Unfairenheit 9/11

I'm no big fan of Christopher Hitchens, who for all his claims of being a hard-core liberal seems to agree with my "neo-con" perspective all too frequently, but his review of Moore's latest MTV movie illustrates from experience what I already expected.

"To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery."

Unlike Moore's other recent movies, I'll likely endure viewing this one the moment it hits the net. As Hitchens points out and as I already knew, there is no point in arguing the validity of Moore's movies, since they are flat entertainment with little to no connection to factual information. Still, I'll need to be prepared to educate it's victims.

* Update *
Here's a counter-point to Hitchen's piece.

* Update 2 *
Andrew Sullivan weighs in with this:

"Some more thoughts on the Gibson/Moore parallels. It occurred to me as I witnessed the unanimity in the audience watching "Fahrenheit 9/11" that I had been in a similar situation before. Yes - this was exactly what it felt like at an early showing of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ." Both movies were designed for people who already held - as theological certitude - the basic line of the work. Both used the most egregious devices of propaganda to reinforce this point. Gibson used extreme and constant violence - as if to say that recoiling from that horror was proof that his vision of Christianity was correct. The loving camera shots of pure pornographic pain and gore were devices to end thought, short-cut any audience autonomy, and reinforce orthodoxy. And that was Moore's device as well. The long views of the faces of various villains; the camera edits to create menace; the emotional manipulation of a bereaved mother; the swelling, ominous orchestral swoops. All we didn't have was a Pieta scene. One was designed for the unthinking hordes of the far right; the other for the unthinking hordes of the far left. Both were deeply depressing indicators of how far our culture has curdled into unthought and emotional extremism. Neither sought to convert or explain or persuade. Both were designed to bludgeon the viewer into ideological conformity. And if you resist? You are a heretic or a dupe. Whatever happened to "intelligent viewer"?