My man-crush

You just like Moore because he's hairy, PZ. Admit it.

Hah, you didn't watch the movie. He's clean-shaven, with a cheek as smooth as a girl's.

I'm hoping he manages to eviscerate CNN's pet medico Sanjay Gupta on Larry King tonight.

I saw that tape a few hours ago. Moore gave Blitzer his ass. It was enjoyable to watch.

I want to see "Sicko". I've always liked Moore's movies, but this one will be a special viewing for me because I despise American health care. It's so hard to get decent, affordable health care in this country. Don't get me started on prescription drugs. Grrrr...

Oh boy, that was good.
While I believe that a market economy is a good thing, I also believe that the people are the state. Thus, the state should provide for those things that keeps its people alive: a minimal social net, in case something unforeseen happens (e.g. social security), and most definitely free health care on at least a basic level.
Yet, aside from socializing medicine, I think you should socialize Wolf Blitzer ;)

wow, Gupta and Moore, this will be great

Complete cop-out!

A man crush can't be someone you just respect. For instance, don't tell me you have a man-crush on Darwin or Einstein.

No. A man crush should be someone who you like in a creepy way, someone whose eyes hold a strange attraction for you, etc. etc.

I listed mine on BA's page as Ed Norton and Adam Savage.

Regarding the war...

The people we are fighting against are those who would gladly see you dead, PZ. You write the sort of stuff they don't like, and they would do a whole lot more than criticize you in their blogs. Oh, they'd do things about it on the internet, but you might not like them very much. The same goes for Moore. The enemy cheers whenever people like him criticise the Allied war effort (the fact of it, not the way it's done, which I agree could improve), but if he was living under their control he could not say boo if he wanted to go on living.

Get the reporters out of the Middle East and let the military do whatever it must and come home. The coalition has pussyfooted long enough.

Mine? Frank Zappa. Vincent Price.

Justin Moretti:

Yes, if you criticize the most unpopular president in living memory, then the terrorists have won.

Only 3600 American soldiers have died so far in Iraq. Let's give Bush a chance to complete his mission. After all, if we pull it now, it might seem to the hard left that they died in vain in a completely pointless war.

@The Countess

I saw that tape a few hours ago.

Careful, could be showing your age there. Next thing you know you'll be dialing a phone.

@Justin Moretti

Please read this, a little article about what the reporters aren't reporting: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070730/hedges

I must warn anyone with a humanist bent that the above link may completely ruin your day.

There are so many incorrect assumptions behind Justin Moretti's comment almost isn't worth addressing, but:

Get the reporters out of the Middle East and let the military do whatever it must and come home. The coalition has pussyfooted long enough.

Am I reading that wrong or is that actually a pro-genocide statement? After all, the only reason to get reporters out so "the military can do whatever it must" is if "whatever it must" includes things reporters aren't meant to see.

If the death of about a million Iraqi civilians (and the destruction of the lives of millions more) is "pussyfooting" to you, Justin, I'm ashamed to be a member of the same species as you.

Did anyone here see Sanjay Gupta interview Deepak Chopra? Talk about an ass-smooching!

Moore is just too abrasive for me - I have to watch his movies with captions. His message is good, but the delivery leaves a lot to be desired. :)

It's like picking a scab, I swear, but for the cold-hearted pragmatists out there, I want to put out one more reason why the US needs to get out of Iraq now -- self-preservation.

http://www.exile.ru/2007-May-04/war_nerd.html

When you zoom farther out to look at the global picture, the question "Who won Iraq?" doesn't have such an obvious answer. It's much easier to see who lost: Us, and anybody who backed us. We looked invincible after taking out the Taliban. Not no more. If you use armored columns as stationary cops in enemy neighborhoods, you give the locals plenty of time to figure out their weak spots. That's what we did: gave the Arabs a trillion-dollar, multi-year seminar in how to defeat U.S. forces. Another lesson in the Brecher Doctrine: Nuke 'em, bribe 'em or leave 'em alone.

To find a winner in this war means looking outside the box, like they say - or rather outside the theater of war. Because the winners are the countries smart enough to stay out of it.

Yeah yeah, whatever.

Did anyone else notice how much time moore got? He was not only there once, but TWICE and was Wolf Blitzer actually allowed him to talk!

I'm going to write CNN a message telling them that that's exactly what we want out of our news. I'm sure they get tons of complaints, but little to no compliments. Let's not miss this opportunity to tell them we like such coverage, and maybe they'll listen. Remember the atheist debate?

I had the distinct pleasure to shake Michael Moore's hand after his talk at the University of North Texas a few years back, and he autographed my copy of STUPID WHITE MEN.
When I told him I was a Library Science grad student, he added "Librarians rule!"

