Via BoingBoing...

[hirez]

For miss_soap (because I was involved in altercation on her LJ regarding this some number of weeks ago.)

In short: All that stuff about Michael Moore making things up in Bowling for Columbine? Lies.

Which basically means I owe the chap an apology for alleging he was 'potentially using the techniques of the right-wing media to tell a story' and some of the other participants owe similar apologies for believing the lies of the same right-wing media.

Or something a lot like that anyway.

Comments

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

I think the big arrow points to the fact that not one of the institutions or people he accused during the movie has taken him to court. In a country as litigious as the US, that's tantamount to them saying he's right.

[reddragdiva]

Not really - libel and slander cases are almost impossible for any public figure to bring against any sort of journalist.

[miss-soap.livejournal.com]

I wasn't talking about libel or slander, but that if someone makes a statement which is *factually* incorrect about an organisation [the NRA, the government], you can have a court make them retract it. No-one has even tried.

[diffrentcolours]

Hmm. I'm still not entirely convinced. There are certainly some things in Stupid White Men that sound suspicious to me (I'm fairly sure that incinerating cattle would denature the prions that cause BSE / vCJD, rather than merely releasing them to the open air to infect food elsewhere, but IANAChemist).

That said, I still applaud the man for what he does, but I don't believe that "it must be true, nobody's sued us yet" is a convincing argument. Hell, even in the article he manages to confirm some of the criticisms against him - the way I read the part about Titan IV missiles at the Lockheed plant in Littleton is that (a) they can and have in the past be used with nuclear payloads, but that (b) they are currently used for launching military targeting satellites used for targeting Tomahawks, which don't AFAIK count as WMD (by the "conventional" definition).

I think that we need to remember to apply the same level of critical analysis and nitpicking to the people we agree with, as we do to the people we don't.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I think that we need to remember to apply the same level of critical analysis and nitpicking to the people we agree with, as we do to the people we don't.

Oh, indeed. I seem to recall mentioning as much in the original argument (though since I can't remember when it happened, finding the thing is a bit of a fiddle and I'm probably making it all up.)

However, Moore has made some brutal allegations, was shouted down by the right-wing press (and a legion of web dittoheads) and has now proved those naysayers wrong.

It's a familiar tactic - bog the argument down with specifics and it turns into 'is this bloke credible or not' rather than 'The NRA are a bunch of fascist nutters and GWB is systematically pillaging the USA in order to line his and his chums pockets' ... But as long as Anne Coulter shows off a trim ankle, no-one will notice.