GO SEE FAHRENHEIT 9/11!

Go see it. Now. Call in sick, blow off the chores, do whatever you have to do. I saw it yesterday, and It's the best, most emotionally involving documentary I've ever seen. I really laughed; I really wept.



Two things I noticed: for a Monday 4:45 pm screening, the theater was packed. And it was packed with a bunch of different kinds of people, not just well-meaning palefaced liberals like myself. The two guys next to me looked like they'd just rolled off the playground on West 4th Street. I was glad to see that these guys--one black guy, the other Latino, both about 18--were watching it. Like I said yesterday, Americans need to start recognizing and acting in their self-interest. If there's a draft, those guys will be in the crosshairs, not me.



Seeing the movie makes me want to stamp on David Denby's toes even more. Has Moore created something that reflects his opinion? Of course--that's what filmmakers do, documentarians included. The myth of absolute objectivity should be dead by the end of Freshman History, and judging Fahrenheit 9/11 on those grounds is infanile and insulting. The pertinent question is, which vision of reality feels closer to the truth? Moore's makes sense, the White House's doesn't. It's been this way for years. Attacking Iraq in response to 9/11? Cutting taxes in a time of war? Pretending that the world was behind us? Ignoring the PDB? I could go on--we all could. The Bush Administration is either crooked or incompetent, and both mean the same thing: kick the bums out.



As much as I enjoyed the spectacle of hundreds of people laughing at the President for several hours, my primary reaction to F9/11 didn't feel partisan, or even political in the "Coke vs. Pepsi" way it's usually presented. My deepest, most consistent feeling was patriotism--the kind that admires compassion and justice wherever it's found, because I believe (rather sentimentally, I admit) that compassion and justice are American values. And I felt a lot of anger, too, at how our country has been systematically divorced from these values, for the paltriest of reasons: money.



Whether or not you believe every fact in Fahrenheit 9/11 is immaterial; the issue it raises is American responsibility. Denby mentioned Moore's juxtaposition of killed and maimed Iraqis with Donald Rumsfeld's burbling about the surgical precision of our attack. Denby's right: that is the real heart of the film, not Bush's deer-in-the-headlights routine or the harrowing vision of smoke and swirling paper from 9/11. Denby felt guilty, and balked. But it's essential that we all acknowledge the reality of what our country does. It's uncomfortable--awful, in fact. We'd all rather eat the sugar that Bush is selling than the shit that Moore is, but the facts are undeniable. I felt ashamed that my tax dollars went towards killing and maiming those people, and I refuse to become so frightened of Islamic terrorism that I approve of American terrorism. War is never surgical, and anybody who believes that lie is fooling himself, Mr. Denby, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Bush.



Our current status as the only superpower should make us tremble, not rejoice. Will we inch the world towards a better future, or a worse one? I defy anyone--Democrat, Republican or Independent--to see Fahrenheit 9/11 and conclude that we are moving in the right direction. Whether the Bush Administration is corrupt or inept; whether the problem is the individuals, or an out-of-whack system, the conclusion is clear: the United States has to start acting right. And the first step--but far from the only one--is booting Bush, Cheney, and all the rest.