aquapub
DP Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2005
- Messages
- 7,317
- Reaction score
- 344
- Location
- America (A.K.A., a red state)
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
Moore opens up Fahrenheit 9/11 with slow motion scenes of jubilation, made surreal by inspirational music, put to the question, "Was it all just a dream?" He shows celebrities and crowds of people doing what seems to be celebrating a Presidential victory for Al Gore. But it was actually footage of a party before Election Day. Then he shows broadcasts from several news channels with various reporters conclusively projecting victory for Gore, presumably to convey the impression that he legitimately won (Ad populum). Then he shows a picture of a man named Ellis at Fox News while explaining that everything changed once this cousin of Bush's called the election for Bush (cum hoc ergo propter hoc).
In portraying the election as being randomly hijacked by John Ellis, Moore leaves out the timeline and some critical facts, which tell a very different story. The media did call the election for Gore as Michael Moore showed. But one thing he didn’t show is that the projections for Gore came one hour before the polls closed in the rigidly conservative panhandle, which cost Bush votes estimated in the tens of thousands. Another thing he didn’t mention was that at 10:15 p.m. CNN and CBS withdrew their calls for Gore. It wasn’t until four hours later that FOX withdrew their projection for Gore and switched it to Bush. This timeline fact single-handedly invalidates Moore’s argument of causation against FOX.
Another thing Moore failed to point out was that the VNS numbers they were basing the early call for Gore on didn’t support calling the race for Gore. Lee C. Shapiro, VNS director of media services, said, ''The exit poll gave Gore a small lead, but no member, nor VNS, thought that it was enough to call the race with confidence…” The Associated Press was quick to call the race for Gore without a valid basis, but at 2:16 a.m. when John Ellis and three Democrats at FOX called the election for Bush after the voting was done and after the VNS numbers showed Bush as the clear winner, the AP wouldn’t call the state for Bush.
Moore portrays the early calls for Gore as the legitimate event and the later reversal for Bush as the cause of the whole problem. But the early calls appear to have been without merit, and as a scholarly, peer-reviewed study published in Public Choice concludes, early calls for Gore and excessively delayed calls for Bush were a regular occurrence from the news media across the country that night (Mixon, 53-59).
After the Ellis segment, Moore then insinuates electoral impropriety by pointing out that Jeb Bush is the Governor of the state in question (no accusations of wrong-doing, just the fact that Jeb is governor) and that Katherine Harris was the “vote count woman.” Harris’s job did not involve any vote counting, just certifying the results by the deadlines prescribed by Florida election law. He follows that up with a doctored letter to the editor of a small Bloomington, Illinois newspaper called the Pantagraph, altered to look like a front page news article made to look like it is announcing that the recounts proved Gore the winner . A six month study conducted by CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times confirmed Gore lost by every counting method Gore’s people asked for Moore follows that up with a portrayal of the Supreme Court as a bunch of people appointed by Bush Senior who intervened as a rubber stamp for George W. Bush to become president. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the notoriously left-wing Florida Supreme Court could not fabricate new deadlines and recount procedures contrary to Florida state law in the middle of an election. And although the final decision against the Florida Supreme Court to stop the recounts (largely on the basis of subjectivity and legal deadlines) was 5-4, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy are far from Bush loyalists.
After making his case against Bush’s presidential legitimacy, Moore then shows angry mobs of protesters (without showing any of the celebratory demonstrations) refusing to accept this “stolen” election with tension-building music to generate the impression that the public widely rejected this “usurpation of their political process.” He claims that no president had ever seen such overwhelming protests on their inauguration day, that rioters pelted his limo with eggs, and that Bush’s walk to the White House had to be scrapped. The BBC confirms that Bush did get out and walk despite the one egg that had been hurled at his limo. Additionally, CNN confirmed that Richard Nixon had similar protests at his inaugurations.
Then Moore asserts that a company called Data Base Technologies was hired by the Florida state government to “knock off” black votes. A 1998 Miami mayoral race had been invalidated because felons had been allowed to vote. The state legislature ordered felons to be purged from the voting rolls before the next election. This led to some problems when people from states that allow post-sentence felon-voting and people with the same name as a convicted felon got mistakenly purged. In most cases, errors like this were reported to the victims months before the election, and they were given more than sufficient time to resolve the matter. Data Base Technologies refused to include information about race in any part of their process. This actually caused some of the cases of mistaken identity. Due to these errors though, 20 counties in Florida simply ignored the purge lists and illegally allowed thousands of felons (who vote around 70% for Democrats) to drastically shorten Bush’s lead over Gore.
