Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 2004)
' s Oregon Daily Emerald Thursday, October 14,2004 NEWS STAFF (541)346-5511 JEN SUDICK EDITOR IN CHIEF STEVEN R. NEUMAN MANAGING EDITOR JARED PABEN AYISHA YAUYA NEWS EDITORS PARKER HOWELL SENIOR NEWS REPORTER MORIAH BALINCIT MECHANN CUNIFF KARA HANSEN ANTHONY LUCERO CANE1A WOOD NEWS REPORTERS - CLAYTON JONES SPORTS EDITOR ION ROETMAN SENIOR SPORTS REPORTER STEPHEN MILLER BRIAN SMITH STORTS REPORTERS RYAN NYBURG PULSE EDITOR NATASHA CH1LINCERIAN SENIOR PULSE REPORTER DAHVI FISCHER AMY LICHTY RYAN MURPHY PULSE REPORTERS DAVID IACERNAUTH EDITORIAL EDITOR JENNIFER MCBRIDE A1LEE SLATER CHUCK SLOTHOWER TRAVIS WILLSE COLUMNISTS ASHLEY GRIFFIN SUPPLEMENT FREELANCE EDITOR CABE BRADLEY NtWS FREELANCE EDITOR/ C.RECTOR OF RECRUITMENT DANIELLE HICKEY PHOTO EDITOR IAUREN WIMER SE NIOR PHOTOGRAPHER F1M BOBOSKY PHOTOGRAPHER ERIK BISHOFF PART TIME PHOTOGRAPHER BRET FURTWANCLER GRAPHICS EDITOR KIRA PARK DESIGN EDITOR ELLIOTr ASBURY CHARLIE CALDWELL DUSTIN REESE DESIGNERS SHADRA BEESLEY JEANNIE EVERS COPY CHIEFS KIMBERLY BLACKFIELD PAUL THOMPSON SPORTS COPY EDITORS AMANDA EVRARD AMBER LINDROS NEWS COPY EDITORS LINDSAY BURT PULSE COPYEDITOR ADRIENNE NELSON ONLINE EDITOR BUSINESS (541)346-5511 JUDY RIF.DL GENERAL MANAGER KATHY CARBONE BUSINESS MANAGER REBECCA CRirCHETT RECEPTIONIST N All IAN FOSTER AIBING GUO ANDREW LEAHY JOHN LONG MALLORY MAHONEY HOLLY MISTELL DISTRIBUTION ADVERTISING (541)346-3712 MELISSA GUST ADVERTISING DIRECTOR TYLER MACK SALES MANAGER ALEX AMES MATT BETZ HERON CALISCII-DOLEN MEGAN HAMLIN ELISA JESSOP MAF.CAN KASER-LEE MIA LEIDELMEYER EMILY PHILBIN SHANNON ROGERS SALES REPRESENTATIVES KEI.LEE KAUFTHEIL AD ASSISTANT CLASSIFIED (541)3464343 TRINA SHANAMAN CLASSIFIED MANAGER KATY GAGNON SABRINA COWETTE LESLIE STRAIGHT KERI SPANGLER KATIE STRINGER CLASSIFIED ADVERTISING ASSOCIATES PRODUCTION (541)3464381 MICHELE ROSS PRODUCTION MANAGER TARA SLOAN PRODUCTION COORDINATOR JEN CRAMLET KRISTEN DICHARRY CAMERON CAUT ANDY HOLLAND DESIGNERS The Oregon Dally Emerald is pu6 listed daily Monday through Fri day during the school year by the Oregon Daily Emerald Publishing Co. Inc., at the University of Ore gon, Eugene, Ore. The Emerald operates independently of the University with offices in Suite 300 of the Erb Memorial Union. The Emerald is private property. Unlawful removal or use of papers is prosecutable by law. £lH XL FOXTtf'AN&LER Bret Furtwancler | Graphics editor NO more Moore Recent months have brought big names in politics to town: Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, for mer Vermont governor Howard Dean and vice presidential nominee John Edwards. On Monday, Eugene will play host to another political guest: Michael Moore. Moore — the lugubrious, self-indul gent court jester of the American left — will discuss his inflammatory doc umentary “Fahrenheit 9/11,” and no doubt fling intermittently deserved barbs at the Bush administration’s in termittently effective policies. In light of Moore’s visit, I’d like to offer an inoculation against his litany of oversimplified innuendoes and misleading non sequiturs, and, in the interest of fairness, give credit in some of those places where it’s due. In “Fahrenheit,” Moore paints him self as a plucky and patriotic muck raker, a cinematographic sage illumi nating the incestuous catacombs of corporate self-interest and blundered foreign policy and the blood rites sacrificing hapless American soldiers and Iraqi civilians for fossil fuel. (These profanities are all, of course, orchestrated by a cabal of Republican policy-makers and defense contractor executives.) This story is, of course, largely ridiculous: Moore’s absurd criticisms begin as early as the film's opening scene. “Everything seemed to be going as planned,” Moore explains, launching into a montage of clips of networks projecting Democratic nominee A1 Gore as the winner of Florida’s elec toral votes in the 2000 election. But then he screens a clip of the Fox News Channel projecting now-President Bush as the state’s winner. “All of a sudden,” Moore explains, “the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’” The man at Fox’s “decision desk” on election night, it turns out, was John Ellis, a Bush first cousin. The TRAVIS WILLSE RIVALLESS WIT sequence spirals into incoherence from there, eventually implicating the Supreme Court in a procedural coup d’etat: “(Independent recounts don’t) matter, as long as all of your daddy’s friends on the Supreme Court vote the right way.” This sequence’s innuendo is largely spurious: The media, even if (or when) they behaved in the monolithic follow-the-leader scheme that Moore implies, had little say over the final vote count. Ellis’ assignment to the “decision desk” was thus unwise for a channel that prides itself on “fair ness and balance,” but also irrelevant to the wider discussion. Worse, Moore reduces the sober legal attention of the land’s highest court to an unrealis tic exercise in third-grade playground politics. (Absent, too, is the thornier notion that if court’s 5-4 ruling implies that the more conservative justices let their politics interfere with their judi cial sense in Bush v. Gore, then it sug gests the more liberal ones yielded to the same temptation.) Worse, this nonsense overshadows Moore’s too-brief discussion of the most legally and ethically dubious problems with Florida’s election: Katherine Harris’ double-duty as both vote-count chief and Bush’s campaign chair for the state, and the overzealous purging of state voter rolls that left probably thousands disenfranchised. Moore’s self-portrait fails in other ways, too. The best muckrakers pres ent