The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #70963   Message #1213106
Posted By: Nerd
23-Jun-04 - 03:49 PM
Thread Name: BS: Can't wait for Fahrenheit 9/11
Subject: RE: BS: Can't wait for Fahrenheit 9/11
Here's a Hitchens excerpt:

A film that bases itself on a big lie and a big misrepresentation can only sustain itself by a dizzying succession of smaller falsehoods, beefed up by wilder and (if possible) yet more-contradictory claims. President Bush is accused of taking too many lazy vacations. (What is that about, by the way? Isn't he supposed to be an unceasing planner for future aggressive wars?) But the shot of him "relaxing at Camp David" shows him side by side with Tony Blair. I say "shows," even though this photograph is on-screen so briefly that if you sneeze or blink, you won't recognize the other figure. A meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom, or at least with this prime minister, is not a goof-off.

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.


What Hitchens does NOT mention is that Bush took as many vacation days in three years as Clinton did in his entire eight years. In other words, it's perfectly true that Bush takes a whole lot of vacation time. This is the kind of disengenuous crap Hitchens likes to push. Or take the following:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious.

Using Clintonesque legalistic mumbo-jumbo, he gets to call the movie childish names while claiming that he's actually NOT calling it childish names.

To call Hitchens an overblown self-important windbag would be intemperate; to call him a lying sack of shit would (to use his own phrase) risk a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental; to call him a poor wounded ex-liberal who on feeling raped by Clinton was transformed by victim's rage into a bizarre self-caricature would descend to mere pop psychology.

Let's just say he's neither fair nor balanced...