The Passion of the Moore

Are the parallels between these two paranoid and hysterical films totally obvious? Liberals and leftists have the same problem in confronting Moore's movie as conservatives did with Mel Gibson's The Passion of Jim Caviezel (and did you notice, by the way, that Ebert & Roeper recommended both films, in a particularly spectacular display of gullibility and cowardice). On the whole, I have to say that liberals are performing almost as badly as conservatives did several months ago. While a number of liberal reviewers have conceded that the film trades on a mountain of distortions and half-truths, they tend to follow that up with a cowardly exculpatory statement.

Here's the basic pattern: "Well sure, Moore misstates some facts and proclaims many of his own opinions to be facts, but he's still doing the necessary job of showing people the depth of awfulness of this administration. And besides, what are Moore's errors when compared with the willful lying of the President and his advisors." Michael Musto in the Village Voice and David Edelstein in Slate provide typical examples of the species: they acknowledge that the film is propaganda but excuse that because it serves a higher purpose.

First of all, is it really likely that this film will make any positive difference for the Democrats? Is anyone who hasn't yet made up his mind about the election going to be swayed by this film? Is it any less an instance preaching extreme orthodoxy to a choir than Mel Gibson's Merry Romp through the Garden of Anti-Jewish Homoerotic BDSM? Secondly, there are exactly infinity false claims that one could make about George W. Bush. And infinitely many of them could result in his public image being tarnished. Does that mean it's okay to say anything at all that could be damaging to the president? Back in the day when David Brock was a right-wing liar, and Rush Limbaugh &co. accused Bill Clinton of murdering Vincent Foster, Democrats tended to be opposed to baseless and injurious smear campaigns. What happened?

Thirdly, amid all of Moore's unsupportable attacks, he failed to actually include anything about the true depravity of the administration's conduct of the war. (That can be found here.) The fact that serious Democrats can take this movie seriously reminds me why I'm not a Democrat (and I do need to be reminded often enough).

Let's not forget however, that around the time of the release of Mel Gibson's feature-length gay porno/Oberammergau remake, conservatives, on the whole, acted worse if anything. Although there were a few enlightened souls who denounced it for the load of pogrom-inspiring dreck that it was (if you think that's an exaggeration, wait until it's released in Serbia or Pakistan)---and here I'm not counting non-Republican eagles and libertarians like Andrew Sullivan---incurable national hemorrhoids like Bill O'Reilly (who also believes that a Jewish cabal controls the media) conflated accurate criticism of Gibson with hatred for Christians and America too (natch). Jewish conservatives like David Horowitz---who operates on the assumption that leftists are anti-Semites but millenialist Protestants are not---were even more contemptible because they really do know better. Of course, nobody can top the pussilanimity of Michael Medved, arguing that Jews complaining about the film's outrageous anti-Semitic iconography would be guilty of fueling world-wide anti-Semitism.

That said, the nannies on the left and the right who wanted to censor these films can get the hell out of my country. USA USA USA!!!