Pretty cool.

These sputterings and fumings about "pussyfooting" and "let the military do whatever it must" strongly imply that Mr. Moretti wants a policy of schrecklichkeit so atrocious that he fears the consequences of anyone knowing about it- else why also call for "get[ting] the reporters out of the Middle East.

The first problem with that is that atrocity will out, irrespective of how hard you try to prevent it (see "the Vrba-Wetzler Report" and "the Polish Major's Report" as examples). What would be the result of the sort of utterly unrestrained attempt to beat the Iraqi people into submission the remaining neo-con true believers fantasize about becoming known to the rest of the world? The effect on what remains of the USA's status in the world would make the pariah nation status enjoyed by the South African apartheid regime look like a collection of love letters. That's a Hell of a price for our country to pay so that a gaggle of frustrated authoritarian armchair warriors here can throw a temper tantrum with other people's blood.

The second problem is that the idiot belief that one group has some sort of unquestioned right to impose its will on the rest of the world by force and that any means to that end are automatically justified is just plain wrong. It is, in fact, precisely how people like Bin Laden view their relationship with the world. Adopting it truly means that the terrorists have won.

If we can't purge the sick need to "show them who's boss" from our politics if not completely from our psyches, the future of both our nation and our species looks awfully dim.

Having said that, Mr. Moretti...

For pure bad-assity: Bruce Campbell
For musical bad-assity: Tom Waits and Les Claypool
For looking like a badass on a book cover: Chine Mieville
For elevating newspaper comics to art and pure mental stimuli: Bill Watterson, Gary Larson, Berkeley Breathed
For strange, inexplicable urges I dare not share with my wife : Arnie circa 1975, Brad Pitt, Ryan Reynolds
For a list of reasons I can't begin to encapsulate: Douglas Adams.

And that's just what I could think of at this odd moment, drinking a bottle of Chimay, and trying to get the twins to go to sleep.

Sleep, damn it.

Damn. That should be China, not Chine. It's the Chimay typing, not me.

Hey, Justin.. GoArmy.com>!

This so totally freaked me out... until I thought of Moore's genitals and a cephalopod's beak...

Speaking of crushes - PZ, I just noticed you are listed in "55 of the Hottest, Smartest, Most Talked about College Professors" at http://www.collegedegree.com/library/college-choice/55-of-the-Hottest-C… .

While Moore tends to ramble and go hopelessly off topic, I have to say that this is one of the best pieces of coverage of a topic CNN has ever done. Did you notice that there were actually multiple minutes devoted to the guest talking about stuff uninterrupted? As much as Wolf wanted it to be, that particular segment was not all about the host, and actual complete ideas came across. Who knew that you could get that somewhere other than public radio?

Sure, Moore kind of derailed and took over the show, but if that's what it takes to make network news about the guests and their ideas rather than the hosts and their hair, I suppose I can live with it.

The same goes for Moore. The enemy cheers whenever people like him criticise the Allied war effort

Huh what? What's the Allied war effort got to do with health care?

Wait a minute...are you talking about Fahrenheit 911? That was Moore's last movie, back before the 2004 election. You can stop panicking over that; it's all over and Moore lost. Despite Moore's best efforts, Bush was re-elected and got the extra four years that he needed to bring us victory in Iraq. Saddam paid the price for his role in the 9/11 hijackings, and we're no longer threatened by his WMD stockpiles. Today the insurgency is in its last throes, and we just need to give General Petraeus another six months or so to do the final mopping up.

But you can't just rest on your laurels now; there's a new battle to fight. If Moore gets his way this time, then too many people will be getting too much health care! I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the consequences of that are about a million billion times worse than the consequences of defeat in Iraq.

Any ideas on how we can solve the problem?

#23: Unfortunately, the same site also says: "Glenn H. Reynolds is one of the most distinguished professors of the faculty at the University of Tennessee. Mr. Reynolds explores his various law interests on his blog, instapundit.com..."

Ick.

Moore is wise. He's waited 3 years, declining invitations, waiting for one that did not come with conditions that would prevent his message from getting across.
He didn't waste time with the details of Dr. Gupta's analysis; he went straight after CNN's failure to report the news.

Michael Moore's website has a variety of interesting posts on the Iraq War, healthcare and politics.

http://www.michaelmoore.com/

I was actually rooting tonight (Larry King) when Michael Moore came back with that Iraq War spending blast on the good doctor. That was priceless. Then Gupta pulls a line from the movie to make a point without knowing it. And on top of all of it says it's important to get the numbers right for the people that really care about health care in this country and turns around and gets the average spending in Cuba wrong in his piece. $25 bucks? Seriously? Wow. Just wow.

