Posted by Tim Lambert on July 6, 2007 Sadly, No has turned all the partisan right-wing commentary at Town Hall into haikus. An example:
Ann Coulter
Fact: Women are dumb.
Didja hear that, Time? Newsweek?
I want the cover!
And they weren’t being unfair. Here it is from Coulter:
Women shouldn’t vote: “What changed … that explains the growth of government? The answer is women’s suffrage.”
She’s quoting from Freedomnomics …
The worst part of it, both
(1) Women innately, all other things being equal, have a tendency to favor more government programs than men.
(2) Excessive government spending is a bad thing.
are defensible premises. It’s the conclusion (women should be deprived of fundamental human rights because they tend to support a trend I think is bad) that’s loony. ‘We need to work harder to convince women that apparently attractive government programs tend to have deleterious unintended consequences’ would be a sane conservative statement.
Of course, sane conservative statements won’t get Coulter facetime on FoxNews.
Do women want more goverment? Or is it just that when women work outside the home, someone has to take over the responsibilities they had? Someone has to care for the old, young and infirm, and people were used to getting it “for free” – from women. Makes sense, really.
Well, the left has Michael Moore, so we’re even.
Yes. So true.
All it takes is one Progressive activist to equal ~2 score wingnut welfare-fed yappers.
Best,
D
“Well, the left has Michael Moore, so we’re even.”
Does one progressive truth-teller equal a dozen lying wingnut liars?
Here is another truth about American health care that “progressive truth-teller” Michael Moore didn’t bother telling you and other Moore acolytes in his recent movie:
“However, the cost of employer-sponsored health plans has increased by nearly 75 percent since 2000, with premiums increasing more rapidly than either inflation or wage growth. Health insurance costs are now among the fastest-growing business expenses for American corporations. In fact, The McKinsey Quarterly predicted that the average Fortune 500 company could see health benefit spending equal profits as soon as 2008.
Major American corporations are feeling the effects. General Motors’ CEO recently lamented that, “[GM's] health care expense represents a significant disadvantage versus our foreign-based competitors. Left unaddressed, this will make a big difference in our ability to compete in investment, technology and other key contributors to our future success.” GM’s CEO is not alone. The Economist recently speculated that many American executives harbor similar sentiments and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has identified the cost of health care as an issue affecting the ability of U.S. corporations to compete in global markets. ”
http://www.iccr.org/issues/healthcare/featured.php
When GM and the other American corporate giants decide that shedding their crippling employee healthcare costs is worth a limited alliance with the dark forces of “liberalism”, tax-paid medical care will arrive so swiftly your heads will spin.
Somehow that jane galt post fails to mention the fact that it’s estimated that one third of the US health care cost goes to administration, so adding people to a public health care system would save money, regardless of what she thinks.
I’ve written a number of posts about universal health care and the US health care system. The can be found here. The earliest ones are the ones in which I do all the number crushing. Let’s just say that while it’s not up to me to make any decision about a switch from the current US system to a universal health care system, I can’t see why anyone would defend the current US system.
ben – we’ve been through this “lying scumbag” story once before, that time regarding Krugman. That time around, having stated categorically at the outset that Krugman is a liar, you were able, after much prodding, to come up with one minor error in one Krugman article – an error he subsequently corrected. Must we go through this process again?
I suggest that you either come up with a few examples of gross lies by Moore, or retract.
Sortition, did you see the cartoon in “Bowling for Columbine?” It amounts to one gigantic lie. And then there’s what Moore did to Heston in that film. Basically, Columbine was a fraud. That film was decimated on http://www.bowlingfortruth.com (which no longer seems to exist, damn) and yes I have seen it myself and verified the work done at BFT.
Christopher Hitchens thinks he’s a liar for his work in FH911.
I could go on, but what is the point. He’s a fat greedy bastard and a lying scumbag. There is essentially nothing good that can be written about Moore.