the facts and help to resolve them cogently. Moore does neither. And such is his central failing in “Fahren heit.” While Moore has honed his prodding and instigating to near-per fection, he lacks an ability to provide coherent, logical conclusions. One of Moore’s slick but problem atic assessments is his take on Saudi influence on American policy. While Saudi Arabia enjoys evident fa voritism from the United States (de spite the former’s marginal-to-poor human rights record), differences in aims strain relations between the countries. If Saudi interests were as potent here as Moore suggests, Amer ican policy in both Afghanistan and Israel would be starkly different. At the least, Saudi Arabia wouldn’t have forced the United States to move its regional military headquarters out of the country. These and countless other devices of equal intellectual frivolity make Moore less a respectable critic of na tional policy gone awry and more a partisan gadfly with a flair for “gotchas” and parlor tricks. This ex cess leaves “Fahrenheit 9/11” far from the critical and emotional tour de force Moore wanted it to be — and from, to Moore’s credit, the one it could have been. Moore’s most remarkable failing in “Fahrenheit,” though, is also the most ironic. He tenders a half-true narra tive: Bush is a leader certain in his mission to protect his interests, but suffers from a misplaced sense of pa triotism and is shamefully willing to deceive the American public when convenient for his ideologically moti vated agenda. In succumbing to the excesses of paranoia and style that dominate the movie, Moore renders himself not as a person certain in his mission to dis credit Bush, but as a filmmaker that suffers from a misplaced sense of pa triotism and who is shamefully will ing to deceive his audience when con venient for his own ideologically motivated agenda. traviswUlse@dailyemerald.com OREGON DAILY EMERALD LETTERS POLICY Letters to the editor and guest commentaries are encouraged, and should be sent to letters@dailyemerald.com or submitted at the Oregon Daily Emerald office, EMU Suite 300. Electronic submissions are preferred. Letters are limited to 250 words, and guest commentaries to 550 words. Authors are limited to one submission per calendar month Submissions should include phone number and address for verification The Emerald reserves the right to edit for space, grammar and style. Guest submissions are published at the discretion of the Emerald. ■ Editorial In Senator McCain's holy name we trust After the president’s dramatic May 1 land ing on an aircraft carrier, the media was ob sessed with “Bush’s Bulge.” Who could have predicted that yet another suspicious presi dential bunching of fabric would steal so much spotlight once again last week? Fortu nately, this time it is a bulge north of the border. Internet conspiracy theorists are saying that a visible protrusion on Bush’s back during the first presidential debate is evidence that he is getting feed information through a wireless earpiece. The finest evidence against this theory is in plain sight — the President’s atrocious per formance during the first debate. If Bush was cheating during any of the presidential debates, it was last night’s. For the duration of the 90-minute pissing contest he performed much better, in style, but not in content. His smirks seemed a bit more presi dential as he and Kerry flung lie after lie, re peating lies from other debates that had been previously discredited and even lying about their lies. For those of you who missed the debates to watch the Sox and Yanks “debate” on the baseball field, we cannot blame you. For the rest of you, here is a list of awards from the last debate: The Name Most Dropped Award goes to ... John McCain by a nose, with All Mighty God a close sepond. Ironically, McCain had the ad vantage over The Omiscient One. Perhaps it was because he was in the audience, but the two candidates fell all over each other to men tion McCain. Too bad we can’t vote for Mc Cain instead of those other two ass kissers. The I’m Here Too Award goes to ... Rudy Guiliani, who was sitting right next to McCain but was never mentioned by the candidates. The Most Telling Phrases Award goes to ... Bush with “freedom is on the march” and “armies of compassion.” Bush can’t even talk about positive things without using war metaphors. I know he said he is a “war president... (with) war on my mind,” but this is ridiculous. The Worst Anachronistic Muckraking Ques tion Award goes to ... Bob Schieffer for asking Kerry what he thought of Catholic bishops who that say voting for him is a sin. By the way Bob, 1960 called — they want their ques tion back. The Worst Answer Award goes to ... Kerry for answering Schieffer’s bishop question with “I respect their views.” The Lowest Blow Award goes to ... Kerry by a mile for bringing up Dick Cheney’s daugh ter when asked if homosexuality is a choice. Don’t bring the man’s daughter into this. Above the belt John. Keep it clean. The Misdirected Attack Award goes to ... Bush for saying he is going to restore “fiscal sanity” to Congress. Uh, could somebody tell Bush he has been president for four years and that the Congress is Republican controlled. You can’t run as an outsider-incumbent. The Worst Joke of the Night Award goes to ... Kerry for: “Being lectured by the president on fiscal responsibility is a little bit like Tony Soprano talking to me about law and order.” The Talking For 90 Minutes But Saying Nothing New Award goes to ... of course, a tie. The Emerald would like to retract our orig inal call for more debates. No more debates! For the love of John McCain, no more debates!
