Well, some of us *progressives* don't feel a need to pander to the opposition, and aren't even apologetic about it! I have nearly as much contempt for liberals as I do reactionary right types, though. I'm also really not interested in a dialogue with rigid "my mind is made up forever" people of any stripe. If a person can't open their minds enough to be persuaded to change their thinking, why not just blow their own brains out? I mean, it isn't like they are using them properly. :)

I agree that leaving the picture at Heston's door was over the top, and unnecessary. But I liked the way he edited that sequence of scenes. That became one of the flash points for the conservative right, who claimed that Moore only went to Heston to ambush him. I kept waiting for Moore to read Heston the riot act, and was really disappointed he didn't. That would have given me, the viewer, some sense of vindication I think, and may have even acted as a release valve for some of the anger I felt over Heston's actions in the wake of the school shootings. A big problem with the criticism of the Heston sequence is that people took it out of the context of Moore's body of work. Moore has used this device in all of his films and tv shows, and it is one of the hallmarks of his style of filmmaking. So it seemed ludicrous that the right wing nuts, along with the mainstream media, decided to hone in on that one thing.

It's been some time now since I saw the film, but my recollection was that the Lockheed Martin sequence was attempting to connect the purportedly "local" community gun violence to the national military weapons violence. I thought that part of the film was the weakest though. I expected much better from Moore, and thought he should have been able to draw much more obvious linkages between community violence on a local level and military violence on the national and international level. Certainly could have been done using the McVeighs and the Oklahoma City bombings, don't you think? But I thought the military violence montage with the Louis Armstrong song playing over it was very effective.