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Wednesday, June 30, 2004 The Other Michael MooreI'm afraid Fahrenheit 9/11 was everything I expected it to be: a long and sometimes funny anti-Bush commercial, which I paid to watch. Since I loathe Bush, and since he's so good at damning himself with his own words, the satirical stuff was hilarious; but "documentary" is the wrong word for it. Even the most substantial and coherent part of the film, early on, about the Saudi and Bush families, falls short of journalism. Moore built up to his point with the fury of a hurricane and all the honest force of waves on a lake: the Saudi royals, he revealed, have complex oil-money connections to the Bushes!Yes, we know that. I'm glad it's on a big screen for everyone to see, because it probably did influence the administration's response to September 11, and no one this November should mistake Bush for a president who's "strong on terror." But what, exactly, went on? Sullivan is right that Moore "has no actual evidence that [these connections] corrupted any political decisions at all." Which didn't stop a San Francisco audience from clapping and groaning on cue. American political debate is turning into a spectator sport. Instead of reasoned arguments we look for our favorite gladiators to go all armored up into the coliseum and splatter some rhetorical blood. Bill O'Reilly, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore (and it hurts me to type those names in a row): What's the difference? May they hack each other to bits. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:59 AM (0) comments Tuesday, June 29, 2004 Horatio, someting is fukdHere's a hilarious Flash version of Hamlet, all in leet, for anyone who thinks English has taken a dive. Complete with immature gay subtext. Thanks to Brian. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 9:13 PM (0) commentsSunday, June 27, 2004 Another Side of Greg McIlvaineProud father, painter and self-portraitist, friend of ours from high school, and rock star: Greg's got a new record out. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 8:08 PM (0) commentsThursday, June 24, 2004 Wife With Macaques
... in the Monkey Forest, Ubud, Bali. They'll climb you if they can. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 7:27 AM (0) comments Wednesday, June 23, 2004 David Bowie Under AttackIn April it was a big pink bunny, this month it's a lollipop-wielding Norwegian. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 10:29 PM (0) commentsAmerican ParanoiaI just noticed that two recent posts -- on anti-Communism in the 1980s and the dangers of Indonesia -- have a buried common thread. They're both about Americans who quiver in their boots about something that really isn't such an enormous threat. Weak-bellied fear is a hidden trait of conservatives who otherwise like to talk tough. When Americans get spooked, unfortunately, we tend to go blow things up, and the effect is a bit like a scared elephant stomping a mouse. That's what happened in Nicaragua in the 1980s; it's what happened in Iraq last year.* Paranoia turns Americans into un-Americans; it's how we get lulled into illiberal nonsense like random searches on the subway in Boston, which you should protest even if you don't live there. (Thanks Marc.) "Give me liberty or give me death." Right? Guys? ... Hey guys?* Not that Iraq was no threat at all: At Radio Free Mike we still think toppling Saddam would have been unavoidable -- in fact a western-power duty -- in the near future. But he was put up as a straw man to avoid dealing with an even deeper problem in Saudi Arabia, which still festers. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:47 AM (0) comments Still and all— paranoia and the Saudis aside — it's bracing to read Christopher Hitchens clean Michael Moore's clock over journalistic methodology in Fahrenheit 9/11:I know, thanks, before you tell me, that a documentary must have a "POV" or point of view and that it must also impose a narrative line. But if you leave out absolutely everything that might give your "narrative" a problem and throw in any old rubbish that might support it, and you don't even care that one bit of that rubbish flatly contradicts the next bit, and you give no chance to those who might differ, then you have betrayed your craft. If you flatter and fawn upon your potential audience, I might add, you are patronizing them and insulting them. By the same token, if I write an article and I quote somebody and for space reasons put in an ellipsis like this (…), I swear on my children that I am not leaving out anything that, if quoted in full, would alter the original meaning or its significance. Those who violate this pact with readers or viewers are to be despised. I'll have my own opinion on the rest after seeing the film this weekend. But if this Moore guy gets any more famous I might have to change my name. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 12:37 AM (0) comments Friday, June 18, 2004 Ring of FireConrad at The Gweilo Diaries notices a week-old story from Indonesia to the effect that "British and Australian intelligence services have collected 'specific and credible information' including communications intercepts, that a team of Jemaah Islamiah operatives have -- within the past few weeks -- entered Indonesia from the Philippine island of Mindanao for purpose of assassinating Westerners. "Ideally," he adds, "I would have read this yesterday, before I booked a ticket to Jakarta." Don't sweat it, Conrad. The same story scrolled across TV screens last weekend while I waited in the Jakarta airport. The idea was that American, British, and Australian diplomats would be the targets of a mysterious new hit squad. For a minute I thought about delaying my flight home. What if someone did get assassinated? Would I miss a story? A day later, when I e-mailed a friend in Jakarta about it, she sent me this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. Terrorists, fundamentalists, bird flu, SARS, political riots, live volcanoes, pirates, the dreaded durian fruit -- all a lot of real but minor Indonesian threats that prey on the fears of bulés. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 11:18 PM (0) comments Thursday, June 17, 2004 Pondok NgrukiOne excuse for the Indonesia trip was research for a novel. The other reason, which became the main one, was to write a travelogue about the 2004 (Indonesian) presidential elections. I talked to a lot of people -- Muslims, non-Muslims, university students, taxi drivers, artists, Pramoedya Ananta Toer -- about how the democracy experiment in Indonesia has gone, overall, since Suharto's fall in 1998. In Surakarta I paid a visit to Pondok Ngruki, the Islamic boarding school founded by Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Those guys didn't especially want to talk. But I took a snapshot of the school gate, shown here behind my rickshaw driver, Robin. The banner reads "Welcome home Abu Bakar Baasyir." It's proof that even radical Muslims have an ironic sense of humor. Last April the Jakarta government almost freed Ba'asyir from jail, only to arrest him again. A few of those banners still fly across the streets leading to the school in Ngruki. 
