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If anyone reading this thread hasn't already made up his mind, I suggest they read both the kopel site (attacking the statements in F911) and the moore site (defending the statements in F911) http://www.michaelmoore.com/warroom/f911notes/ and make up your own mind.

I can't honestly claim I read the entirety of either site. They go on and on and on. I read the first several deceits listed on the kopel site, read the defense on the moore site, spent about an hour doing research on my own (Google is an amazing tool).

The conclusion I came to is that kopel's claimed deceits (the ones I read, anyway) don't actually identify false factual statements. Instead, they are "impressionistic" arguments. Kopel explains the "impression" he got from F911, then argues his impression was wrong. However, if you didn't get the same impression when you saw the movie, then who's at fault? How about Kopel?

For example, F911 says Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush. Kopel says "Moore thus creates the false impression that the networks withdrew their claim about Gore winning Florida when they heard that Fox said that Bush won Florida." Sorry, but Kopel has mixed up retracting a call for Gore and making a call for Bush, so he's reached the wrong impression - inadvertently, I'm sure. F911 says that Fox was the first network to call Florida for Bush, and that is the documented truth (it happened at 2:16am, and the other networks followed shortly thereafter).

He also seems to nitpick a lot. Like when he says F911 deceitfully calls Katherine Harris the "vote count woman" when she doesn't actually count the votes, she merely certifies the count. Look, I'm not stupid. I know she didn't get down on her knees and personally count the ballots. She was the Secretary of State and on the Election Board, she supervised the elections and the vote counting, and she made the decision to certify (accept) a vote count or, later, to refuse to certify (reject) a vote re-count. Maybe F911 should call her the "vote count certifying woman" - gimme a break, who cares?

Of course, F911 is a partisan, opinionated movie that tries its hardest to persuade the viewer to vote against Bush. And because it is a movie, it has to be watchable and to last under 2 hours, so not every footnote and detail can fit in. So I can agree that Moore does everything he can to present Bush unfavorably and make his anti-Bush case - he uses hints, innuendo, cuts and editing, camera angles, emotions, all the tricks. He's pretty upfront about it - do you think anyone walked into see F911 thinking that Moore supported Bush?

But I didn't find F911 riddled with false statements of fact, as Kopel says. (Again, I only had time to read the first several claims of deceit. I'd hope Kopel led off with his best stuff.)

If you support Bush, I can see that you might call the movie "detestable" or even "disgusting". But calling it "deceitful" is, in my opinion, unjustified.
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Old 08-06-2004, 12:30 AM
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