Shorter ben: MICHAEL MOORE IS A LIAR CUZ HE SUX AND IS A LIAR HAHAHAHA
Ben, such a terrible shame those links don`t work. I have never seen you post a link on Deltoid that was not immediately torn apart by the following poster. Given your record, I really am not inclined to believe a word you have to say unless you can put a decent bit of evidence in your post (I suspect everyone else has the same view). And no, claiming iceland was in the coalition of the willing does NOT count as a serious error.
Anyway, you`re on dangerous ground claiming he`s a liar. The central thesis of Bowling for Columbine was one you agree with: guns don`t kill people, people do. He was pointing out that American people have a particular inclination to do that, and wondering why. Isn`t that exactly what you think?
I’m kind of unimpressed by the anti-Michael Moore arguments here. We have seen how Ann Coulter can be politically demolished. What you have to do is come up with a better haiku.
‘Progressive “truth-tel-
ler” my ass. Michael Moore is
a lying scumbag.’
just doesn’t cut it, in my view.
Actually, ben’s citation is from Christopher Hitchens infamous hit-job, which essentially accuses Moore of sins of omission rather than “lying” (and as critics have pointed out, his piece contained quite a few sins of omission with regard to what Moore actually claimed in the movie). The one place where he was able to claim “lies” was in response to what was at the very best (for Hitchens) a overstated point by Moore regarding Iraq “not threatening to kill any American.”
However, the cost of employer-sponsored health plans has increased by nearly 75 percent since 2000
I’m self-employed and my health insurance has roughly doubled in that time frame.
The first political cartoon I saw opposing his new movie “Sicko” made the typically right-wing deep-thought impressive point: “Michael Moore is fat”.
Which pretty much summarizes the argument against F9/11.
Yeah, Moore exaggerated in F9/11. It’s undeniably hyperbolic.
But, which do you prefer? Moore making a few right wingnuts like Ben froth at the mouth, or lies by the President of the United States leading to hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis being killed?
Oh, yeah, I know which side of that argument Ben takes. Pfft.
Oh look Ben, your link was debunked within 5 comments. Excellent, true to form as ever.
Coulter’s is a seriously unhinged and nasty persona which ought to be put back under the rock it crawled out from. As for Hitchens his attack on Moore (for Fahrenheit 911) deserved at least a bat taken to it with some well-deserved collateral damage to Hitchens himself. The result is here if you like.
I figured you guys would like Hitchens, I guessed wrong. I’m no fan of him.
It is unfortunate that bowoling for truth is no longer with us, since that was the best Moore debunking site ever. I don’t know what happened to it. It came out shortly after Moore’s Columbine movie and was still alive a couple months ago. The guy who created it had no beef with Moore, wasn’t a gun-enthusiast, but was simply pissed off at what Moore did to Heston.
In that movie, and I’ve seen it, Moore outright fakes facts to make his points. He splices together exerpts from TWO DIFFERENT Heston speeches and passes them off as the same speech. It’s easy to tell because Heston is wearing two different ties in what Moore passes off as one speech. Nice.
And seriously, has anyone actually seen the cartoon in Bowling? Does anyone here who has seen it actually buy any part of it as a reasonable depiction of the truth?
I honestly don’t know very much about the truthfulness of his other movies, but I have seen some of them. Bowling however, I have seen and I have fact checked to some degree. It is a sham. His “thesis” in that movie, that we’re a bunch of fraidy-cat white folks is pathetic. To believe it, you have to ignore the entire human history of the world. He’s a schmuck. His “thesis” wasn’t that guns were bad, but he wsa essentially vilifying guns and gun-owners, so it doesn’t matter that he says that wasn’t his point. Sure looked like it was to me.
Yo Ben, if it helps you stop hyperventilating, just think of Moore’s mendaciousness as equal time to Fox.
No doubt a hard-pressed yet committed crusader for truth like you will now devote equal comment to dismantling the disingenous bullshit peddled by the folks trying to discredit Mike.
Yes, he’s a hard-nosed, shrewd and very successful businessman. And you know why he’s successful. “cos he’s giving the public what they want.
