Moore's defenders say that, if not factually correct, then his film is in some way "essentially" true. Iraqi babies and US blue-collar soldiers are indeed being blown to bits for no good reason. The west's unholy relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Saudi royal family's unholy relationship in turn with its barbaric Islamists, did, in a general sense, lead to 9/11. And western politicians do seem to want to distract us from those nasty facts.
But this makes Fahrenheit 9/11, in documentary terms at least, a fraud. The film is not journalism. It is an extended piece of stand-up - a satiric riff by one deeply hostile individual. This shouldn't discourage people from going to this exhilarating movie. But it means that if you have a respect for accuracy, watching will be a guilty pleasure.
This is, essentially, the problem I have with Moore, that the truth is ignored for the Truth (or sometimes just a punchline). That is better to be entertaining and wrong than it is to be a little boring and accurate. Right-wing commentators have been doing this for years, of course. Personally I prefer someone like Francis Wheen who manages to be witty, endlessly readable and well-researched. I suppose, though, that it's good that the left have a mass-market figure-head; Wheen writing for the Guardian and Private Eye isn't going to have that many unconverted reading him and I doubt he's going to be going into film-making any time soon.
I feel that many a Guardian reader type (which would include me) is glad that someone like Moore is popular but wish that it was someone less like him.
1. They have a lot of articles on Fahrenheit 9/11 here. They aren't all negative by any stretch, though the Mark Kermode one verges on the nasty (which, for me, makes it the most fun one and seems to be pretty accurate, too) accusing Moore of being a narcissist.
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