Having just been reminded, by comments in a livejournal, to watch the sitting-waiting-to-be-watched Bowling for Columbine, I studiously avoided reading this page until, well, about two thirds of the way through because I was terribly bored by that point.
Moore's arguments are really incredibly horrible and unconvincing - lots of strawmen and fraudulent slippery slopery. The part that irked me more than any other (and wasn't mentioned in that deconstruction) was twice equating poverty levels with unemployment levels. Horribly inappropriate comparison. Though I quite enjoyed the equally horrible comparison of gun murder rates by raw number rather than per capita (let alone the exclusion of other flavours of murder).
That deconstruction, though, has me narrowing my eyes too. Is the writer adding another layer of deception to the pile? Does the writer actually think Moore was making a joke, or is the writer making a joke about thinking Moore was making a joke? Yes, Moore knew he was lying a lot (the Bowling for Columbine website makes that fairly clear in that it outright contradicts parts of the movie, but in flowery prose disguise), but was he doing it because he thought it was funny, or in order to genuinely deceive the gullible part of the audience into accepting what he wants people to accept; the blatant falsehoods included so that he would then be able to claim it's all a funny joke when confronted by the less gullible?
I have no idea. But the movie is fucking boring.
The fact that people do believe such propaganda is infuriating. Not the lies - I have no problem with people believing lies that are presented as truth - but the shit. Either the man can't tie an argument together for toffee, or he's a smarty man who realises that the most effective way to convince idiots is to argue as one of them. Either way, he's a tosser.
[07:36]
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