re: #116 BeachDem

I agree about the size of his hammer. I think he seems to always go one step too far (although, overall I like his movies.) In Bowling for Columbine, I think he should have stopped before the Charlton Heston ambush; in Sicko, he should have left out the Cuban boat thingie etc.

Although I usually agree with his movies’ points, there is always at least one segment that makes me cringe and think to myself, “OK—here is where he’s going to lose his audience.”

Talk about somebody who could use a good editor!

It wasn’t just Heston in BfC, though even in the early stages of Alzheimer’s Disease Charlton Heston still showed far more guts than Roger Smith ever did (though given Heston’s life and career that isn’t surprising).

It was also facts Moore got wrong or gave a dishonest twist. In the movie he notes that the National Rifle Association was founded in “the same year the Ku Klux Klan was declared illegal.” The film’s next words are: “Just a coincidence?”, which implies it was not a coincidence. Which is actually true, but not in the way Moore insinuates: The NRA was founded in New York State and its first two presidents were both former Union generals who had served under Ulysses S. Grant as corps commanders: Ambrose Burnside and Henry Slocum. After Grant, who had signed the Ku Klux Klan Act into law left the White House, he served a year as the NRA’s president.

Many things have changed from those days to now, and the NRA’s center of gravity has left the states that supplied the Union’s man power during the Civil War. But Michael Moore did not try to explain that complex history, which he could have done through the book companion to his movie (it wouldn’t have made for good film). Instead he went for a quick and dishonest note on the NRA’s founding, and in doing so dishonored its founders, who should instead be thought of as honorable and patriotic.