On ABC Lateline there's a discussion between Christopher Hitchens and George Monbiot of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. I've both read and watched the exchange, and as an entirely neutral observer, if in my own gently partisan way, I judge that the argument is won by...
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... The Dude.
However, you may judge it for yourself. Here, I just observe two points about George Monbiot's side of the exchange. First, when Tony Jones (the programme's host) brings him in with 'You found fault with the film's crudity and incoherence, but in the end you say you were so shaken you actually applauded it', Monbiot begins his response:
Well, with the rest of the audience.He's not alone, do you see? He wants you to know it.
The second thing is this thing.
Michael Moore's film, with all its crude journalism, it's incoherence and the rest of it, would have been entirely unnecessary if we weren't bombarded with propaganda from the other side all the time.This is the paranoid delusion of some people on the anti-liberation side that their views, and the information they especially cleave to (Monbiot gives as an example Donald Rumsfeld's meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983), haven't had a proper airing. Since I've expressed my thoughts about this delusion before, I shall refrain from doing so again. Going interactive, I invite readers, instead, to choose their own response:Propaganda from the right leaning television networks, which seem to be very happy to do the business of the US and the British governments, to do the business of their intelligence agencies, to do the business of big corporations on both sides of the Atlantic
They have unfortunately debased journalism.
They have created a journalism which is scarcely better than propaganda.
That being so, it seems unfortunate that we do need some propaganda on the other side. (Italics added.)
> A wry smile
> An infectious giggle
> A rumbling belly laugh
> Helpless, uncontrollable mirth
(Via Harry.)