You think he’s wrong and/or the public doesn’t know what they want? Then damn man, there’s a great big untapped market waiting out there for you.
Go for it.
Nothing? I’m shocked! Nobody could debunk the debunking of the crap about how the NRA and KKK are related? Couldn’t any of you show how Heston really did change his ties right in the middle of a speech? Couldn’t any of you show that the NRA really did go to Flint to rub the death of Kayla Rolland in everyones faces? Or how about the Heston bullshit interview? I’d like to kick Moore in the nuts for that one, the bastard has zero scruples.
You’re frothing at the mouth again ben.
Fox News and the vice-President of the United States of America.
To name but two modern phenomena that trump any of your feigned indignation at the colossal impact of Michael Moore. And f*** Ann Coulter.
His “thesis” wasn’t that guns were bad, but he wsa essentially vilifying guns and gun-owners, so it doesn’t matter that he says that wasn’t his point.
(Emphasis mine)
This is why no-one’s bothering arguing with you – there’s no point. If Moore says straight out he’s not blaming guns, and you ignore that, but yet you seize upon his editing of a 10-minute speech (like he should show it in its entireity) as more indicative of his bias towards guns, the problem is not the film – it’s your twisted interpretation of it. You’re doing to Moore exactly what you complain about Moore doing to the subject of his film.
Slightly_peeved, it’s not his editing of a 10 minute speech, as if that is all it was. It’s the blatant dishonesty. He intentionally puts shots together that have nothing in common to make a fictitious point.
“You’re doing to Moore exactly what you complain about Moore doing to the subject of his film.”
Not even close. Nice try.
It’s simple Ben.
Michael Moore says, in the film, “maybe it’s not just about guns..”
You say, “it doesn’t matter that he says that wasn’t his point.”
This invalidates any criticism you have of the film, other than objective factual errors. If you accuse Michael Moore of presenting a dishonest interpretation or message in the film, it may well be (and probably is) a problem with your bias towards him, rather than his towards the NRA.
ben – I had a look at the Truth_About_Bowling page. Some of the points (not all) appear quite strong. I have not tried to verify the claims, but taken at face value, they do indicate that Moore is being deliberately misleading on more than one point.
Of course, this puts him nowhere in the league of Coulter [this is more in the vicinity of Bush's Saddam-9/11 links insinuations], but *I hereby acknowledge that there appear to be solid grounds for the claim that Moore lies*.
Hey, maybe she is serious about women not voting. That’s really why she violated Florida voting laws–to protest female suffrage.
Ben, here is bowling for truth:
http://www.bowlingfortruth.com/
when I visited, there were adverts for sten guns and the first paragraph was about people dying because they can`t carry guns. Not a gun enthusiast?
Seriously, do you read anything you link to?
Sortition, one of those claims concerns the stitching job which Mike Moore did on Charlton Heston’s speech, and really it doesn’t change the content of the speech at all (you can look at the two versions on the site). The website seems to think the only way one should report a speech is by playing all of it, and the only way to report an interview is by playing all of it. I’m sure there has never been a conservative doco maker or shock jock who did such a thing, ever ever.
The website also claims that the US spent $250 million in aid on the taliban in 2000, not anti-drug money; but this claim is unsourced (it links to some other spinsanity page which links to itself when it makes the claim). I recall pretty clearly in 2001 that the $200-250 million opium eradication program was being discussed all over the news. I looked it up just now but couldn’t find any details; however the US spent $13 million on opium eradication in Iran in 2000, so I assume they spent a bit more in Afghanistan. Also the US has spent $3 billion since 2000 on Columbian drug control (and security) projects. So I suspect this info from that website is presented in a sly fashion. Probably, the US gave $250 million (or a large portion thereof) to the UNODC to spend on Afghan poppy control, and then the website claimed this was “aid”, not “opium eradication.” This would explain claims by the UNODC in 2000 that the trade had been almost wiped out. If so, then it seems the website is doing a bit of a Michael Moore itself.
