America has no organized left, unlike in India and Italy, to take just two examples. Many American leftists do behave exactly as Mark Ames charges them, but not toward Michael Moore, (who is worshipped by most American leftists as LBO-talk postings serve as evidence), but toward Ralph Nader.
Fahrenheit 9/11's cumulative gross is now about $80,121,002 (<http://movies.yahoo.com/boxoffice/latest/rank.html>"Weekend Box Office Actuals [U.S.]: Jul 9 - 11 Weekend"</a>). That's approximately the sale of 11 million tickets -- about 3.7% of the total US population of 293,729,072 (<http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock>).
Since the announcement of his candidacy, Nader has polled in the 2-7% range of in the voter surveys (some of which polled registered voters, while others polled only likely voters <http://pollingreport.com/wh04gen.htm>) -- the total voting-age population was roughly 210 million individuals in 2000 ("Fact Sheet: The Demographics of Voting in America," <http://www.prcdc.org/summaries/voting/voting.html>).
Therefore, it is safe to say that Michael Moore and Ralph Nader enjoy comparable levels of support among the general public in the United States. In fact, it is probably immensely more difficult to receive 2.7% of the total votes of the eligible electorate who actually register and vote in a presidential election (as Nader did in 2000) than to get 4% of the US population to go see a very well-made entertaining movie. And yet, observe opposite reactions on the part of US leftists (as evidenced by LBO-talk responses):
* Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 is so popular, and anyone who criticizes it in any way is simply a loser.
* Ralph Nader is so unpopular, and anyone who supports him is simply a loser.
If US leftists became better at arithmetics, perhaps we might one day enjoy the presence of an organized US left, even one that would present a sharp challenge to the bipartisan consensus for empire.
>I cannot think of a single American Leftist in my lifetime as
>effective as Michael Moore, and if Fahrenheit 9/11 is objectively
>anything at all, it is objectively effective.
<snip>
>He has single-handedly managed to turn the Right-Wing brutocracy
>into a pack of whiny fags scrambling to get out of the way of the
>message that his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 brings, lest it smack them
>with such a powerful dose of cognitive dissonance that their skulls
>will burst wide open like that guy in Scanners.
The way some LBO-talkers are embracing a man who uses terms like "whiny fags" just because they agree with him on the virtue of Fahrenheit 9/11 is revealing.
That said, I, too, believe that Fahrenheit 9/11 will have an impact, but the main impact will be probably to do its share to help elect John Kerry:
<blockquote>[I]t's possible that Fahrenheit 9/11 may be having an impact on Kerry's war chest. Last week, the day before the movie's surprise victory at the box office was announced, Internet donations to the Kerry campaign climbed to a two-day fund-raising record of $ 5 million, with no special push from the candidate. Moviegoers may be plunking down their $ 9 at the multiplexes, then going home and e-mailing more money to the Man Who Isn't Bush. Says former Kerry campaign manager Jim Jordan of the film: "It is an exaggerated message from an imperfect messenger, but it might be the phenomenon that finally poisons the political atmosphere for Bush." (Richard Corliss, "The World According To Michael," <em>Time</em> <a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?messageDate=2004-05-07">July 12, 2004</a>)</blockquote>
Since the film is overwhelmingly focused on the George W. Bush administration, the film's shelf life -- as far as uses by anti-war activists are concerned -- will be shorter than Michael Moore's previous works. After the election day, it may be used by Democratic Party operatives against us, as a propaganda tool to tell us never to do anything that will help elect another Republican, for he may be the second coming of George W. Bush, even though that's not Moore's intention (Moore's embarrassing endorsement of Wesley Clark and cooperation with a Democratic Party front group MoveOn notwithstanding). -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>