National Review's Lies About Fahrenheit 9/11

Why am I not surprised that the National Review has a deceitful list of deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11?

After the obligatory smear of Moore before the listing of supposed deceits in the film begins they attempt to document 59 deceits.

First, why do they call them deceits and not lies? Because as they themselves admit, "nothing he says is, formally speaking, false." Instead Michael Moore is "cleverly blending half-truths to deceive the viewer."

Then they attempt to use the same technique against Fahrenheit 9/11. Let's look at the first few "deceits" they find in the film.

Moore creates the impression that Gore was celebrating his victory in Florida. Actually, the rally took place in the early hours of election day, before polls had even opened.

I don't know how you can say this was a deceit, supporters did celebrate before and after the early calls by the networks giving Gore Florida. That was good footage any movie or TV show would use. They claim it is deceitful because this celebration occurred before the polls closed.

According to the narrator, “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy… All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”

A careful reading of their paragraph shows this to be true, FOX did first call Florida for Bush and the other networks followed four minutes later. They claim it to be deceitful because the movie ignores the hours in the middle where all networks moved Florida to too close to call. (They then make an unrelated argument that the networks early call for Gore cost Bush thousands of votes in western Florida. Notice he carefully doesn't mention any study of the Florida vote that supports this.)

They, I use they because while officially Kopel is the author of this he is mostly bringing into one place all the conservative criticisms of the film, next move to the Florida recount.

Michael Moore shows a clip of CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin saying that if ballots had been recounted in Florida after the 2000 presidential vote, “under every scenario Gore won the election.”

What Moore doesn’t show is that a six-month study in 2001 by news organizations including The New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN found just the opposite. Even if the Supreme Court had not stopped a statewide recount, or if a more limited recount of four heavily Democratic counties had taken place, Bush still would have won Florida and the election.

The three sources he cites based their analysis on what was being recounted when the Supreme Court stopped the recount. A full and complete recount of all ballots in the entire state, which should have been done and Gore called for, shows more people voted for Gore. This is never mentioned in why he thinks this is another "deceit."

The article amazingly goes downhill from there. Four is even more deceitful in regards to the voter purge. They even manage to imply first that Gore gained votes from this purge and then, based on some study from the discredited Dr. Lott, that many voters purged from the Florida voter rolls were black Republicans! And it continues like this for the entire article.

The movie is an opinion editorial that uses facts and opinions to make a case. So is this article by Kopel. So is everything you hear on talk radio. The film is less "deceitful" then the Kopel article, Rush Limbaugh, and this administration.