am not afraid to admit that I cried like a child, not because I was so much sad, but because I was angry. Angry at whoever bombed the WTC, angry at whatever they felt was a just cause for doing it, angry at any factors that contributed to the deaths of these people, angry at any politician over the last several decades who trained, supported, supplied weapons to those who may have come back to attack us, angry at those who sat idly by and did nothing, angry at those who did too much in the name of safety, angry at those who convince, trick, persuade babies (the poor and colored ones of course) to go and die on foreign soil while their children languish in expensive schools, offices, and apartments that those dying for them can never even hope to see the inside of, angry at the current powers that be and all of the previous ones who dropped the ball, angry at Moore for making me this fucking angry all over again, and angry at myself for opening up this emotional can of worms all over again.

I guess I was ready to talk about this after all and I guess that this will really ramp up the number of hits that my blog was getting from the mysterious IP address that could be traced back to the Department of Homeland Security. Hi guys, and don't work this angry black woman doesn't pose a threat beyond that of the dangerous pen and ballot.