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Times Watch for
October 22, 2004
A "Didactic" Anti-Michael Moore "Screed"
Movie critic Manohla Dargis takes on "Celsius 41.11", a conservative antidote to left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore's "documentary," and she doesn't like it much. In Friday's "Lowering the Subtlety Of Political Discourse," Dargis writes: "If you didn't know where the new film 'Celsius 41.11' was coming from you certainly get the picture when the filmmakers cut from an image juxtaposing Michael Moore with Hitler straight to an image of John Kerry and John Edwards. If the juxtaposition weren't so shameless, if the political climate were not so scurrilous, if the country were not actively at war and men, women and children were not dying in that war, this composite triumvirate of Moore-Hitler-Kerry might be easy to laugh off. As it is, it's a depressing indicator of our political discourse and what passes as nonfiction film these days."
She warns: "What [the filmmakers] want to do with their movie is make you afraid -- very, very afraid….Less savvy propagandists than Mr. Moore, the 'Celsius 41.11' filmmakers apply their thesis with a trowel. The film opens with the image of the second World Trade Center tower being hit by a plane, and returns to the attack, with the towers in flames and then tumbling, again and again."
While admitting that Moore may not have had his facts right in "Fahrenheit 9/11," she argues that has nothing to do with "Celsius 41.11": "This sort of sloppy cut-and-paste strategy is not exclusive to 'Celsius 41.11.' Mr. Moore's arguments in 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' for one, would be more persuasive if he were more exacting and forthcoming about the found material he uses. But Mr. Moore's presumed faults as a filmmaker and as an openly left muckraker have no bearing on 'Celsius 41.11' or its worth as a film. A didactic screed that has all the verve of a PowerPoint presentation and all the subtlety of a Homeland Security red alert, 'Celsius 41.11' is finally interesting only because it represents another unconvincing effort on the part of conservatives to mount a viable critique of Mr. Moore. It also suggests that the right's gifts for spinning ideology into compelling narrative, so evident during the Reagan administration, have gone missing."
"Fahrenheit"'s factual accuracy didn't matter to Times movie critic A.O. Scott either, when he gave it a mixed-but-favorable review and said of the left-wing Moore: "He is a credit to the republic."
For the rest of Dargis on "Celsius 41.11," click here.
• "Celsius 41.11" | Manohla Dargis | "Fahrenheit 9/11" | Iraq War | Michael Moore | Movies | Terrorism
Pro-Kerry Speculations as Undisputable "Facts"
Friday's "Fact Check" by David Rosenbaum, "Taking a Closer Look at Bush's Attacks on Kerry's Health Care Plan." He defends Kerry's health plan: "In his stump speeches, his debates with Senator John Kerry and his television advertisements, President Bush has maintained that Mr. Kerry is proposing a government-run health care system. Outside experts who have studied the Kerry proposal say that is not the case."
Under "What Bush Says," Rosenbaum writes: "In Downingtown, Pa., yesterday, Mr. Bush said the Kerry plan 'involves bigger and more intrusive government.' He said it would 'expand the government's health care rolls by nearly 22 million,' leading to 'the largest expansion of government health care in American history.' He said '8 out of 10 people' who obtained health coverage under Mr. Kerry's plan 'would be placed on a government program' and small businesses would have the incentive to drop their private insurance and throw people into government programs. He said the Kerry plan would cost $1.2 trillion."
Rosenbaum's pro-Kerry "Facts" are actually quite disputable: "The Kerry plan would actually make health insurance less expensive for small businesses because they would be able to take a tax credit to offset 50 percent of the cost of offering employees coverage and because the catastrophic coverage would lower the payments for premiums. The cost of the Kerry plan is a point of dispute. The Kerry campaign puts the cost at $653 billion over 10 years. Whatever the price tag, most if not all of it would be offset by Mr. Kerry's proposal to repeal tax cuts for the 2 percent of taxpayers with incomes over $200,000."
Many economists think tax hikes on high earners will slow the economy, reducing tax revenue and thus failing to cover the costs of Kerry's health plan.
For the rest of Rosenbaum's "Fact Check," click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | "Fact Check" | David Rosenbaum
Over 300 Electoral Votes for Kerry, Says Krugman
Kerry's on the path to a convincing victory in the electoral college, according to Paul Krugman's Friday column, "Voting and Counting."
"If the election were held today and the votes were counted fairly, Senator John Kerry would probably win. But the votes won't be counted fairly, and the disenfranchisement of minority voters may determine the outcome. Recent national poll results range from a three-percentage-point Kerry lead in the A.P.-Ipsos poll released yesterday to an eight-point Bush lead in the Gallup poll. But if you line up the polls released this week from the most to the least favorable to President Bush, the polls in the middle show a tie at about 47 percent. This is bad news for Mr. Bush because undecided voters usually break against the incumbent -- not always, but we're talking about probabilities."
