More Michael Moore hatred

It would be better to say that I have a problem with his tactics and style, more than anything. Bluster, shouting down the other guy instead of providing a reasonable argument, etc.

What if he decides to be a political activist that's capable of making jokes? Are you afraid time will stop?

There's no justifiable reason to do that in something that purports to be a documentary.

Moore makes the worst kind of propaganda - his political goals outweigh everything else, and serve to undermine any rational basis for his beliefs. It's fine for getting people to side with you on an emotional level - as evidenced by the general left-wing love of BfC - but it's really shit for making an effectual argument or changing opinions and views.

But I still think the KKK-NRA thing was supposed to be historical irony rather than any attempt to directly equate the two organisations.

(In part because people who don't have a strong grounding for their beliefs are the most likely to flip-flop and switch sides.)

I don't understand why people think he can't put jokes in! Is it because some people are dumb enough to take it as a fact? Anyone with a handle on anything can seperate the entertaining comic relief bits from the serious, informative bits.

That's brilliant. What I've got a problem with are jokes that don't resemble the facts. If it was a right-wing documentary implying through humor that Bill Clinton was friends with bin Laden or something, lefties would (rightfully) be up in arms.

Kevin, it's great that we have some political aspects of pop culture. That doesn't excuse playing fast and loose with evidence and avoiding making a reasonable argument at all. (de la Rocha and Morello's politics tend to make more sense than Moore's from the interviews I've read) You can have a Michael Moore or BfC inspiring kids without any of Moore's flaws and problems.

Moore (and Limbaugh)(and Fox News) insult the intelligence of their audience by assuming that they can't handle both sides of an argument, or that they can't let facts get in the way of a good rant. I find that, as I said, unhealthy.

I'd take statements like this a little more seriously were it not for those currently dominant in politics.

You mean the one that never actually happened? this thread has some people agreeing with him, some people saying they disagree but respect him, and very few actually dissing him. There's like only four truly agressive messages on the entire thread!

e.g they complain that he calls the Shah a dictator rather than a king - which is surely a matter of opinion

Not if you were a typical Iranian citizen during the Shah's regeime. A dictator is still a dictator no matter if he has the blessing of the US or not.

I find that entry-level politics concept to be insulting to the intelligence of the average person. They don't need to be treated like morons. Give them an argument, without it being Al Gore-boring, and they'll respond.

I disagree here, the "average person" is spectacularly ignorant and disengaged with respect to political and civic knowledge. Historically, the average person has responded by not voting.

Ebert writes: The pitfall for Moore is not subjectivity, but accuracy. We expect him to hold an opinion and argue it, but we also require his facts to be correct. I was an admirer of his previous doc, the Oscar-winning "Bowling for Columbine," until I discovered that some of his "facts" were wrong, false or fudged.

In some cases, he was guilty of making a good story better, but in other cases (such as his ambush of Charlton Heston) he was unfair, and in still others (such as the wording on the plaque under the bomber at the Air Force Academy) he was just plain wrong, as anyone can see by going to look at the plaque.

Because I agree with Moore's politics, his inaccuracies pained me, and I wrote about them in my Answer Man column. Moore wrote me that he didn't expect such attacks "from you, of all people." But I cannot ignore flaws simply because I agree with the filmmaker. In hurting his cause, he wounds mine.

For some reason, Moore kinda reminds me of Orson Welles's character in Touch of Evil - both have good intentions, but they use the wrong methods. And there's the bloatedness factor. And in both cases, they are up against Charlton Heston (who plays a Mexican narc in Touch of Evil). Hmm.

From what I hear about “9/11,” however, he does leave himself out of the film more than ever before, which solves some problems, but no doubt the guy still wanders off point for much of the run-time. This is actually the first of his films I feel compelled to see in the theatres, not for all the nonsense stuff either already debunked (Bin Laden charter flights out of the U.S. on 9/11) or silly (lets mock the Congress!) but as a (perhaps) damning indictment of the misleading march to War and messy clean-up. We shall see.

Then again, the fact that Moore is all but threatening his critics with libel this time out makes me want to see him fail, fail, fail.

boo hoo. not nearly as bad as the shellacking the entire world is taking from our vicious, wrong-headed foreign policy.