posted by Michael Scott Moore |
12:39 AM
(2) comments
Tuesday, June 15, 2004 Boogie NightsTwo people have written recent nice things about the novel: a friend from high school named Brian Wanamaker, who works in Osaka, Japan, and Rodger Jacobs, a total stranger who just liked the book. (He also runs a web site here.) What they both react to is the L.A. landscape -- in Rodger's case because he still lives in it, in Brian's case because he doesn't. Thanks guys. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:10 AM (0) commentsMonday, June 14, 2004 Twilight of the IdolsI was in a Yogyakarta apartment when I heard about Reagan; another American had a text message on her phone that made her laugh out loud. What was so funny? "Oh -- my friend back home sent me an SMS. It says, 'Not sure if you care, but Reagan just died.'" My own paper, SF Weekly, has declared itself a "Reagan-free zone," which is amusing, but the ban on Reagan chit-chat can't reach as far as this blog. The man's death is a big deal, even if he languished in an Alzheimer's twilight for years. He defined the ’80s the way Eisenhower defined the 1950s; he was a litmus test in a way not even Clinton (who was smarter) proved to be. I'm afraid Matt Welch is right, pace Marc, that Reagan found a proper international pose for his time; his line against Communism was the right idea in a broad big blurry way, and now Eastern Europe thinks of him, with some justice, as a liberator. But that was his big-screen image. Underneath, there was corruption, and here's a question no Reagan idolator has answered for me: If the old actor knew what he was doing with his arms-race bluff, which scared the Russkies into accepting Gorbachev's reforms but dug a deep trench of American debt, why oh why did he spend even more money to support nasty two-bit armies fighting on the imperial Soviet frontiers? Why not let the Sandinistas run Nicaragua for a couple of years (since they were democratically elected)? Why not let Osama bin Laden starve in Afghanistan? If Reagan knew the Soviet Empire was fragile, he must have known the Red Tide wasn't rising against our shores, so there was no need to truck with hateful murderous gangs in Asia or Central America. But Reagan's people -- Casey, Poindexter, North -- waged a vicious and cowardly and un-constitutional series of small Vietnams under the president's aegis of anti-communism that were just so much bureaucratic busywork. (Anti-communism came in handy for that kind of thing.) The plain fact is that Reagan didn't know: He got lucky. Gorbachev took everyone by surprise, and the acting president's happy hands-off policy with the idiots he hired led to a lot of dangerous nonsense, like Iran-contra. There. Now this blog can be a Reagan-free zone. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 1:27 PM (0) comments Sunday, June 13, 2004 Back in the Land of KetchupKecap, I remember learning a long time ago and then forgetting, is a Malay word for fish sauce. Indonesian is based mostly on Malay, so across Indonesia you can ask for "ketchup" and receive a thick, sweet soy mixture for your nasi ikan or (highly recommended) potato cakes. If you ask for it at McDonald's, they'll know what you mean but hand you packets of this:
A page on About.com has more. The word "kecap" goes back to Chinese. Don't spread that around, though. (Sorry.) Republican radio would find a way to use it against Kerry in the fall. I meant to post from Indonesia, but every internet stall I stopped in was soul-drainingly, demoralizingly slow. The land of ketchup has its advantages. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 2:26 PM (0) comments | |
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