Just for fun, let’s do a little more on Moore. Sometimes people say “Why would M. Moore lie? He would know he was going to be caught!” but that’s not the case at all, remember how he feels about all of us here in the US:
“Take his description of his fellow countrymen and their blind pursuit of the American Dream: “They are possibly the dumbest people on the planet… in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pricks.” – quote in context (which is more than Moore would ever give anyone)
There are any number of interesting items in the news about this guy of late, first lets pull some quotes from a London Times article:
“One of the most important concerns the depiction of the Lockheed Martin factory, the largest employer in the Denver suburb where the Columbine shootings took place. After a caption introduces Lockheed as the “world’s largest weapons maker”, a spokesman, Evan McCollum, is interviewed in front of a huge section of a rocket. Moore suggests that there is a connection between the presence in the town of a weapons manufacturer and the demented violence unleashed at nearby Columbine: “So, you don’t think our kids say to themselves, `Gee, you know, Dad goes off to the factory every day and, you know, he builds missiles. These are weapons of mass destruction. What’s the difference between that mass destruction and the mass destruction over at Columbine High School?”
McCollum initially appears bemused by this question. The bland reply that he eventually offers appears to be the typical evasion of Corporate Man. (Throughout his career, Moore has been very good at making “ordinary” people, from receptionists to shopkeepers, look foolish on camera.) Later, we see a rocket being transported through the streets in the dead of night, en route to an air force base, passing close to the homes where, as Moore ominously intones, “the children of Columbine are asleep”.
The forces of evil are on the prowl, it seems. But that hardly tallies with Moore’s own subsequent admission, on the Bowling website, that the plant does not actually make weapons: the rockets are used to carry satellites, including TV satellites, into space. Given that the film is so intent on drawing an analogy between rampant militarism and school violence, this surely undermines Moore’s entire thesis.
When you read Moore’s explanation for the error (“Lockheed rockets now take satellites into outer space”) it is possible to infer — if you wish to give him the benefit of the doubt — that there could simply have been a misunderstanding. But when I spoke to McCollum this week he insisted that Moore was given the correct information at the time of the visit.” – quote in context
You have to love the balls on this guy.
“A more serious charge concerns a later scene in which Heston resurfaces in Flint, where a six-year-old black girl, Kayla Rolland, had been fatally shot by a boy in her class. Moore describes at some length how the boy’s mother had been forced to go out on low-paid jobs as part of a callous welfare-to-work programme. Her son found the gun in his uncle’s house, where he had been staying, and took it to school. (Moore’s critics have pointed out that the uncle was, in fact, a drug dealer and that the home was a crack house. The gun is said to have been left as payment for drugs. The details of the mother’s financial circumstances have also been challenged. All this goes unmentioned in the film.) Hardy argues that Moore manipulates the fast-moving screen images at this point. Moore’s narration tells us: “Just as he did after the Columbine shooting, Heston showed up in Flint to have a big pro-gun rally.”
The impression of ambulance-chasing is heightened by the fleeting shot of a report taken from an NRA webpage: we see, in bold type, the words “48 hours after Kayla Rolland is pronounced dead”. Hardy points out that the rest of the sentence, which you can read when you freeze-frame the tape, actually refers to pro-gun-control comments made by the then President Clinton on TV. What is more, Hardy learnt that Heston actually gave his address in Flint eight months after the shooting, when he spoke at an election rally as part of the 2000 election campaign.” – quote in context
Lies, lies lies.