It certainly seems like the implication Charlton Heston is a racist is a nasty slur. But then, conservatives tell us that Al Gore claimed to invent the internet, and that Rachel Carson was worse than Hitler. So score it 2-1 to the conservatives, eh?
Also, Michael Moore is presented as having misrepresented NRA rallies in Flint and Columbine. But even if they happened 8 months after the school shootings (as in the case of Flint), it would still be considered tasteless by anyone else that the NRA would campaign in that particular town. There are lots of towns in Michigan. I don’t think Michael Moore is drawing a long bow with this one, even if he is a bit sly about the timing. Certainly in Australia, if a gun lobby mob decided to go and have a pro-gun rally in Port Arthur NOW, 11 years after the event, they would run into a lot of trouble and probably destroy their cause even more than they have. If Americans need to be lied to in order to understand how completely despicable this sort of behaviour is, well I hardly think that’s Michael Moore’s problem.
Finally, the site picks on Michael Moore’s figures, like the 11127 gun murders in the US, which it claims is wrong. It is wrong to compare this to Oz crime figures, but only by 10% or so and in any case, this is an easy mistake for a hairy fat man to make. He probably just pulled random figures from different places on the web to make his point. Would 10000 vs. 65 look any different? Also, the site claims that self-defense murders shouldn’t be included. But that’s ludicrous – they certainly would be in Australia. So the site seems to be doing a bit of a Michael Moore there too.
All in all that site’s only real claim to actually really bad shit (as opposed to a bit of documentary-makers’ license) is that he stitched up Charlton Heston as a racist. I say too bad Charlton, maybe if your gun lobby wasn’t slaughtering all those people every year and wasn’t so clearly connected to christian survivalists etc., we might cry some tears for you.
Coming next from the same site: did you know, sometimes wildlife documentary makers set up their scenes? And they don’t show you every moment of the footage they took on the prairie, but only the highlights – and it often distorts your understanding of how dangerous the prairie really is! Can you believe it?
SG, like I wrote earlier, the bowling for truth site that you found is NOT what it used to be. It seems to have been made lame and taken over by someone else. Maybe I didn’t make that clear. Didn’t you notice that it has zip to say about Moore?
It certainly seems like the implication Charlton Heston is a racist is a nasty slur.
That is actually an understatement. Lessee what wiki says about Heston: A civil rights activist, he accompanied Martin Luther King Jr. during the civil rights march held in Washington, D.C. in 1963, even going so far as to wear a sign that read “All Men Are Created Equal”. Heston later claimed it a point of pride that he helped in the civil rights cause “long before Hollywood found it fashionable.”
Yes, nit-picking about 11,000 vs 10,000 is dumb, I’ll give you that.
He seriously misrepresented the Colorado NRA rally. That was their general meeting, planned months or longer in advance, which they were required to hold by law, and for which they cancelled EVERYTHING (the usual trade show and festivities) except the meeting itself out of deference to Columbine.
I say too bad Charlton, maybe if your gun lobby wasn’t slaughtering all those people every year and wasn’t so clearly connected to christian survivalists etc., we might cry some tears for you.
The gun lobby slaughters “all those people” every year? Good luck backing that up. The NRA supports all gun-owners rights, and you have to take the good with nuts when supporting rights against the government. The NRA does not have a particular affinity for “christian survivalists”, and if you think they do then please back that up.
While the veracity of Michael Moore is something of a rathole here, it’s worth noting that it’s not just “frothing gun nuts” who have problems with him. ‘Spinsanity’ kept something of a running tally of what they described as his “distortions and contradictions”; you can check out their [Bowling for Columbine](http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20021119.html) article for starters. Spinsanity was hardly a right-wing cheerleading squad (if you look at their “topics” page, they had a whole lot about Coulter, too). Moore can be entertaining and provocative, but he has a track record of what can be very kindly called extremely selective presentation.