Michael Moore plays too fast and loose with the truth for my tastes. In that way, he's not very different from those he seeks to condemn. That he does it with a message that is more palatable doesn't change the basic fact that he takes considerable artistic licence with the truth.

I find his work to be similar to the work required when your dog swallows your wife's engagement ring... there's a diamond in there somewhere, but you'll be straining through a lot of shit to find it.

I was really impressed with Michael Moore in the interview. He really tells it like it is. I think Michael is right that the media could have made the war end if they had been accurately reporting what was going on.

Someone commented about praising CNN for giving Moore so much time. I had CNN on this afternoon and they were constantly promoting the second part of Moore's interview with Wolf. The female announcer called him a ranter and said to "tune in for the second part, if you can stomach it." {subtext: How dare Moore even slightly criticize Saint Sanjay?} Anyway, it prompted an angry e-mail from me to the most trusted name in news.

I saw SiCKO with my daughter tonight. It was moving, depressing, and entertaining. CAN we ever fix our government?

Anyway, it prompted an angry e-mail from me to the most trusted name in news.

Sure, they shouldn't be calling him a ranter and saying all that, and it was right to complain about it. However, my point was (and I know I'm not the only one who made it, so you might have been talking to someone else) that we need to not just punish bad behavior, but reward the good.

Evolving Squid: I'm a bit taken aback by your remarks. We have mainstream media (the NY Times, for example) uncritically adopting the latest Bush-administration baffle gab, using 'Al-Qaida in Iraq' as the new label for anyone in Iraq fighting U.S. forces. We have Channel 4 in Britain decrying the great global-warming 'hoax' with a tissue of lies, distortions and heavily-edited interviews obtained under false pretenses. And there's lots more. But it's Michael Moore that you find 'plays fast and loose with the truth'? You can quibble over details with anyone who has to fit a story to some narrative form. As I see it, we're living in a sewer and you're complaining that your neighbour hasn't showered today.

I wish he'd been given a chance to kick Lou Dobbs' ass.

Yeah really man. Moore is even better at kicking butt than that George Gallaway dude. Wow.

Are we talking about the same Michael Moore that made "Roger and Me" and wrote "Stupid White Men"? I thought we were supposed to be critical thinkers.

Bryson Brown:

I'm inclined to agree with Evolving Squid, actually. Just because Moore equivocates doesn't mean that others don't -- it just puts him on their level when he really should be staking out the moral high ground. Honestly -- is Moore a documentarian or a polemicist? Because we've got far too many of the latter, and he certainly has the talent to be the former, but it seems like he spends an awful lot of effort trying to shoehorn his data into his conclusion.

The truth speaks for itself. Staged photo ops in Cuba say exactly what the director wants. You tell me which is superior.

One may not agree with everything Christopher Hitchens says, but if you are a fan of Michael Moore you should read his review of Fairenheit 9/11. Hitchens usually has his facts straight, quite unlike Moore. It more or less places all of Moore's works in context. Michael Moore is doing more to hurt our cause than to help it - his positions are indefensible. Fawning over Michael Moore is just embarrassing.

Unfairenheit 9/11 The lies of Michael Moore. By Christopher Hitchens

homostoicus:

Is that the same Christopher Hitchens who wrote a book about Clinton being a rapist and the embodiment of evil? The same Christopher Hitchens who so tirelessly defended the Iraq invasion?

Also, it seems to me that in the Moore vs. CNN clash, Moore was proved to be the more accurate of the two.

Curiously enough, Hitchens is my mancrush. His "I don't give a fuck what you think" attitude, his self-confidence, his arrogance, his intellect and above all his mastery of sarcasm and invective - what's not to admire?

Christian - isn't that "poisoning the well"? Arguing that Hitchens is wrong about Moore because he has unpopular opinions about Iraq and Clinton is a logical fallacy.

...

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If we have to have saints, perfect beings with ALL the facts, ALL the goodness, and NONE of the flaws, before we can criticize the White House, or the health industry, or the gun lobby, or the Catholic Church, then these vast enterprises will roll on and crush us blithely into dust.

Watching Gupta's attack on Sicko is like watching a guy walking out into a field on a sunny day and picking up a rock and crowing "Look! There's a tiny patch of darkness under here! Ha - I knew it! The sun is NO GOOD!!"

Gupta and Blitzer are part of the political sickness in America today that has turned on its head one of our defining myths - that little David has a chance against Goliath.