And I'm assuming you're wondering why the right AREN'T making their own movies in support of Bush, Elvis T. And I think they are, just in an understandably less overt way.

http://www.crankycritic.com/archive02/posters/weweresoldiers.jpg

But there's a difference in that, and propaganda designed specifically to prey on emotion and to do no enlightening and no reasoning. When that's done in the name of pro-American propaganda, we complain (Jessica Lynch, perhaps?).

http://www.michaelmoore.com/images_la/f911-home-interim_03.jpg

and more movies like:

http://www.impawards.com/1999/posters/three_kings.jpg

MICHAEL MOORE is not coy about his hopes for "Fahrenheit
9/11," his blistering documentary attack on President Bush
and the war in Iraq. He wants it to be remembered as the
first big-audience, election-year film that helped unseat a
president.

"And it's not just a hope," the Oscar-winning filmmaker
said in a phone interview last week, describing focus
groups in Michigan in April at which, after seeing the
movie, previously undecided voters expressed eagerness to
defeat Mr. Bush. "We found that if you entered the theater
on the fence, you fell off it somewhere during those two
hours," he said. "It ignites a fire in people who had given
up."

The movie's indictment of the president is nothing if not
sprawling. Mr. Moore suggests that Mr. Bush and his
administration jeopardized national security in an effort
to placate Bush family cronies in Saudi Arabia, that the
White House helped members of Mr. bin Laden's family to
flee the United States after Sept. 11 and that the
administration manipulated terrorism alert levels in order
to scare Americans into supporting the invasion of Iraq.

Mr. Moore's previous films generated a cottage industry of
conservative commentators eager to prove sloppiness and
exaggeration in his films; a handful of mainstream critics
have also found flaws. But if "Fahrenheit 9/11" attracts
the audience Mr. Moore and his distributors are predicting,
Mr. Moore may face an onslaught of fact-checking unlike
anything he - or any other documentary filmmaker - has ever
experienced. After all, White House officials and the Bush
family began impugning the film even before any of them had
seen it.

"Outrageously false," said Dan Bartlett, the White House
communications director, last month when told about the
film's assertion of a sinister connection between Mr. Bush
and the family of Osama bin Laden. The former president
George H. W. Bush was quoted in The New York Daily News
calling Mr. Moore a "slime ball" and describing the
documentary as "a vicious personal attack on our son."

So how will Mr. Moore's movie stand up under close
examination? Is the film's depiction of Mr. Bush as a lazy
and duplicitous leader, blinded by his family's financial
ties to Arab moneymen and the Saudi Arabian royal family,
true to fact?

Mr. Moore and his distributors have refused to circulate
copies of the film and its script before the film's release
this Friday; his production team said that as of last
Wednesday, there was no final script because the film was
still undergoing minor editing - for clarity, they said,
not accuracy.

After a year spent covering the federal commission
investigating the Sept. 11 attacks, I was recently allowed
to attend a Hollywood screening. Based on that single
viewing, and after separating out what is clearly presented
as Mr. Moore's opinion from what is stated as fact, it
seems safe to say that central assertions of fact in
"Fahrenheit 9/11" are supported by the public record
(indeed, many of them will be familiar to those who have
closely followed Mr. Bush's political career).

Mr. Moore is on firm ground in arguing that the Bushes,
like many prominent Texas families with oil interests, have
profited handsomely from their relationships with prominent
Saudis, including members of the royal family and of the
large and fabulously wealthy bin Laden clan, which has
insisted it long ago disowned Osama. Mr. Moore spends
several minutes in the film documenting ties between the
president and James R. Bath, a financial advisor to a
prominent member of the bin Laden family who was an
original investor in Mr. Bush's Arbusto energy company and
who served with the future president in the Air National
Guard in the early 1970's. The Bath friendship, which
indirectly links Mr. Bush to the family of the world's most
notorious terrorist, has received less attention from
national news organization than it has from reporters in
Texas, but it has been well documented.

Mr. Moore charges that President Bush and his aides paid
too little attention to warnings in the summer of 2001 that
Al Qaeda was about to attack, including a detailed Aug. 6,
2001, C.I.A. briefing that warned of terrorism within the
country's borders. In its final report next month, the
Sept. 11 commission can be expected to offer support to
this assertion. Mr. Moore says that instead of focusing on
Al Qaeda, the president spent 42 percent of his first eight
months in office on vacation; the figure came not from a
conspiracy-hungry Web site but from a calculation by The
Washington Post.

