on the other hand...

[waider]

Something of Moore's that I really dislike: building an argument on researchable facts that he explictly hasn't researched. An example from the book Stupid White Men is where he's talking about who invented various methods of killing people; it goes something like "who invented rifle? a white man (name probably given). Who invented the automatic pistol? a white man. Who invented the machine gun? I don't know, but it was probably a white man" Right there, he's lost me. You don't build a logical argument by saying, "I don't know, but probably"; you build it by looking up the fact you don't know, and using the knowledge thus gained, or you don't mention it at all. I was reminded of this during the bit in Farhenheit 9/11 where he's filming outside the Saudi embassy, and he asks the guy with him how much the Saudis have invested in the US. The guy responds, "I heard [some number of billions, or trillions, or whatever]". And on this hearsay Moore builds an anti-Saudi rant (well, more a didactic nag than a rant, but you get the idea). If Moore had even taken the time to coach the guy to not say, "I heard", that whole segment might have carried a bit of weight for me. I'd probably still want to know where the figure came from, but I wouldn't have been sitting there thinking, "you're building this entire argument on what some random guy just said he heard".

Comments

[suzylou.livejournal.com]

His name was James Puckle, and he patented the Defence Gun in 1718

Probably white. http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/person.asp?LinkID=mp53248

I was going to say something about how he was probably white because in America until about 1982 black people weren't allowed to do anything, but it turns out the guy was a brit.

[waider.livejournal.com]

Don't you have work to be doing? :)

But, yes, you've given my argument even more weight. If you can find the information that quickly, why didn't Moore bother to do so before writing his book?

[opadit.livejournal.com]

I try hard to like Michael Moore because he could be a listened-to liberal voice (that is, listened to by working families who have voted Republican for decades but are finally just getting way too screwed by outsourcing and layoffs), as opposed to an affluent Northeast liberal. But Stupid White Men really needed fact-checking, as you noted, and even proofreading: it included the line, "a tough road to hoe."

At that point I put it down, probably in favor of Susan Faludi's Stiffed.

[ikkyu2.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely a white guy.

Michael Moore's an idiot. I always laugh when the same people who get irked about "intelligent design" praise him.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Criticisms like this are why I've never ever seen a Michael Moore movie.

Can't stand shoddy research.

*perches glasses on nose, puts hair in bun*

[waider.livejournal.com]

The weird thing is, the research is there. If you look at MichaelMoore.com, he's got a point-by-point backup for all the assertions made.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

That's even more annoying, then. If he's done the work, why make it look like he hasn't?

[nothings.livejournal.com]

But his point-by-point backups are still wrong or at least misleading. See http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20040702.html and indeed _all_ of their numerous Michael Moore posts.

[waider.livejournal.com]

I'm skimming that one page at the moment, and a lot of it seems to be about as fact-based as Moore's stuff. Much of their counterarguments seem to be along the lines of "Moore says that A implies B, but maybe it doesn't". Plus, they pick up on a few things that they say Moore is implying but which I certainly didn't read into what was being presented to me, which they then (obviously) counterargue; seems like a tactic as cheap as any used by Moore in the first place. I'm also not entirely sure of their rendition of the Florida recount; I looked into this myself for some other random livejournal discussion and I seem to recall it being somewhat more complicated than Spinsanity's report. But hey, it's all moot anyway.

[matrushkaka.livejournal.com]

Michael Moore is a blowhard. While his movies have a kernel of truth in them, he overstates things, and makes stuff up (duh.)

Fahrenheit 9/11 should have saved us from a second installment of Bush II, but Moore fucked up so bad in making that film that it ended up just turning people off, and not really convincing the Bush supporters to NOT vote for Bush. It has potential. It just didn't meet it.

[merde.livejournal.com]

blowhard is exactly the right word for him, yes.

he could've done it right, and he didn't. that really pisses me off. i mean,for god's sake, i fact-check and research for my lj posts and stories that no one will ever read!

[tongodeon.livejournal.com]

Who invented rifle? A white man. Who invented the automatic pistol? A white man. Who wrote "Stupid White Men"? A white man.