Moore shows powerful, agonizing footage of one black representative after another attempting to air their grievances about the perceived suppression of black votes while Al Gore repeatedly stops them from speaking due to the fact that none of them can find a single U.S. Senator willing to back up their complaints, as required by policy. Moore misrepresents the purging of felon votes as a racially motivated electoral theft and simplistically attributes the entire ordeal to Republicans.
In portraying the election as being randomly hijacked by John Ellis, Moore leaves out the timeline and some critical facts, which tell a very different story. The media did call the election for Gore as Michael Moore showed. But one thing he didn’t show is that the projections for Gore came one hour before the polls closed in the rigidly conservative panhandle, which cost Bush votes estimated in the tens of thousands. Another thing he didn’t mention was that at 10:15 p.m. CNN and CBS withdrew their calls for Gore. It wasn’t until four hours later that FOX withdrew their projection for Gore and switched it to Bush. This timeline fact single-handedly invalidates Moore’s argument of causation against FOX.
Another thing Moore failed to point out was that the VNS numbers they were basing the early call for Gore on didn’t support calling the race for Gore. Lee C. Shapiro, VNS director of media services, said, ''The exit poll gave Gore a small lead, but no member, nor VNS, thought that it was enough to call the race with confidence…” The Associated Press was quick to call the race for Gore without a valid basis, but at 2:16 a.m. when John Ellis and three Democrats at FOX called the election for Bush after the voting was done and after the VNS numbers showed Bush as the clear winner, the AP wouldn’t call the state for Bush.
Moore portrays the early calls for Gore as the legitimate event and the later reversal for Bush as the cause of the whole problem. But the early calls appear to have been without merit, and as a scholarly, peer-reviewed study published in Public Choice concludes, early calls for Gore and excessively delayed calls for Bush were a regular occurrence from the news media across the country that night (Mixon, 53-59).
After the Ellis segment, Moore then insinuates electoral impropriety by pointing out that Jeb Bush is the Governor of the state in question (no accusations of wrong-doing, just the fact that Jeb is governor) and that Katherine Harris was the “vote count woman.” Harris’s job did not involve any vote counting, just certifying the results by the deadlines prescribed by Florida election law. He follows that up with a doctored letter to the editor of a small Bloomington, Illinois newspaper called the Pantagraph, altered to look like a front page news article made to look like it is announcing that the recounts proved Gore the winner . A six month study conducted by CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times confirmed Gore lost by every counting method Gore’s people asked for Moore follows that up with a portrayal of the Supreme Court as a bunch of people appointed by Bush Senior who intervened as a rubber stamp for George W. Bush to become president. The Supreme Court unanimously agreed that the notoriously left-wing Florida Supreme Court could not fabricate new deadlines and recount procedures contrary to Florida state law in the middle of an election. And although the final decision against the Florida Supreme Court to stop the recounts (largely on the basis of subjectivity and legal deadlines) was 5-4, Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony Kennedy are far from Bush loyalists.
After making his case against Bush’s presidential legitimacy, Moore then shows angry mobs of protesters (without showing any of the celebratory demonstrations) refusing to accept this “stolen” election with tension-building music to generate the impression that the public widely rejected this “usurpation of their political process.” He claims that no president had ever seen such overwhelming protests on their inauguration day, that rioters pelted his limo with eggs, and that Bush’s walk to the White House had to be scrapped. The BBC confirms that Bush did get out and walk despite the one egg that had been hurled at his limo. Additionally, CNN confirmed that Richard Nixon had similar protests at his inaugurations.
Then Moore asserts that a company called Data Base Technologies was hired by the Florida state government to “knock off” black votes. A 1998 Miami mayoral race had been invalidated because felons had been allowed to vote. The state legislature ordered felons to be purged from the voting rolls before the next election. This led to some problems when people from states that allow post-sentence felon-voting and people with the same name as a convicted felon got mistakenly purged. In most cases, errors like this were reported to the victims months before the election, and they were given more than sufficient time to resolve the matter. Data Base Technologies refused to include information about race in any part of their process. This actually caused some of the cases of mistaken identity. Due to these errors though, 20 counties in Florida simply ignored the purge lists and illegally allowed thousands of felons (who vote around 70% for Democrats) to drastically shorten Bush’s lead over Gore.
Moore shows powerful, agonizing footage of one black representative after another attempting to air their grievances about the perceived suppression of black votes while Al Gore repeatedly stops them from speaking due to the fact that none of them can find a single U.S. Senator willing to back up their complaints, as required by policy. Moore misrepresents the purging of felon votes as a racially motivated electoral theft and simplistically attributes the entire ordeal to Republicans.