Having said that, this _is_ a rathole; AFAIK, Moore at his most hyperbolic doesn’t seem to reach the levels of inflammatory rhetoric Coulter routinely trades in, accusing Democrats, _in these words,_ of opposing “anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union” and voting “whichever way would best advance Communist interests,” because of course liberals are “always against America.” In her world, the press is “traitorous” for treating Joseph McCarthy unfairly, Jimmy Carter committed an act of treason by accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, and anyone who criticizes the Republicans, the president, or even takes issue with the way the Iraq War has been prosecuted supports Al Qaeda. (All this is also [from Spinsanity](http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20030630.html).)
I am not particularly a fan of Moore’s, but I’m afraid that if he were actually the worst that we got in political debate in this country, it would be a vast improvement.
SG,
Assuming that the facts as presented in the link are correct, I think that Moore’s editing is grossly misleading on a number of points.
The tone of Heston’s original speech, for example, is much less offensive than that of the edited speech. Splicing video snippets together may be standard practice, but if the result creates false impressions on substantive points, then doing so is deceptive.
In general, points, even those that we support, should be made on the basis of the plain facts. No need to edit the facts when you are in the right.
Regarding the international comparison of gun deaths – the points made in the link are silly, but the author glosses over a substantial point: Moore is misleading by making basing the comparison on total numbers without accounting for population sizes. The case is strong even after accounting for size – gun homicide rates in the U.S are off the charts (which is probably why the author of “truth about Columbine” doesn’t dwell on this point). Moore seems unable to let the facts speak for themselves.
At least Air America is listenable. Hate speech like that in the original topic is not listenable.
Speaking of that, let’s compromise a bit, and turn back to the topic to determine whether 1 Progressive polemicist is equal to ~2 dz wingnut welfare recipients.
Best,
D
Sortition, I disagree about the splicing of the speech. The bit in between the speech splices was Heston going off on a classic monty-python rant about “I fought and died in 3 world wars for your freedom and you wanna stop me being insensitive at a mass murder site? What is your problem, hippy?” If anything the splicing Moore did just served to make Heston seem like an insensitive gun nut, rather than an insensitive self-pitying gun nut. I really couldn`t care less which he actually is.
The same is true of the numbers vs. rates argument. Either way you slice it, the US looks crazy. What`s the problem with Moore doing it in the way which looks more effective? It would be just as silly if he said “every minute in america, x people die; the same number die every hour in Australia.” It would still make the point.
And Ben, as I said: if Coulter et al are allowed to make crazy claims about what left wing people think and say (e.g. Carson is worse than hitler), why can`t left-wing people do the same to get their point across? Heston as the head of the NRA is an obvious target for the kinds of slurs a Coulter-style left-wing attack would use. If you don`t like this on moral grounds, look on your own side of the aisle before you whine about anyone else. You might like to start with the outrageous bullshit which your libertarian comrades spout every day.
(Also, I`m not going to believe something you say about what bowling for truth once was, because your links are always wrong).
So yeah, what Dano said.
With regard to Air America, have any of you actually listened to it? I listen to it all the time. The only stations I listen to when I’m driving are PBS and AA. I like PBS most of the time even with their obvious political bias, but AA helps me exercise my eye-rolling muscles.
I don’t bother with Rush and “conservative” talk radio, booorring. At least AA gets my gander up. Seriously though, between Franken and Randy Rhodes, you’ve got Coulter covered.
SG,
By rates I refer to normalizing by the size of the population – i.e., gun homicides per 100,000 people. Since the US is about 15x larger than Australia, it makes no sense to compare raw numbers. You have to divide by the size of the population for the comparison to make any sense.
As for editing the speech: removing the parts about canceling the festivities and about being respectful of other people, and splicing in the “cold, dead, hands” part from another speech, creates a completely false impression about Heston’s tone.
ben,
No, I don’t listen to Air America – too much of a Democratic mouthpiece to be of any value. (For daily news, I use [Democracy Now!](http://democracynow.org). My weekly treat is FAIR’s [CounterSpin](http://www.fair.org).) That, however, doesn’t mean you can go around asserting that Air America lies without providing evidence. Again: substantiate or retract.
