MOORE IS LESS

Michael Moore and the consecration of victimhood: "...the film, and in fact Moore's entire oeuvre, revolves around the consecration of victimhood. After all, this is a man who hides behind the crippled, the bereaved, and the deceased whenever he tries to make a point. In Bowling for Columbine, he swaggers into Wal-Mart's head office pushing a wheelchair-bound, bullet-ridden teenager, and demands that the supermarket chain stop selling bullets... The assumption that underlies Moore's work is that victims have greater moral authority than anyone else, simply by virtue of their victimhood. This approach does a disservice to those disenfranchised individuals it purports to help, because it casts their predicament in crude emotional terms and thus precludes arriving at a rational understanding of it. Such an approach may appear compassionate, but it is actually about the egotistical display of Moore's own emotional credentials."

"The cinema is fast becoming a pulpit. And Michael Moore is not the only preacher in town. Showing in Europe are two companion pieces to Fahrenheit 9/11, both by acolytes of the American controversialist.... American power seems to loom so large in the Left imagination that the rest of the world is occluded from view. One rarely hears any discussion of the real global crisis: poverty.... An interesting configuration seems to be taking place. The Left is angsting about the US - the latest edition of Courrier International, titled Made in Bush, is entirely dedicated to American ugliness - while the US is beginning to talk about the world.... If your politics are fed by popular culture, particularly by the new trend in cinematic pamphleteering, you probably have the impression that only one thing really matters: the US. But this is easy politics - too easy. It is being fed by an alliance between film culture and Left politics; unfortunately, however, it represents shallow culture and narrow politics".

"Moore isn't just antiwar and anti-Bush; he is also virulently anti-American. That's a label some right-wing pundits tend to slap on anyone critical of the war and of President Bush. In Moore's case, however, the label fits."

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello has an accurate description of Moore after Moore said that both the Australian Prime Minister and GWB were idiots: "Mike Moore is entitled to his opinion but that's the quintessential ugly American, sitting down attacking the Australian prime minister,"

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ELSEWHERE

An amusing article by a Leftist here -- accusing the GOP of an unprincipled desperation that will make it do anything to hang on to power. Classic Leftist projection! Seeing your own motivations in others! The Left themselves are so desperate to gain power that they have put up a man whose proclaimed policies are almost identical to those of the despised Bush! Given that same man's far-left congressional voting record, who is the desperate and unprincipled one?

LOL: Another self-revelatory article by a Leftist here: He goes out and interviews ordinary non-intellectual GOP voters and finds that, like most ordinary people, they don't have much grasp of political minutiae. He finds that they vote for GWB simply because they see him as a man of good character. Our Leftist does not understand that at all. Character? What is that? The best explanation he can come up with is that it is some kind of religion! The Leftist's poster-boy is the psychopathic Clinton -- a man of no character at all but who can talk the feelgood talk. So Leftists love him. The warm inner glow of feeling superior is all that matters to them.

A good quip: "Now that obesity is a disease, we don't have to work. All we have to do is call in fat!"

Theodore Dalrymple on multiculturalism in Britain "if we are to avoid violently disaffected and resentful ethnic enclaves in our midst, we need to teach immigrants that the freedom, prosperity, and tolerance that they enjoy result from a long spiritual and cultural development, not to be taken for granted, and that they have a magnificence and grandeur. In the modern multicultural climate, though, there is no quick way of doing this.

Peaceful Muslims ignored: " President Bush likes to talk about nurturing democracy within the Muslim world, but he's doing little for the pro-Western Muslims of the Western Sahara whose future rests in his hands... They have been languishing in refugee camps in western Algeria for nearly 30 years and will remain there until the United States stops playing chief enabler to a Moroccan government that invaded and seized their country when it was freed from colonial rule by Spain in the '70s."

Leftist racism OK? "Because of the racially-insensitive content of a recent cartoon, members of the African-American leadership network Project 21 are asking Universal Press Syndicate to cease the distribution of comics drawn by Ted Rall. Project 21 also is challenging several other civil rights-oriented groups to join in the demand. A July 1 comic by Rall suggests "appropriate punishments for deposed Bushists" that parodies alleged treatment of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. The panel featuring Bush Administration national security advisor Condoleezza Rice has her saying "I was Bush's beard! His house nigga. His..." She is interrupted by a character wearing a shirt reading "You're not white, stupid" who says, "Now hand over your hair straightener.".. "Is it OK for Ted Rall to use such vile language because he's using it against a black conservative?" asks Project 21 member Michael King. "I'm beside myself with anger over this comic."

Hitler idealized youth too: "For liberals, obsession with the support of 'the youth' is power worship too, but it's something as well. Liberals believe that youth has a moral authority independent of the substance of its arguments. Youth politics is a variant of identity politics which imbues in young people an authority they did not purchase with work or with insight -- just as liberalism does with gender, race, infirmity, etc"

Prof. Bunyip is good at mockery. On seducing his students: "True, one must listen to all sorts of late-teenage emptiness en route to boudoir or the floor of one's office, but that's really par for the course, as a willingness to nod and agree with vigourously asserted vacuities is the prime prerequisite for building and preserving a relationship with any woman. When they're young, it's all about sympathising with observations about illegal aliens and how we must do something to ease their plight, and how -- my word, isn't that a coincidence! -- it is indeed really, really special when a young woman comes across an older gentlemen who genuinely digs unicorns, too"

Which German to choose? "German law bars any trade using Hitler portraits, swastikas or National Socialist symbols." But communist symbols are perfectly acceptable; Germany even produces Karl Marx vodka."

For more postings, see GREENIE WATCH and POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH. Mirror sites here and here

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Puzzle 1: Leftists always say that human nature is fundamentally good and that people can be trusted. So why do they say that whilst at the same time wanting to regulate everybody to death and take as many decisions and choices out of the hands of the individual as they possibly can? Easy: They say that about human nature because, if it is true, then THEY are good at heart and can be trusted -- and, given their destructive deeds, they need all the propaganda help they can get in that regard.

Puzzle 2: Why do "postmodern" Leftists make the strange claim that everything ever written has to be interpreted in terms of how it serves power? Easy: Because everything THEY say is directed towards getting themselves power

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