The most valid criticisms of the film are likely to involve
the artful way that Mr. Moore connects the facts, and
whether he has left out others that might undermine his
scalding attack. A great many statistics fly by in the
movie - such as assertions that 6 percent to 7 percent of
the United States is owned by Saudi Arabians, and that
Saudi companies have paid more than $1.4 billion to Bush
family interests. But Mr. Moore doesn't explain how he
arrived at them, or what these vague interests comprise.
Mr. Moore and his team say they have news reports and other
evidence to back up the numbers and that it will be posted
on his Web site (www.michaelmoore.com) after the film's
release.

Mr. Moore may also be criticized for the way he portrays
the evacuation of the extended bin Laden family from the
United States after Sept. 11. As the Sept. 11 commission
has found, the Saudi government was able to pull strings at
senior levels of the Bush administration to help the bin
Ladens leave the United States. But while the film clearly
suggests that the flights occurred at a time when all air
traffic was grounded immediately after the attacks ("Even
Ricky Martin couldn't fly," Mr. Moore says over video of
the singer wandering in an airport lobby), the Sept. 11
commission said in a report this April that there was "no
credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi
Arabian nationals departed the United States before the
reopening of national airspace" and that the F.B.I. had
concluded that no one aboard the flights was involved in
Sept. 11.

In conversation, Mr. Moore defended the scene, saying his
goal was to show how the White House was eager to bend and
break the rules for Saudi friends - in this case, the
extended family of the terrorist who had just brought down
the twin towers and attacked the Pentagon. And as reporters
have found, the White House still refuses to document fully
how the flights were arranged.

"I don't want to get lost in the forest because of a single
tree," Mr. Moore said. "The main point I want people to go
away with is that these people got special treatment
because they were bin Ladens or Saudi royals, and you and I
would never have been given that treatment."

Mr. Moore may also have to defend his portrayal of Mr.
Bush's presidency as sinking prior to Sept. 11, citing an
inability to win support for his legislation. But he fails
to mention that in May, Congress agreed to Mr. Bush's $1.35
trillion tax cut, the centerpiece of his legislative
agenda. Mr. Moore said that his review of news coverage
before Sept. 11 shows that, with or without the tax cut,
the Bush presidency was floundering before the terrorist
attacks. Mr. Moore said, "I've read what other people wrote
and said at the time, and he was definitely on the ropes."

MR. MOORE usually revels in his role as the target of
conservative attacks, and his delight in playing the
mischievous, little-guy bomb-thrower has brought him fame,
wealth and the devotion of fans more interested in
rhetorical force than precision. But with "Fahrenheit" he
has taken on his biggest and best-defended target yet, and
his production staff says that on his orders they have
taken no chances in checking and double-checking the film,
knowing Bush supporters would pounce on factual mistakes.

Mr. Moore is readying for a conservative counterattack,
saying he has created a political-style "war room" to offer
an instant response to any assault on the film's
credibility. He has retained Chris Lehane, a Democratic
Party strategist known as a master of the black art of
"oppo," or opposition research, used to discredit
detractors. He also hired outside fact-checkers, led by a
former general counsel of The New Yorker and a veteran
member of that magazine's legendary fact-checking team, to
vet the film. And he is threatening to go one step further,
saying he has consulted with lawyers who can bring
defamation suits against anyone who maligns the film or
damages his reputation.

"We want the word out," says Mr. Moore, who says he should
have responded more quickly to allegations of inaccuracy in
his Oscar-winning 2002 anti-gun documentary, "Bowling for
Columbine." "Any attempts to libel me will be met by
force," he said, not an ounce of humor in his familiar
voice. "The most important thing we have is truth on our
side. If they persist in telling lies, knowingly telling a
lie with malice, then I'll take them to court."

As proof of its scrupulousness, the Moore team cites
adjustments it made to the film's portrayal of Attorney
General John Ashcroft. The film is brutal to Mr. Ashcroft,
depicting him as a glassy-eyed architect of efforts to
shred the Constitution, who became Attorney General only
after he proved himself so unpopular in his home state of
Missouri that he lost a Senate race to a former Democratic
governor who died in a plane crash a month before election
day. "Voters preferred the dead guy," Mr. Moore deadpans in
the film, a line that drew belly laughs at recent preview
screenings. (In reality, voters knew they were in effect
casting ballots for the governor's widow).

