Bowling For Truth

Many of his fans point-out that Moore is NOT anti-gun, and point to his membership in the NRA (as well as the very guns he owns) as proof. However, at the same time, he is the poster-boy for gun-control.

If you can’t see the hypocrisy in this, then you’re a moron; he’s preaching veganism while eating a steak.

In Bowling, Michael Moore brags that he is a “lifetime member” of the NRA. So it might be expected that Moore would inform viewers about the NRA’s noble anti-slavery history, but not quite. In his brief history of America cartoon he attempts the opposite and does an admirable job of welding racism to the NRA wherever possible as detailed in other places of this site. The main issue here is Moore’s phony respect for the organization. Instead of coming out against it and opposing what he feels are dangerous and detrimental actions, he feigns neutrality in Bowling For Columbine when it is clear he despises the organization.

Just look at what Moore says about the NRA himself :

“After Columbine, I decided that I would run against Charlton Heston for the presidency of the NRA. If elected, my plan was to try to return the NRA to a gun safety organization, instead of its current agenda of gun fanaticism. The rules said that to run for president, you had to be a member for the past five years or buy a lifetime membership for $750. And that’s what I did. But after a while I realized this endeavor was going to take too much time, so I decided to focus all my attention on the movie I was making.”

Too much time… Here Moore actually admits that he’d rather take pot shots and defame those he disagrees with in movies rather than actually make any real change. Perhaps the paycheck from making a movie vs. NRA president was more enticing to Moore than it was to Charlton Heston. Dave Kopel writes:

But Moore’s connection to the NRA is bizarre; he told Tim Russert that he joined the group so that he could be elected its president and make it support gun control. This is aggrandized self-delusion, rather like Barbra Streisand announcing that she was becoming Catholic so that she could be elected Pope and make the Church support polygamy.

Distortion on Heston’s record

Moore says that the NRA is responsible for gun crime despite vigorous and bold efforts by the organization and especially Charlton Heston while he served as president, to curtail gun violence. For instance – Heston was known for taking tough stances like the following:

If you’re a felon out on the streets of Philadelphia today, I dare you to carry a gun,” Heston warned. “Because if you do, you will go to prison. No plea bargain, no discussion. Just a cold, hard federal prison cell. So go ahead — carry a gun on these streets. To quote my good friend Clint Eastwood, ‘Make My Day’. (January 25, 1999)

But then again, Moore and his viewers may equally hate that approach. Others (myself included) love that kind of no nonsense “bring it on” type of threat when concerning violence when the subtext is that “because you will be punished if you dare”. It all depends on whether you’re one of those crazies who like to confront wickedness instead of appease it.

But opinions aside – Moore’s representation of the NRA is dishonest at best.

Michael Moore sets the tone of Bowling For Columbine by choosing a title and reason for that choice that rests on false premises, uneven argument, factually inaccurate citations and a stubborn refusal to correct the record.

The film begins on the day of the Columbine murders on the morning of April 20, 1999. Michael Moore narrates the opening of the day and the movie, stating that on that day, “Two boys went bowling at six in the morning.”

The truth: the Columbine murderers skipped class on the day of the murders. Glenn Moore of the Golden Police Department concluded that they were absent from school on the day of the attack. This police record was made available before Bowling For Columbine was released.

The teacher of the bowling class kept attendance through score. When a student was absent, their average score was entered for them and circled. Page 31 of this pdf file scan of the police record from the Boulder Daily Camera to see the circles (top left corner of the page).

The police investigation found that none of the students in the bowling class that morning had seen the killers that day. Glenn Moore summarizes his final conclusion on page 33: “The score sheet, as well as the teacher, indicated HARRIS, KLEBOLD AND MORRIS were absent on April 20, 1999.”

This inaccuracy is important, considering it is the foundation for the thesis of the entire movie, which is that American violence is caused by America’s history of violence and and other excuses are invalid. Using Columbine as an example, Moore argues that because the boys allegedly went bowling the day they murdered their classmates, that blaming violent video games or Marilyn Manson music makes no more sense than blaming bowling. This argument fails under the revelation that the boys did not attend the bowling class and no evidence is given to suggest they had any interest in the sport, where as their enjoyment of Mansons music and violent video games is well documented.

Moore elaborates on this fallacy founded argument in the official Bowling For Columbine website FAQ:

One reason the film is called “Bowling For Columbine” is that, after the massacre, all the pundits and experts started blaming all the usual suspects that are wheeled out for blame whenever a school shooting occurs-evil rock music (in this case Marilyn Manson), violent video games, and bad parenting. My point is that those scapegoats make about as much sense as blaming bowling. After all, Eric and Dylan were bowlers, they took bowling class at Columbine-was bowling responsible for their evil deeds? If they bowled that morning, did the bowling trigger their desire to commit mass murder? Or, if they skipped their bowling class that morning, did that bring on the massacre? Had they bowled, that may have altered their mood and prevented them from picking up their guns. As you can see, this is all nonsense, just as it is nonsense to blame Marilyn Manson.