Today's Goliath would be defended by a legion of Wolf Blitzers and Bill O'Reillys, Pat Robertsons and Rush Limbaughs. Whereas David would be dragged over the coals for using the wrong-shaped rock, and having his sandals untied.

Too many of us liberals and progressives would weakly give ground, making feeble protests that started by AGREEING with them. "Well, yeah, he used the wrong-shaped rock and, um, okay, those sandals are a disgrace. But still ..."

Michael Moore bites back. He handed Blitzer his mainstream-media ass on a plate. And I love it.

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The people we are fighting against are those who would gladly see you dead, PZ.

Yes, and?

Is it really beyond your comprehension that there might be such a thing as a monumental war of evil against evil?

Do you really believe everything has to have exactly one Light Side and exactly one Dark Side?

In fact, it's actually a war of evil (neocons) against evil (various and sundry Islamists) against evil (Iranian mullahcracy -- Chalabi, Shiite brigades, whatever). There used to be a fourth evil party (Saddam and nostalgics), fighting (obviously) against the other three, but it seems to have died out.

Get out of Iraq, get the UN in instead, and pay for it. That's the best suggestion I can make.

Christian - isn't that "poisoning the well"?

Yes, and that's Christian's point -- he is holding a mirror to homostoicus.

Evolving Squid: I'm a bit taken aback by your remarks. We have mainstream media (the NY Times, for example) uncritically adopting the latest Bush-administration baffle gab, using 'Al-Qaida in Iraq' as the new label for anyone in Iraq fighting U.S. forces. We have Channel 4 in Britain decrying the great global-warming 'hoax' with a tissue of lies, distortions and heavily-edited interviews obtained under false pretenses. And there's lots more. But it's Michael Moore that you find 'plays fast and loose with the truth'? You can quibble over details with anyone who has to fit a story to some narrative form. As I see it, we're living in a sewer and you're complaining that your neighbour hasn't showered today.

I'm not saying mainstream media is better. It's not. I said that I think Michael Moore isn't to my taste. I don't worship the mainstream media ground by a long shot. Is it justifiable to deliberately deceive people or manipulate the truth just because mainstream media does it?

BrianX said this:

Just because Moore equivocates doesn't mean that others don't -- it just puts him on their level when he really should be staking out the moral high ground.

Exactly.

Get out of Iraq, get the UN in instead, and pay for it. That's the best suggestion I can make.

Good luck getting the UN in there. The entire rest of the world other than the US and the UK (ok, probably a goodly part of the US and UK too) think the Iraq war is bollocks. I would conjecture that at a UN general assembly meeting, the US ambassador's suggestion that the UN should send in peace keepers to cover the coalition withdrawal would be met with pointing and giggling and a sound rejection.

What I've never understood is...

... how is it that a president can be impeached for getting his end away with some office tart, but doesn't get impeached for flagrantly lying to the public and using the lie to start a war? Surely there is some breach of law going on there that is worth of prosecution?

Or was it that the risk of President Cheney was so bad nobody wanted to go there?

Since Hitchens' review of FH9/11 has already been cited, might as well balance it out with this response to it.

Sorry, link went dead.

Here.

I tend to agree with his general positions but am confused when he launches into some of the more outlandish conspiracy theory stuff as he did in parts of Fahrenheit 9/11. Does he believe everything he says, or does he just try to throw all his stuff on the board and see what sticks?

And Moore can be just as bad as Fox News for distorting facts and being overtly manipulative. I won't tolerate those tactics from Fox and I don't appreciate those traits in someone whose political views I tend to agree with either.

That being said, I love that he stands by his opinions and doesn't let the right-wing shut him up.

P.S. Wait, "silver-haired rodent"? Don't put the most successful order of mammals in the same category as Blitzer. Rodents are much cooler!

I would conjecture that at a UN general assembly meeting, the US ambassador's suggestion that the UN should send in peace keepers to cover the coalition withdrawal would be met with pointing and giggling and a sound rejection.

If you poor folks pay for it, instead of keeping to pay Halliburton and Bechtel, I don't think it would be laughed at. Few have an interest in leaving Iraq to itself (or Iran) in its present state.

Fun facts: The leading cause of personal banckrupcy in the US is unpaid medical bills. The death rate in any given year for someone without health insurance is twenty-five per cent higher than for someone with insurance.
Source: The Moral-Hazard Myth by Malcolm Gladwell; The New Yorker online
Every other civilised country has set up systems (albeit imperfect) steeped in the ideal that all citizens deserve the very best medical treatment regardless of income. Why is the US so far behind?

Or was it that the risk of President Cheney was so bad nobody wanted to go there?