An earlier version of the film, however, included a
reference to a widely circulated charge, broadcast by CBS
News in July 2001, that Mr. Ashcroft had received warning
of threats and stopped flying on commercial airlines. Tia
Lessin, supervising producer of "Fahrenheit 9/11," said the
reference to the CBS report was cut after Mr. Moore's
fact-checking team found evidence that Mr. Ashcroft had
flown commercially at least twice that summer.

"We have gone through every single word of this film -
literally every word - and verified its accuracy," said
Joanne Doroshow, a public interest lawyer and filmmaker who
shared in a 1993 Oscar for documentaries and who joined the
fact-checking effort last month. Ms. Doroshow is
responsible for preparing what she calls a "fact-checking
bible," with material ranging from newspaper and magazine
articles to copies of the Federal Register, that will allow
the film's lawyers and publicists to provide backup for its
allegations.

That said, Mr. Moore's fact-checkers do not view the film
as straight reportage. "This is an Op-Ed piece, it's not a
news report," said Dev Chatillon, the former general
counsel for The New Yorker. "This is not The New York
Times, it's not a network news report. The facts have to be
right, yes, but this is an individual's view of current
events. And I'm a very firm believer that it is within
everybody's right to examine the actions of their
government."

Besides, it may turn out that the most talked-about moments
in the film are the least impeachable. Mr. Moore makes
extensive use of obscure footage from White House and
network-news video archives, including long scenes that
capture President Bush at his least articulate. For the
White House, the most devastating segment of "Fahrenheit
9/11" may be the video of a befuddled-looking President
Bush staying put for nearly seven minutes at a Florida
elementary school on the morning of Sept. 11, continuing to
read a copy of "My Pet Goat" to schoolchildren even after
an aide has told him that a second plane has struck the
twin towers. Mr. Bush's slow, hesitant reaction to the
disastrous news has never been a secret. But seeing the
actual footage, with the minutes ticking by, may prove more
damaging to the White House than all the statistics in the
world.¬Ý¬Ý

So it wasn't one-sided at all? Moore provided plenty of ammunition from the right as to possible answers? No, he didn't. And that's OK.

What isn't OK is pushing his political POV by ignoring/blurring facts, ambushing, messing with chronology and the like - rather than simply laying out what's wrong with the NRA. (and this goes beyond BfC)

The "I'm a comedian!"/"I'm a documentarian!" obfuscation is a page taken straight from the Limbaugh playbook, isn't it?

A good counter-example might be Al Franken. He's funnier than Moore (though still not hilarious), but even while doing straight comedy, he avoids the pitfalls of Moore's pranksterism.

If Moore's film does some consciousness raising, if it inspires a few heretofore unaware souls to seek to boot Bush out of office, that's just fine with me. I'm way past the point of factual scruples with this administration. Moore's use of a few funky juxtapositions or loosey-goosey edits absolutely pales in comparison to the horrendous prevarication and criminal behavior of the current occupants of the White House. If there's a contemporary equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns, quibbling about a major motion picture would have to be it.

Like CeCe said, I liked not having a Rush Limbaugh on my side. You underestimate the extent to which a Michael Moore, known only from this mistakes and his public persona comes to represent everyone left-of-center.

Maybe it's horribly idealistic, but you win by being better than the other guy. You don't win by being just as bad.

I'll say this, and then I'll talk about Moore in greater detail once I've actually seen his movie: I really don't think there's any equivalence between Moore's filmmaking techniques and Bush lying about WMD or his connections to the Saudis or any other number of things. And I think the left totally sucks at pointing that out, and enables the comparison. Everyone that goes on some right wing flunkie's cable or radio show this week to talk about this movie ought to hasten to point out that whatever Moore's weaknesses, they have yet to cost a single person their life. We can't let right-wing attack dogs make it sound like Moore is the criminal. Because though he may be a lot of things, that is one thing he most definitely is not.

