Back from vacation...

...and ready to see Fahrenheit 9/11! But first, I had to read David Denby's irritating review in The New Yorker.



The New Yorker has been called a self-satisfied bastion of middle-class smugness. And in the American middle class, thou-shalt-not admit the existence of economic classes; it's unkind towards those below, and impolite towards those above. So the entire premise of Michael Moore's humor--that the rich ARE different from you and I, they're greedy assholes--offends David Denby. Who is, as we all know from his self-aggrandizing gawp of a mea culpa American Sucker, himself quite wealthy--by any standard save the Upper West Side/Bonfire of the Vanities one he aspires to. If you're making the kind of money Denby is, and have the kind of friends he does, of course Michael Moore is a paranoid asshole. "We live in the best of all possible worlds, right? Mustn't we, since I'm doing so well?"



Denby reacts to Moore's provocation by making molehills out of mountains. "'Fahrenheit 9/11' has a kind of necessary shock value," Denby writes, "it reveals the underside of the war, the bloody messes not shown on news broadcasts." There's a big question and a little question implied here.



First, the little question: can we trust Moore, who is an admitted agitator with an agenda? That's reasonable to ask, and easy to answer: we trust him at our own risk. But everybody's got a bias, whether it's FOX or CNN or David Denby. Michael Moore's right up front about his, allowing each of us to filter him as we see fit, but for this honesty Denby believes him LESS. I think that people and organizations that cloak their biases under fraudulent claims of objectivity are more to be feared than straight-out polemicists like Moore. But Moore's truthfulness clearly isn't the point. Clearly the offensiveness of what Moore says is more important to Denby than whether it's true or not.



Now the big question: why the hell AREN'T the news broadcasts showing this? Why the hell do we have to rely on Michael Moore to show us 'the underside of the war'? In Vietnam, if you didn't trust an underground newspaper--if you thought it was biased--you could turn on the evening news. Not anymore--and this apparently doesn't worry Denby. Because we're living in the best etc., etc.



"The ideological framework of “Fahrenheit 9/11” goes roughly like this," Denby writes. "America is not a democracy; America is an oligarchy in which the wealthy pull the strings behind a façade of manufactured democratic consent." History suggests that Moore's "ideological framework" is probably a lot closer to the truth than striving functionaries like Denby wish to believe. See: the 2000 election. American Sucker, indeed.



Later, Denby writes, "On the Bush connections with the Saudis, for instance, Moore takes a line similar to that of Craig Ungar in his recent book, “House of Bush, House of Saud”..." Perversely, rather than making Moore's movie MORE intellectually palatable, this makes it LESS. "Ungar cites his sources in footnotes, and you can check up on him if you want to," Denby writes. So, in David Denby's world, unless you're willing to read a thick book filled with checkable footnotes, better to remain ignorant. Wouldn't want to be a firebrand and overstate things--then Kiki Kippington won't let you into the co-op, don't you know.



The problem seems to be that, unlike every other movie he'll review this year, Fahrenheit 9/11 doesn't reflect Denby's extremely mobile, cosmopolitan, priviledged reality. Denby lives on another planet. "[I]sn’t the Army mostly a boon for the working class?" he cringes petulantly at one point, freighting that "mostly" with the obvious comeback, "Yes, except when they get killed for being in it." In a country as rich as ours why do working class people have to risk their lives to get a Bachelor's Degree? Michael Moore seems strident because people like Denby won't ask hard questions like that.



Michael Moore may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean he isn't on to something, and his massive, worldwide popularity suggests that more people agree with him than Denby is comfortable to admit. A "campus and conspiracy-nut following" won't sell you millions and millions of books worldwide. Roger and Me could be denied as a bit of harmless muckraking; Bowling for Columbine less so. Watching Fahrenheit 9/11, Denby saw Moore's enemy and realized it was him.