There is an "Impeach Cheney First" School of Chimpeachment.

Why is the US so far behind?

Out of ignorance about the rest of the word. Why is there a discussion in the USA about whether raising the minimum wage to a normal level would utterly trounce the economy? Why does Austria still have so many dangerous crossroads even though France has replaced them by traffic circles and has got a remarkable decrease in accidents as a result?

No. A man crush should be someone who you like in a creepy way, someone whose eyes hold a strange attraction for you, etc. etc.

That bit about Moore's cheek being "smooth as a girl's" is not emphatic enough for you? :-)

#8 Justin Moretti

Do you support a draft? Rationing of food and gasoline? Higher taxes, and I mean about two or three times what we now pay?

Are you willing to enlist?

If you're a typical soi-disant supporter of the Bu--sh-- War, then the answers to these questions will be no, no, no, and no.

To impose order on Iraq by force will take several times the troops we now have in that country. That means putting this country on a real war footing, and that means a draft, rationing, and taxes. And that means you or someone close to you will end up toting an M-16.

So, let me get this straight. Michael Moore's positions are indefensible. So to support this view, you link to a piece from a guy who unequivocally supports the war in Iraq. Did I just step into the bizarro world?

/I thought "God Is Not Great" was a fantastic book.

Previous comment directed at #38.

Semantical note: "documentary" and "polemic" are not mutually exclusive, despite what the abstract-thought impaired would have you think.

I have rarely seen a documentary on a subject I know something about that doesn't have a few small errors or fudges, and I'm talking about "straight", Discovery-channel shows.

Back when the reich-wing were howling for Moore's blood over Bowling For Columbine I ran into the usual claims of Moore's mendacity, so I did a little digging. Where there was an independent source to check, it was always Moore who was correct. The attacks on Moore go all the way back to Roger and Me.

Moore isn't fat, that's armour-plating.

GeorgeBurnsGod, it would have been more accurate of me to say, rather than Moore's position is indefensible, to say his arguments are far from unassailable.

IMHO, Moore's works are infantile. His agenda is so in your face that it's easy to miss any meaningful parts. I think Diego said it well; "And Moore can be just as bad as Fox News for distorting facts and being overtly manipulative. I won't tolerate those tactics from Fox and I don't appreciate those traits in someone whose political views I tend to agree with either.

HPLC_Sean:

I think it mostly comes down to a combination of moral superiority complex and free-market fundamentalism -- for the first, it seems as though a lot of people in this country subconsciously feel that if you get sick it's your fault (corollary: a lot of people here seem to feel very strongly that mental illness doesn't actually exist, but won't ever say that they think that), and under the "if you don't work you don't eat" principle, that you don't deserve health care if you can't pay for it. The other half of the equation belongs to a particularly batty strain of corporatist libertarians who are the ones who believe everything the for-profit arm of the health care industry (including Big Pharma and the HMOs) tell them (i.e. crying poverty because the US is the only Westernized country they can get away with gouging). Combine that with a heavy dose of Red-baiting, you've got a recipe for a health care train wreck that pretty much nobody can solve without pissing off half the political establishment in this country.

To take an example: we now have a rough approximation of a universal health care system in Massachusetts. As I describe it, it's important to know that Mitt Romney was the one who signed it into law: essentially, it's a system that mandates that everyone have insurance or get whacked on their state taxes next year. Yes, the health insurance industry is doing its part by providing low-cost plans, but the essential point of it seems to be that Romney agreed to sign off on it so he could say, when asked in a Presidential debate about health care, "No, I don't support universal health care. Look at what a mess it is in Massachusetts. You want that socialist shit everywhere in the country?"

David:

Someone actually considers traffic circles an improvement? News to me. Massachusetts has 'em all over the metro Boston area and they're generally considered a form of asphalt guillotine. Boston drivers as a general rule can manage them pretty well; the danger comes when people from out of state or a part of the state where there aren't so many of them don't realize you're supposed to yield on entry.

(It's sort of like the difference when it comes to walking through crowds between British and Americans -- Americans as a general rule tend to keep right, while the British use body language and other such cues to kind of weave through crowds without crashing into each other. From what I hear, when a person from one country winds up in a crowd in the other country, it can be... confusing.)

Homostoicus--it's a little hard to take your complaints about Moore seriously when you link to Hitchens as a critic for his Iraq War movie.

I'm not totally enamored of Moore, but I think it's true that any documentary you see will have errors, and I'd just as soon have a documentary made by someone who wears his bias on his sleeve as some supposedly objective journalist who has the usual mainstream sources spouting the usual mixture of half-truths. To single out Moore as being as bad as the MSM strikes me as silly. He is imperfect, but a lot better on the MSM on both Iraq and the health care crisis.

i

Nothing like a mention of Mr Moore to bring out the concern trolls... (Some of whom may even be truly concerned. Some.)