Krugman makes some more assumptions to project Kerry to a comfortable Electoral College victory, then accuses the media of bias for not making the same assumptions: "Electoral College projections based on state polls also show a dead heat. Projections assuming that undecided voters will break for the challenger in typical proportions give Mr. Kerry more than 300 electoral votes. But if you get your political news from cable TV, you probably have a very different sense of where things stand. CNN, which co-sponsored that Gallup poll, rarely informs its viewers that other polls tell a very different story. The same is true of Fox News, which has its own very Bush-friendly poll. As a result, there is a widespread public impression that Mr. Bush holds a commanding lead."
He summarizes with more accusations of "disenfranchisement" of minorities: "A broad view of the polls, then, suggests that Mr. Bush is in trouble. But he is likely to benefit from a distorted vote count. Florida is the prime, but not the only, example. Recent Florida polls suggest a tight race, which could be tipped by a failure to count all the votes. And votes for Mr. Kerry will be systematically undercounted."
At the end Krugman covers himself: "A lot can change in 11 days, and Mr. Bush may yet win convincingly. But we must not repeat the mistake of 2000 by refusing to acknowledge the possibility that a narrow Bush win, especially if it depends on Florida, rests on the systematic disenfranchisement of minority voters. And the media must not treat such a suspect win as a validation of skewed reporting that has consistently overstated Mr. Bush's popular support."
We'll have to wait and see, won't we?
For Krugman's full column, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Columnists | Sen. John Kerry | Paul Krugman
Bush's Judicial Philosophy Based Purely
on "Reaping Political Benefit"?
Neil Lewis' front-page story on the political fight over Bush's federal judges contains 11 "conservative" labels and puts a cynical spin on the president's judicial philosophy.
Lewis writes: "First, the new president and his aides turned to the Federalist Society, a conservative lawyers' group, to help select candidates. Of Mr. Bush's first batch of nominees, 8 of 11 were proposed by the society. There could have been no clearer signal that Mr. Bush intended to follow the pattern set by his father and President Ronald Reagan of shifting the courts rightward and reaping the political benefit of pleasing social conservatives."
As if Bush couldn't possibly be acting on principle, but only to reap "political benefit."
He continues: "Now, after more than three years of battles over judicial appointments, Mr. Bush's ambitions for the courts are clear, but his record is mixed. He has succeeded in placing staunch conservatives on the bench in many cases but has been foiled in others by Senate Democrats like Charles E. Schumer of New York who charge him with trying to 'create the most ideological bench in history.'"
For Lewis' complete report on Bush's judiciary selections, click here.
• George W. Bush | Campaign 2004 | Judges | Labeling Bias | Neil Lewis
Taking Syria's Side on Quneitra
Neil MacFarquhar's story Friday from Syria, "In a Long-Ruined City, Talk of Lifting the Clouds of War," advances the Syrian state's official line on the wartime destruction of the city of Quneitra in the Golan Heights.
"For the last 30 years, the Syrians have used this flattened provincial capital as an open-air monument to Israeli perfidy, hauling virtually every visiting foreign dignitary through the ruins to hear their traditional lament about how the Zionists leveled the city when they withdrew under the 1974 cease-fire terms….Quneitra, a city straddling the cease-fire line from the October 1973 war, its main arteries interrupted by tangles of barbed wire, has been left largely untouched since the Israelis withdrew. Syria says the Israelis dynamited the town as they went; Israel's rather unconvincing explanation, given the neatly collapsed symmetry of house after house, is that warfare destroyed the place."
But as former New York Daily News correspondent Tom Gross noted last year on National Review Online, Syria's official line is challenged by the Times' own reporting.
Here are four excerpts Gross issued from the Times archives:
"Syria shelled Israeli positions in the Golan for three hours, hitting 'El Quneitra, Nahal Gesher and Ein Zivan,' reported the New York Times ("Fighting Flares in Golan Heights as Syrian Tanks Attack Israelis," June 25, 1970)."
"Damascus radio announces that Syrian artillery had shelled 'Kafr Naffakh and El Quneitra,' reported the New York Times ('Syria Shells Israeli Bases in Occupied Golan Heights,' November 26, 1972)."
"A Moroccan brigade aligned with Syria is 'taking part in an attack on El Quneitra,' reported the New York Times (October 11, 1973)."
"Quneitra is now 'a bombed-out military town,' following the Syrian and Moroccan bombardment, reported the New York Times (October 21, 1973)."
For the rest of MacFarquhar's story from Syria, click here.
• Gaffes | Israel | Middle East | Syria | Neil MacFarquhar
E-mail TimesWatch Director, Clay Waters, with TimesWatch feedback at cwaters@mediaresearch.org