Ray Bradbury piles in

All this handwringing about Moore's subjectivity is, I say again, completely stupid when you consider the history of documentary film. Documentaries are not objective nor were they ever meant to be. And I still don't think Moore's stuff is as lefty as some other classic docs - Harlan County USA (1976 Best Documentary Oscar winner) comes to mine. Too bad Frank Sinatra's not around to give a disclaimer at the awards ceremony.

Documentary award winner Producer Bert Schneider read a controversial Vietnamese telegram as part of his acceptance speech. Later in the ceremony, co-host Frank Sinatra issued a disclaimer on behalf of the Academy disavowing any official endorsement of the telegram's content.

This Moore guy ain't doing anything new, people.

-- hstencil (hstenci...) (webmail), June 20th, 2004 7:46 PM. (hstencil) (later) (link)

hstencil i still think you're missing the point, which ebert clearly articulates: the problem is not *subjectivity* but *accuracy.* and i do think a film claiming to be a "documentary" has a responsible to represent reality as accurately as possible. also, the force of his broader arguments can be sabotaged by lying or half-truths at the level of "details" -- hence the supposed "fact-checking" team moore has ostentatiously employed.

also, what difference does it make if it is "something new" or not? are you berating us for not being aware of the history of documentary film? just because the arguments have been made before, in different circumstances, does not mean we are fools for making them again.

and i do think a film claiming to be a "documentary" has a responsible to represent reality as accurately as possible.

again, what are your feelings on Nanook of the North?

also, the force of his broader arguments can be sabotaged by lying or half-truths at the level of "details" -- hence the supposed "fact-checking" team moore has ostentatiously employed.

I'm confused - you're saying his downfall is inaccuracy yet it's "ostentatious" for him to employ fact-checkers? That doesn't make sense to me. Either he should employ fact-checkers - in an attempt to make his movie accurate as I think you (and Ebert) are claiming he should do - or not.

also, what difference does it make if it is "something new" or not? are you berating us for not being aware of the history of documentary film? just because the arguments have been made before, in different circumstances, does not mean we are fools for making them again.

I am not berating anybody (although I'm suspecting I'm beginning to be berated). I think most of the objections that are voiced about Fahrenheit 9/11 on this thread have little to do with the movie itself, and instead have A LOT to do with legitimate objections to the documentary genre as a whole. Knowing just a smidgen of history of documentary film would help clarify those objections, and might help the objectors realize that Moore is but one in a long line. I think that's helpful, not hurtful, and I'm kinda surprised that someone with such an avid knowledge of film would advocate that me pointing that history out is somehow wrong. Maybe you think people should not try to be at least somewhat conversant in their subjects?

i mean his chattering to the newspaper journalist about his multidudinous squads of fact-checkers, is a bit ostentatious and self-serving. but you can cut out the "ostentatious" part, it was just an editorial aside from me.

I think most of the objections that are voiced about Fahrenheit 9/11 on this thread have little to do with the movie itself, and instead have A LOT to do with legitimate objections to the documentary genre as a whole.

well, surely many documentaries have--rightfully--come up for various forms of criticism/defense on the grounds of accuracy. i don't think revisiting such arguments as applied to moore's film is the same thing as misunderstanding the nature of the documentary film.

as far as your historical notes go, i just feel that they don't really answer the arguments presented on these threads, and thus seem a little gratuitous... as though you were attempting to argue largely by means of authority claims. i probably do this sometimes myself.

Also, his film is about to open here next week, so I totally expected to see him working the Times for more publicity. It's his main target demo!

i have no idea what these means (except for the "gimme a break" part).

...as though you were attempting to argue largely by means of authority claims. i probably do this sometimes myself.

if you think I go a little overboard doing this, I'd like to introduce you to Chuck Eddy.

i tend to think of documentary (this is the short version) as a film made (for the most part) of constituent bits of non-staged reality, however they happen to be arranged and for whatever purpose.

moore: "my film is a documentary"
critic: "no, it's propaganda"

you haven't dealt with the actual claims/arguments of the film itself. you've simply tried to shut down a debate that is not, in fact, going to shut down.

I don't think so. I think he thinks of himself more as an old-fashioned muckraker. And at his best, he is.

my impression is that you were suggesting that people picking at the factual errors and misrepresentations in moore's film were ignorant of the history of the documentary, and that such criticisms aren't relevant. is that a misreading?