Given the intensity of the anti Michael Moore feeling among some segments of the population, the trivia that makes up the lists of what he supposedly "got wrong" or "fudged" is truly, truly laughable. If that's the best they can do... I't almost never anything substantive. For nearly every point brought up, you could simply grant the claimant that Moore got it wrong, and it wouldn't do a damned thing to change his thesis. That might say something about Mr. Moore's penchant for fluffing up his pieces with extraneous data, yes. That's called showmanship. But so what? That's why we're talking about him, and about his movies. In any case, they're usually wrong even in that. And more often, they're finding fault with what they imagine him to be implying rather than what he's actually said. Showmanship? Maybe. But.

The truth about Michael Moore is that his genius is for showmanship more than for analysis. But he compensates for that well, and the only way he should, by limiting his facts to some of the most uncontroversial information available. Really. His movies, etc., are controversial only because of the bleedingly obvious conclusions they reach. That's why he's so roundly hated (and loved) by so many. The consequences of what is obvious, and true, are often not popular. Therein lies the problem.

@ Homostoicus:

I won't even ask you for all the distorted facts. We saw how well that went for Dr. Gupta last night. Comparing FauxNews to Michael Moore is priceless. The guy makes two hour documentaries every few years to point out the elephant in the room. Faux has a Murdoch infused propaganda machine that turns 24-7. I think I'll take infantile documentarian over bootlicking journallist any day.

Yeah, but he's much cuter with the baseball cap. (Which Michael Moore would you put on a U.S. postage stamp?)

Yeah, but he's much cuter with the baseball cap. (Which Michael Moore would you put on a U.S. postage stamp?)

Easy: 'Redneck' Michael (his Canadian Bacon cameo).
"It's time we put the American back in North America!"

it seems as though a lot of people in this country subconsciously feel that if you get sick it's your fault

Or perhaps God's fault -- Calvinism. What do you think?

don't realize you're supposed to yield on entry.

I made my driver's license here in Austria, where there are few traffic circles as mentioned. We were told anyway that we're supposed to yield on entry. I suppose that works.

by limiting his facts to some of the most uncontroversial information available.

So much so, in fact, that I didn't learn much from watching Fahrenheit 911. Except that the Saudi embassy, the Watergate building, and some other important building are very close together. If only I could remember the third building...

On the man crush front, I'm going with the young Sean Connery. He used to be pretty man sexy.

David:

Re: Calvinism, could be -- "It was God's Plan" gets thrown around a lot in times of bereavement in this country. Though don't ever call it "God's Fault" or some redneck thug will kick your ass.

As far as the traffic circles go, I'm not sure how to respond to that except to say that a) there's an awful lot of willfully ignorant Americans and b) there's an awful lot of American cities that are notorious for horrible driving, and Boston is very, very high on the list (LA, Atlanta, DC, and New York are a sizeable chunk of the other ones). Boston, weirdly enough, actually has a fairly low level of traffic accidents given its drivers' propensity for maniacal driving. Make of that what you will...

Am I reading that wrong or is that actually a pro-genocide statement?

No, it should be a common sense statement. There are several problems with having the press up to its eyeballs in a situation that isn't stable. 1. They can't trust their information, but insist on trusting it anyway. 2. They report incomplete information, due to what one imbedded called "proximity delay". Which is to say, if you are the one witnessing the event, you won't be allowed to report it accurately, until the military has released most of the details, by which time the other non-directly involved press will have misreported rumors, incomplete facts, wrong fact, etc., and retractions/corrections won't be printed front page like the original story was. No one will know that the press got it wrong, unless they are 500 times more detail oriented than the average reader, or keeping an exact time line record of events, thus "correcting" the data on that time line. As far as I know, a lot of people have vague time lines, but **no one** is tracking events in enough detail to tell that something reported on day 1 was wrong one points a, b, c, d, e and f, exaggerated points g, missed h and didn't even know points i, j, or k existed at all on day 30, let alone what the changes to a, b, c, g, and j where on day 10, when the military decided to give the first real reports about it, with some direct facts. 3. Some news agencies **have** agendas. Their agenda may not be intentionally to undermine the military, but their refusal to report some facts, or over emphasis of others *can* have that result. 4. Sometimes reporting every detail of what is going wrong is **not** going to help anyone except the people that want it to go more wrong and will take *every* advantage given them to push their messages, which may include, since we *are* dealing with religious nuts here, repeating the same debunked bullshit over and over, even weeks, months or years after it turned out to be incorrect or fabricated.