Moore’s claim that the violence based music and video games that the boys thoroughly (perhaps obsessively) enjoyed are illegitimate triggers for their violent behavior is supported only through the argument that another activity the boys enjoyed was not blamed.

Moore argues instead that United States foreign policy and proximity to company headquarters which make weapons for the military are more likely causes for violence, but does not explain why these dots he has connected are any more legitimate than the recreation the boys were actually interested in.

Moore also fails to elaborate on why exactly bad parenting is an illegitimate scapegoat when it pertains to gun crime, as well as why he uses that exact correlation argument later in the same film.

When manipulating the Kayla Rolland shooting, Moore blames the occurrence on lack of parenting which he in turn blames on Dick Clark.

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Fahrenheit 911 begins on election night 2000 where Al Gore is on stage at a Florida rally with a banner reading “Florida Victory.” While this creates the impression that Gore was celebrating his victory in Florida, the really actually took in the early hours of election day, before polls had even opened. Gore returned to his home in Tennessee to await the election results. The “Florida Victory” sign reflected Gore’s hopes, not any actual election results.

The film shows CBS and CNN calling Florida for Al Gore when Moore intones “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.’”

“All of us networks made a mistake and projected Florida in the Al Gore column. It was our mistake” says NBC anchor Tom Brokaw in a portrayal that makes it seem as though the NBC retraction was caused by Fox.

Dave Kopel reports the events of the evening in detail that starkly contrasts Moore’s presentation:

In fact, the networks which called Florida for Gore did so early in the evening—before polls had even closed in the Florida panhandle, which is part of the Central Time Zone. NBC called Florida for Gore at 7:49:40 p.m., Eastern Time. This was 10 minutes before polls closed in the Florida panhandle. Thirty seconds later, CBS called Florida for Gore. And at 7:52 p.m., Fox called Florida for Gore. Moore never lets the audience know that Fox was among the networks which made the error of calling Florida for Gore prematurely. Then at 8:02 p.m., ABC called Florida for Gore. Only ABC had waited until the Florida polls were closed.

The premature calls probably cost Bush thousands of votes from the conservative panhandle, as discouraged last-minute voters heard that their state had already been decided, and many voters who were waiting in line left the polling place. In Florida, as elsewhere, voters who have arrived at the polling place before closing time often end up voting after closing time, because of long lines. The conventional wisdom of politics is that supporters of the losing candidate are most likely to give up on voting when they hear that their side has already lost. (Thus, on election night 1980, when incumbent President Jimmy Carter gave a concession speech while polls were still open on the West coast, the early concession was widely blamed for costing the Democrats several Congressional seats in the West. The fact that all the networks had declared Reagan a landslide winner while West coast voting was still in progress was also blamed for Democratic losses in the West.) Even if the premature television calls affected all potential voters equally, the effect was to reduce Republican votes significantly, because the Florida panhandle is a Republican stronghold; depress overall turnout in the panhandle, and you will necessarily depress more Republican than Democratic votes.

At 10:00 p.m., which network took the lead in retracting the premature Florida result? The first retracting network was CBS, not Fox.

Over four hours later, at 2:16 a.m., Fox projected Bush as the Florida winner, as did all the other networks by 2:20 a.m.

CBS had taken the lead in making the erroneous call for Gore, and had taken the lead in retracting that call. At 3:59 a.m., CBS also took the lead in retracting the Florida call for Bush. All the other networks, including Fox, followed the CBS lead within eight minutes. That the networks arrived at similar conclusions within a short period of time is not surprising, since they were all using the same data from the Voter News Service. (Linda Mason, Kathleen Francovic & Kathleen Hall Jamieson, “CBS News Coverage of Election Night 2000: Investigation, Analysis, Recommendations” (CBS News, Jan. 2001), pp. 12-25.)

Moore’s editing technique of the election night segment is typical of his style: all the video clips are real clips, and nothing he says is, formally speaking, false. But notice how he says, “Then something called the Fox News Channel called the election in favor of the other guy…” The impression created is that the Fox call of Florida for Bush came soon after the CBS/CNN calls of Florida for Gore, and that Fox caused the other networks to change (“All of a sudden the other networks said, ‘Hey, if Fox said it, it must be true.’”)

This is the essence of the Moore technique: cleverly blending half-truths to deceive the viewer.