And I think it's really preposterous that you claim I take a position of "not answering an argument except to say 'i know a lot about this stuff, so trust me'" then lecture someone else on the difference b/w prop and doc. I mean that's just either ridiculously ballsy and I salute you for your cutzpah, disingenous to the nth degree tho it might be, or you are just not very self-aware.

btw i think of "nanook" as something halfway between documentary and fiction film.

Yeah, but you have to keep in mind how those "mistakes" and "public persona" have been shaped by vindictive often grossly exaggerated partisan campaigns from the other side. I've read the rap sheet of inaccuracies in "Bowling for Columbine," and they don't cumulatively add up to enough to indict the film's central points. Moore sometimes gets on my nerves too, but I've been a little alarmed at how many liberals I know seem to be at great pains to distance themselves from him, often seemingly on the basis of his "reputation" -- a reputation that is being shaped by people with very good reasons for trying to tear down a potentially powerful liberal voice. Michael Moore has ten times the journalistic and fact-checking scruples of Rush Limbaugh, who just brazenly makes shit up three hours a day on a daily basis, and even though Rush's many fabrications and distortions have been pointed out in various places I don't see conservatives nervously distancing themselves from him like they don't want anyone to get the wrong idea about them.

Anyway, from that Times article (and from Ebert's piece, in which you'll note he's much more positive about "9/11" than "Columbine" -- he's already given "9/11" a huge thumbs-up on his show), it sounds like Moore's done more fact-checking on this movie than any publication in America does on their own work. Any "inaccuracies" found are almost certain to be small ones, and they will be trumpted largely by people pretending to attack his methods but really attacking his message.

I don't love Michael Moore, but I do think he gets a raw deal. And I'm also glad he's out there.

I've often been baffled at why the left so often lets conservatives set the terms of debate in this.

I don't even see his stuff as documentary. I just see it as plain old propaganda. And Moore would probably agree.

I don't think so. I think he thinks of himself more as an old-fashioned muckraker. And at his best, he is.

-- spittle (ptu...), June 21st, 2004.

I don't agree. I think he sees himself as a revolutionary. He wants to effect the election. He wants all his movies to have an effect on society and CHANGE society if possible. He wants the country to be a different place and he makes movies to further that goal. That's why I used the word propaganda. I'm not saying it's good or bad. Just that he is beyond muckraking or investigative journalism. When I think of muckraking I think of someone shedding light on a subject and letting the facts speak for themselves. Most of Moore's information comes from print journalism and muckrakers and investigative reporting. Then he takes that information and does what he does with it. I'm looking forward to the movie.

Now, I don't think Moore is anywhere near the equal of someone like Steffens or Riis. But I also don't think that the muckrakers were some clarion of objectivity. (As a sidebar, I should say that I think that the drive toward "objectivity" in reportage, which goes hand-in-hand with the professionalization of the industry, is something to be lamented. It has watered down reporting as a political tool and transformed most reporters into a quivering chorus of stenographers eager to preserve their "sources" and their "access.") And I'll say it again -- I also don't think Moore is a reporter per se. His films are agitprop, and agitprop has its place.

The pitfall for Moore is not subjectivity, but accuracy.

...is being ignored again and again on this thread, which is a shame 'cos it's U&K.

found this when googling... Anyone see this ever?

Unless it's something like a hilarious photocollage that is meant to point out that Michael Moore is a heavyset man, and therefore his ideas are worthless. Keep those coming.

I am mad at myself right now for even deigning to post a response in a thread that links to some ridiculous bullshit like that "Bowling for Truth" thing. Jesus christ.

http://www.fritzliess.com/movabletype/archives/images/moore_dude_book.jpg
http://hogwild.net/images/Balloons/2003.06.08/michael.moore-madeleine.albright.jpg
http://www.attackcartoons.com/bigcameras.GIF

(I've never seen him smoke on TV).

i stopped reading hitchens when he stopped trying to make convincing arguments.

So I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft.

a) Charlton Heston is a senile jackass (true)
b) Canadian media is always very polite, and would never exploit fear for ratings (wrong!)

Really, I wouldn't care about the film's many distortions of the truth if it made any fucking sense.

From Slate.

Funny how easily "An administration" or "A call to arms" or even "A former journalist" can be subbed in for "film," no?