While a free press is necessary for freedom, any freedom comes at the cost of *having* to consider the consequences of your actions and sometimes *choosing* to shut up for the greater good. Some where along the line the press has imho lost site of this and inflated its own self importance to the point where, if the modern press got hold of something like the Nixon scandle, by the time they where done reporting rumors, incorrect facts, bad information, and endless rants from the local wackos, Nixon would have gotten off the hook entirely, because no one would have had a fracking clue what **real** information was available to impeach him with. They sat on it until they ***knew*** they had their facts right. From day one, the press reporting from Iraq, when it involved anything that wasn't directly witnessed by a reporter, was thrown on the air immediately, without bothering to be 100% sure they got it right. Once they stopped imbedding and starting relying one military info, second hand info, etc., they **still** reported it immediately.

The one that sticks in my mind was a report from about a year ago that initially reported like 20 dead US soldiers, then 4-5 days later the military mentioned that, "a lot of insurgents where killed during the mission.", it was over a week before the complete facts where known, because anyone that did see it couldn't report it. If I hadn't been reading Iraqi blogs that where reporting information about it, I would have been in the same boat as everyone else, and by the time all the facts where available, no one who read the original report would have had a clue that the vague report from a week later had anything to do with the original. After all, it was probably page 10, in any paper that bothered to write it and little more than a 10 second blurb on any TV news station that bothered either.

I am **not** impressed with how the press handled its ethical responsibilities in this at all. And I **do** think they are at least partly responsible, by not taking more care and time to get facts right or report complete details, for unintentionally helping create the mess we have. You can't conduct a war effectively if your enemy knows what happened through a combination of the press reporting that something happened at X location, plus local information we don't have, before your own fracking military has all the facts and can use them. Its like some idiot telling a bank robber, "Man, be careful, there are guys out there with guns, but its OK, because there is a security guard hiding behind the counter over there!" Intent isn't the issue here, its complete lack of social conscience and common sense in some parts of the press during the entire time we have been over there. And nothing they are likely to do while they keep their heads up their asses like that is going to help *us* more than it helps everyone trying to undermine every other faction's plans.

I would think that this would just be common sense... Calling them traitors is stupid and unfounded. Idiots who are more interested in selling papers than the consequences of not getting facts right... that is far more reasonable a definition. And you can't deny that, since we see the same stupid shit 24/7 from them when dealing with fawning over religion, misreporting science, and numerous other things that piss us off. You really think, when they can't even get basic science facts right, even after talking to a scientist, that its a **good idea** to have them screwing up the same way reporting on a war? Or more specifically, that they got it 90% right, when they can't get anything else we care about, most of the time, 50% right...

And if you really believe that, why? Because given them the benefit of the doubt in something as important as people dying, but not with anything else, is just completely nuts. And I know, the argument is, "they where saying a lot of stuff before, and a lot proved right." Umm, when though? When they said it, or a year later, after various groups had lots of time to cater their tactics and propaganda to what the press theorized was happening? And how can you tell the difference, if the press won't shut up long enough to find out?

Sorry, but I do think the press has gone out of control. Some of them by throwing off the shackles of ethical conduct and turning into what is just short of tabloid, while others are letting themselves be bought out by special interests in politics, neither side of which are interested in facts that don't support *their* truth. In such an environment, the losers are the public and anyone gullible enough to assume that any of them are providing all of the facts. Everyone else is a winner, at least temporarily, and those winners are not going to be all on *our* side.

Dude, we aren't gonna win in Iraq, and it's going to be a disaster whether we pull out 1 month or 10 years from now. Trying to find a scapegoat (i.e., the press) can be emotionally comforting, but it does no good otherwise.

It's not like the US military has never played the media like a fiddle, eh?

Face it, the occupation never had a chance of succeeding, because Rumsfeld took the advice of neocon ideologues over career soldiers and diplomats, and Bremer botched the job in his first few months. It's not journalists who lost Iraq--it's the overly hierarchical, bureaucratic and ego-driven culture of the Pentagon still trying to fight a 4th-generation war with 2nd-generation thinking, so enough with the Dolchstosslegende already.

I had the distinct pleasure to shake Michael Moore's hand after his talk at the University of North Texas a few years back, and he autographed my copy of STUPID WHITE MEN.
When I told him I was a Library Science grad student, he added "Librarians rule!"

Pretty cool.

Posted by: JJR | July 10, 2007 08:02 PM

JJR--we do rule. :-) Here's why Moore thinks so.

