Carl Remick wrote:
>
>
> <Insert meaningless intensifier of your choice>! That just makes Moore's
> refusal to examine the Israeli connection in F911 that much more egregious.
>
I don't think so. I think it important for leftists to recognize the "refusal" to attend to that question, and to consider their own political priorities in the light of that recognition and the discussion of it. But I do not think a _movie_ ("documentary") focused on the U.S. (or, if you will, Bush) reaction to 9/11 and usable for agitational purposes needed to include the question. Because of Moore's movie I will be able to talk to rather more people about Palestine than I would have been to otherwise. Had he spoiled his work's focus and coherence by trying to include other issues, the movie would be less not more valuable for palestinian solidarity work.
I'm not interested in Moore's own soul. I'm interested in (1) how we use his movie for radical organizing and (2) the kind of conversation among leftists it can evoke. Discussion among leftists of this gap in the movie is what Yoshie seems to have tried to provoke. That's a good idea, and people should be less defensive about it. But I wouldn't want the movie to be different, and I'm not interested in making judgments (approving or disapproving) of Moore himself.
Carrol
Any artifact, once completed, is simply itself. It can be stimulating to thought to talk about what it does not do or does not 'contain,' and perhaps can enhance perception of the artifact, but one then is also talking about something that does not exist, the strictly hypothetical artifact that is in some mystic way both the "same" as the one in front of us and also a different 'thing.'