As Ron Silver states, given enough stock footage of Michael Moore, you could make him look like an anorexic right-winger. As an editor myself, I can tell you without a doubt that this is absolutely true.
So why then does the movie resort to exactly the same tactics that it condemns? Are we to assume that Ann Coulter had a hand in the script? That would certainly lead to a satisfactory conclusion, since the first chapter of her vicious book Slander is concerned with savagely attacking liberals for resorting to such childish tactics as name calling, and the remaining 200 pages or so are concerned with calling liberals every name imaginable. Coulter's hypocrisy is counterbalanced only by its immediacy, as is also the case with much of the material in this movie.
It does go to great lengths to defend the Patriot Act, which is highly unpopular with organizations like the American Civil Liberties Act, which in turn is highly unpopular with conservatives in general. Fahrenhype states a couple of cases in which the Patriot Act was effective, countering an assertion that Moore did not make, that its costs outweighed the benefits. Moore's sequence on the Patriot Act was centered on the shocking revelation that the Act itself was not even read before it was passed.
I'm reminded of something Homer Simpson once said, 'Wait a minute, I don't sign anything until I read it or someone gives me the gist of it.' Let me just tell you right now, that statement is MUCH funnier coming from Homer Simpson than it is coming from high level government officials.
But that's just a detail, a little fact to be ignored. Let's just present a case illustrating what the Patriot Act was designed for and hope that people forget the reduction of civil liberties that it entails, the ways that it has been and continues to be abused, and the fact that John Kerry has stated he has no plans to dismantle it, only to restructure it to prevent its wholesale abuse.
By far the funniest part of the movie is unintentionally funny but is absolutely hilarious and also because of the juxtaposition of images, just like Moore's juxtaposition of dancing kids and marriage ceremonies with falling bombs. There's a scene where a man says that it is arrogantly mean-spirited to say that Bush wanted a reason to invade Iraq even before the 9/11 attacks. This is hilarious because immediately after this ludicrous statement is made, it cuts to Ann Coulter, quite possibly the most arrogant and mean-spirited person in news, entertainment, political commentary, or publishing on any side of the political spectrum. I almost fell out of my chair laughing. A movie featuring Ann Coulter calling someone ELSE mean-spirited. That's like Michael Savage calling someone other than himself a racist.
Another example of a botched attack is Fahrenhype's attack of Moore's outrageous claim that Saddam Hussein never attacked or threatened to attack this country. On the other hand, Hussein DID try to have Bush Sr. assassinated (note: he tried to kill Clinton, too), but this movie is so inept that it cites as evidence threats against America that took place AFTER Bush invaded Iraq (see below).
'He's not happy that he's occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either!' -President George W. Bush, in reference to Saddam Hussein
One guy stupidly uses a nest of copperhead snakes, which are immensely poisonous, as a ludicrous example of Bush's and Kerry's alleged strategies for conducting a war on terror. He uses one of the weakest attacks imaginable in all of debate, which is to twist the other side's position so badly that it is entirely unrecognizable. This is generally an attack used by religious extremists to attack the Evolution. He foolishly says that he didn't go ask the City Council or his wife to ask permission to kill the garter snakes, he just lopped their heads off with a ho because his grandchildren and great-grandchildren play in the area and a single snake bite would kill any one of them. The only way this analogy could be compared to Iraq is if, rather than using a ho to kill the snakes, he used a stick of dynamite, and in addition to killing the garter snakes, he also accidentally killed a dozen or so innocent bystanders, at least one of his grandchildren, injured his wife, lost at least two appendages himself (arm or leg) but not more than three, ignored the loud requests of his neighbors to use a ho rather than a stick of dynamite, and angered all of the copperhead snakes in the area to the point where they decided that their reason for existence was to get revenge against him and anyone who looks like him. THEN you have an apt analogy.
It's really sad to see a movie come out with the purported purpose of setting the record straight, of revealing what they believe is the propaganda of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, and succeed in doing nothing more than creating a whole film full of propaganda themselves. It truly is telling this movie features a political cartoon that shows Michael Moore standing in front of the burning World Trade Center, trying to cover it up and telling people 'There's nothing to see here.' I assume we are meant to believe that these people watched and studied Fahrenheit 9/11 and therefore know what's in it. So how is it that they so completely missed the scene where Moore played the audio of the planes hitting the World Trade Center, as well as footage of the horrified faces of New Yorkers looking up in horror as the towers collapsed? Are they maybe attacking him for just playing the AUDIO of the attacks and not actually SHOWING the footage? Do they think that he hoped people in the audience wouldn't know what was going on? The lack of any basis for attack here is indeed unsettling.
Then again, Fahrenhype also suggests that Michael Moore's film tries to knock our liberty and claim that we don't have any, which is a curious claim because Fahrenheit 9/11 has absolutely NOTHING to do with liberty or our supposed lack of it under Bush's administration. Nothing. It's about the corruption of that administration and the badly botched war or terror and the even worse handling of and reason for the war in Iraq. Among the countless others, this is one of the best illustrations of how wrong this movie is.
This is not, however, to say that Michael Moore's film is right and to be taken as gospel. In fact, after they finish making this idiotic claim, the film cuts back to Gwen Tose-Rigell, Principal of Booker Elementary, who proposes the question, does it have to take a catastrophe 'in order for us to do some introspection and make America the great country that it was destined to be?'
That's a great question, Mrs. Tose-Rigell, and a good one to submit to the president, because introspection, even the most fleeting moment's thought about why we are so hated in the world, is the one thing that George W. Bush will not even consider.