(Of course nobody on this list who liked the Mark Ames article would condone using the phrase "whiny fag" -- to calling it "revealing" is an absurd attempt to suggest guilt by association.)
Liza
> From: Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 16:32:29 -0400
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org, furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
> Subject: [lbo-talk] Americas Leftists, Michael Moore, and Ralph Nader
>
>> [lbo-talk] Americas Vichy Left vs. Michael Moore
>> Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
>> Tue Jul 13 07:51:36 PDT 2004
> <snip>
>> Backstabbers!
>>
>> America's Vichy Left vs. Michael Moore
>> By Mark Ames ( editor at exile.ru )
> <sni>
>> In fact, the main cause for the demise of the American Left is much
>> more sinister than that. The American Left is responsible for
>> destroying the American Left. I don't mean that metaphorically. I
>> mean quite literally that anytime the Left starts to get somewhere,
>> you can be sure that a vigilante mob of other Leftists will rise to
>> the occasion to crush it, to make sure they stay as marginalized and
>> ineffective as always.
>
> 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/>
> ___________________________________
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