Oh, please. Michael Moore is nothing more than Leni Riefenstahl minus the cinematic panache.

-jcr

Boston, weirdly enough, actually has a fairly low level of traffic accidents given its drivers' propensity for maniacal driving. Make of that what you will...

Ah, that's easy. France is afraid of cars with 13 on the numberplate. 13 is the département Bouches-du-Rhône, where Marseille lies. I've been to Marseille. People there drive in a way that looks batshit insane, but it actually does follow rules -- just that these rules aren't terribly similar to what I had been taught or to, say, the red lights in the city. Crazy driving, no accidents. It's similar in Italy... Austria, on the other hand, does genuinely have bad drivers who believe they're good, and the expected number of accidents.

You can't conduct a war effectively if your enemy knows what happened through a combination of the press reporting that something happened at X location, plus local information we don't have, before your own fracking military has all the facts and can use them.

Kagehi, I'm majorly surprised at such bullshit coming out of your, uh, fingers. The US mainstream media suffer from too much patriotism, not too little.

And for the record, there is such a thing as an unwinnable war.

The US has too many Christians to have a social safety net or public healthcare system. Anyone who winds up poor or gets sick is being punished by god. It is not for mortals to question his judgment.

Get rid of the Christians and a social safety net will soon emerge. Until then, public healthcare has a snow ball's chance in hell.

The people we are fighting against are those who would gladly see you dead, PZ.

Yes, and?

Is it really beyond your comprehension that there might be such a thing as a monumental war of evil against evil?

Do you really believe everything has to have exactly one Light Side and exactly one Dark Side?

In fact, it's actually a war of evil (neocons) against evil (various and sundry Islamists) against evil (Iranian mullahcracy -- Chalabi, Shiite brigades, whatever). There used to be a fourth evil party (Saddam and nostalgics), fighting (obviously) against the other three, but it seems to have died out.

Get out of Iraq, get the UN in instead, and pay for it. That's the best suggestion I can make.

Christian - isn't that "poisoning the well"?

Yes, and that's Christian's point -- he is holding a mirror to homostoicus.

I would conjecture that at a UN general assembly meeting, the US ambassador's suggestion that the UN should send in peace keepers to cover the coalition withdrawal would be met with pointing and giggling and a sound rejection.

If you poor folks pay for it, instead of keeping to pay Halliburton and Bechtel, I don't think it would be laughed at. Few have an interest in leaving Iraq to itself (or Iran) in its present state.

Or was it that the risk of President Cheney was so bad nobody wanted to go there?

There is an "Impeach Cheney First" School of Chimpeachment.

Why is the US so far behind?

Out of ignorance about the rest of the word. Why is there a discussion in the USA about whether raising the minimum wage to a normal level would utterly trounce the economy? Why does Austria still have so many dangerous crossroads even though France has replaced them by traffic circles and has got a remarkable decrease in accidents as a result?

Yeah, but he's much cuter with the baseball cap. (Which Michael Moore would you put on a U.S. postage stamp?)

Easy: 'Redneck' Michael (his Canadian Bacon cameo).
"It's time we put the American back in North America!"

it seems as though a lot of people in this country subconsciously feel that if you get sick it's your fault

Or perhaps God's fault -- Calvinism. What do you think?

don't realize you're supposed to yield on entry.

I made my driver's license here in Austria, where there are few traffic circles as mentioned. We were told anyway that we're supposed to yield on entry. I suppose that works.

by limiting his facts to some of the most uncontroversial information available.

So much so, in fact, that I didn't learn much from watching Fahrenheit 911. Except that the Saudi embassy, the Watergate building, and some other important building are very close together. If only I could remember the third building...

Boston, weirdly enough, actually has a fairly low level of traffic accidents given its drivers' propensity for maniacal driving. Make of that what you will...

Ah, that's easy. France is afraid of cars with 13 on the numberplate. 13 is the département Bouches-du-Rhône, where Marseille lies. I've been to Marseille. People there drive in a way that looks batshit insane, but it actually does follow rules -- just that these rules aren't terribly similar to what I had been taught or to, say, the red lights in the city. Crazy driving, no accidents. It's similar in Italy... Austria, on the other hand, does genuinely have bad drivers who believe they're good, and the expected number of accidents.

You can't conduct a war effectively if your enemy knows what happened through a combination of the press reporting that something happened at X location, plus local information we don't have, before your own fracking military has all the facts and can use them.

Kagehi, I'm majorly surprised at such bullshit coming out of your, uh, fingers. The US mainstream media suffer from too much patriotism, not too little.

And for the record, there is such a thing as an unwinnable war.