Sortition, we’re talking propaganda here not science. Moore’s conclusion is ultimately not wrong, so who really cares? The right does this kind of crap with numbers all the time.
The speech I read was the one 8th months after the shooting (in Flint?)? It had Charlton heston saying “they asked me not to come here”, then a bunch of stuff about how he fought and died in 3 world wars, and then “Therefore you can’t tell me where to travel to be a tasteless oik”. I didn’t read anything about cancelling festivities. I think you read the other speech (10 days after Columbine). Personally I don’t care what lies are made up about the head of the NRA while the NRA continues to pedal lies about its agenda and the issue. I am not from the school of thought where we have to always behave civilly while our political opponents lie, scheme, cheat and steal. As an opponent of the Iraq war, for example, I have been called a traitor for 4 years now. Why should I care if the head of the NRA is called a pig-rooting, racist idiot when he is not? It doesn’t even level the score, and Ben knows it.
Ben: I know a little something about fascism, and the way the modern neo-nazis nestle up to right wing movements. You can’t tell me just because the NRA doesn’t spout nazi propaganda they aren’t the preferred home for that kind of scum. Other movements have done their bit to get rid of these kinds of people. If the NRA can’t, it’s because they don’t want to. That is the intent behind Moore’s little cartoon, and if you can’t see it I suggest you read christian survivalist literature a little more closely.
(And while you’re at it, ask yourself why these same “mainstream” right movements won’t categorically disown scum like Coulter. Many on the left are quite happy to distance themselves from Moore. Why won’t the right?)
SG,
This is not a matter of being civil, but of sticking to the truth. You can be as aggressive and offensive as you see fit, as long as the facts back you up.
As a matter of principle, I expect someone addressing me to be telling the truth, and hold myself to the same standard. As a matter of expediency, when you lie or embelish you may be making some points in the short term, but ultimately you are less effective than when you are meticulously accurate, because once your audience discovers the truth, they no longer trust you.
(I was indeed referring to the [Denver](http://www.hardylaw.net/Bowlingtranscript.html) speech. The editing there was misleading. BTW, I liked your quip about “died in 3 world wars”. 
)
the quip is monty python, I think. I`m generally a supporter of the truth, but I am not convinced it is always usefully deployed in propaganda wars. I am particularly offended when the right jump up and down about it. I don`t recall them being too concerned about the virtue of Our Lady Truth when Colin Powell was ravishing her by powerpoint at the UN. The dissembling of the right regarding exactly what Bush did or didn`t say about Saddam`s connections to bin Laden is a classic example of demanding truth in defense of an outrageous lie. Even Ben, our virtuous pointer-out of Universal Facts here, only decries the anti-Carson crowd because they give the otherwise perfectly decent right a bad name – not because they are lying scum.
When debating people who value the truth, I am happy to see it used. But when countering the lies, slander and dissembling of a bunch of dangerous fantasists, I say play their game and make sure you don`t get caught.
Ultimately Michael Moore did tell the truth – murder in America is out of control, the gun lobby held an insensitive rally in Flint, and most of what Charlton Heston said at Denver was unapologetic and political. The gun lobby is tasteless, and he showed it. He cheated to make the showing of it easier, but he hasn`t shown anything that isn`t true. So what if Heston didn`t say “my cold, dead hands” at Denver – it`s a disgusting ideal no matter where he says it. Michael Moore just made the point more clearly.
“f* Ann Coulter.”
Even in censored form, those are three words that should never appear together.
Seriously, I just ate.
“With regard to Air America, have any of you actually listened to it? I listen to it all the time. The only stations I listen to when I’m driving are PBS and AA. I like PBS most of the time even with their obvious political bias, but AA helps me exercise my eye-rolling muscles.”
This is why I watch Fox News.
The NRA supports all gun-owners rights, and you have to take the good with nuts when supporting rights against the government.
The claim, “The NRA’s policy positions are those that benefit the gun and ammunition manufacturers” has a lot of predictive power, much more so than “The NRA’s policy positions are those that benefit individual, law-abiding gun owners.”
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