Talk:Michael Moore and US foreign policy

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'muckraker' is unashamedly POV. Removed.

Also denying that the US was the 'sole instigator', when Moore's argument cited above does not make that claim is just a straw man.

DJ Clayworth 14:46, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I was under the impression that muckraker was a self-description. And yes his text does claim that. What does "US overthrows" mean to you? -- VV 19:10, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

How to write a rebuttal[edit]

Don't just say that "many people disagree" and then start explaining why YOU think he's wrong. You can't make it "Me vs. Michael Moore".

It takes a lot more work than that; you have to give the views of published writers or well-known politicians or other prominent figuers. For example, Congelia Ricebowl said that Michael Moore has a distorted view of American history. He entirely omits the human rights violations perpetrated by leftists in Nicaragua and El Salvador and conveniently leaves out the fact that Nicaraguans voted against' the Marxists at the first freely held election. (Note that I made up Congelia Ricebowl for this example. For the real article, you'll have to do some research!) --Uncle Ed 15:17, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's a good start which can be fleshed out in time, if need be for this stupid list which has no place in Wikipedia anyway. Deleting the retort because it's not "finished" is not appropriate. There are enough weasel words (many believe, etc.) to make it good enough for now. Also, a lot of the facts are well enough known that they no more need citation than (hypothetically) "The American Civil War ended in 1865, not 1903, as Moore claims". -- VV 19:10, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

VeryVerily said "Many believe the US had no direct role in the Chile coup". There is a ton of evidence that flies in the face of this, including conclusions of US Congressional hearings, declassified records released in the 1970s and late 1990s and so forth. If many people believe the US was not involved, many more believe the exact opposite. The only people who claim to believe this seem to be a subgroup of right-wing Americans. VeryVerily also says "it is widely accepted that Allende committed suicide and was not assassinated by anyone." As far this this incident, there is very little evidence about what happened - I tend to believe he was killed, but no one knows for sure. Anyhow, it is not "widely accepted" he committed suicide - people who support Pinochet's dictatorship tend to believe this, while people who were against the coup that overthrew Allende's democratically elected government tend to believe he was killed. -- HectorRodriguez 17:40, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I thought the issue was whether the coup against Allende was justified or not. Communists say no, the voters clearly gave their informed consent for Allende's post-election activities to make the country socialist. --Uncle Ed 19:15, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I'm not even sure why this is here. Does every person who criticises US foreign policy get a page on their views? DJ Clayworth 20:18, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

I agree. It shouldn't be here. It should be in the state terrorism article. Anthony DiPierro 20:21, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)
  1. Wikipedia is not paper. There's room enough for all those critics.
  2. Michael Moore is a best-selling author. (We might all forget him a year after the election, but he's hot now.)

By the way, I read something claiming Moore cribbed his bullet-point list from some other author. Should we bring up the plagiarism issue, just to muddy the waters? --Uncle Ed 20:24, 12 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Delete this page[edit]

heading added by —No-One Jones 06:51, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC) because I needed to link to this argument.

DELETE THIS! Content can go in "Bowling for Columbine" or biographical entry on Michael Moore.

By these standards, why not have an article on comedian Dennis Miller's take on foregin policy? While you people are squabbling over the work of some entertainer, the serious articles on International relations are being neglected.

On a more practical note, if this article isn't deleted, it will spend the rest of its life with a neutrality heading. You might as well ditch the neutrality heading and put up "partisan flame war free for all" and "permanent battle ground for trolling!" if you want to avoid sugar coating it.

Moreover, what's with all the attention to debunking all his claims? Of course his work is simplistic and reductive! You can even call his presentation "simplistic and reductive" in the article, as this is a matter of fact statement. But who is he? John Gaddis? Stephen Ambrose? Robert Grogin? Max Boot? Immanuel Wallerstein? Walt LaFeber? George Herring? Gabriel Kolko? Arthur Schlesinger? George Kennan? Michael Schaller? (a good mix of left, right, and center) His work wouldn't even the standards of the Marxist academic journal Monthly Review.

But this doesn't matter. For crying out loud, he's a documentary filmmaker interested in conveying some ideas and feelings; he's not writing a PhD dissertation. Someone could also tear apart, say, Sean Hannity's Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism, another work meant to promote a certain set of ideas and values for popular consumption (see http://www.nrbookservice.com/BookPage.asp?prod_cd=c6447 ). Rhetoric is fine (it's essential for good citizenship and a functioning electoral democracy). And I know many academics who lament not becoming partisan activists like Michael Moore. But for crying out loud, neither Michael Moore nor Sean Hannity, e.g., is a serious authority on international relations!

So, rather than debating the merits of the history presented in this Moore film, just move it to another article and state the obvious. By "obvious" I mean, depending on your POV, Moore's being simplistic and reductive in order to convey a message in an entertaining, ironic, and powerful fashion, or he's a demagogue distorting history to inculcate naïve viewers in his anti-American ideology. You don't need to debate Guatemalan or Chilean history. 172 12:43, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion[edit]

- irredeemable POV. Secretlondon 09:22, Feb 13, 2004 (UTC)

    • Put anything of value in Bowling for Columbine before deleting. theresa knott 11:02, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • The current version of the page does not strike me as overly POV, but the content seems to belong more properly directly in Bowling for Columbine (which is not yet so large an article that the two can't be combined). This page title is wrong for the topic, though. Merge then delete. Rossami 14:07, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Delete - POV - Texture 14:51, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Delete. HectorRodriguez 23:59, 13 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Merge back into state terrorism and redirect. The list is cited and attributed, which makes it NPOV. Anthony DiPierro 06:39, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Merge into state terrorism and delete. Politics is (are?) important, the connection with Michael Moore is not. Wile E. Heresiarch 07:48, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC) (new vote below)
      • "merge into article and delete is not a valid option (except for public domain text) because it destroys the information on authorship of the content." Wikipedia:Deletion policy
        • Agreed, if we merge we should redirect rather than delete. -- VV 06:51, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Just for context: I created this article after pulling it out of state terrorism because Moore's random (fictitious) list had no place there, both because it does not on the whole pertain to terrorism at all, and his long list of opinions is not suitable encyclopedic material for a subject as broad as state terrorism, belonging instead under some "Michael Moore" head. Thus, this article was a compromise to keep it at all. I agree it is worthless and should be destroyed, but anyone else who favors this should also propose how to keep the peace after doing so. -- VV 10:07, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Delete See my case at Talk:Michael Moore and US foreign policy. 172 12:36, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Merge into Bowling for Columbine and redirect. 172 has made a very convincing case. --No-One Jones 12:49, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Merge into a Michael Moore page and redirect. I agree with 172. Wile E. Heresiarch 17:13, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • I'd say delete outright rather than merge. This comes close to source material, which Wikipedia is not. Do we also want to include Moore's other "tables" of claims, such as the made-up list of gun homicide statistics from BfC? I would think not unless these lists have some special value. -- VV 18:12, 17 Feb 2004 (UTC)
    • Merge, don't delete outright. In response to VV, it does have some special value. Move the content over to "Bowling for Columbine," where it would give a sense of the film's themes. Note the word "theme," not "evidence." As I had said on Talk:Michael Moore and US foreign policy, it's absurd to regard Moore as a "source" for anything. VV (who denounced Moore for his "paranoid fantasies" in his earlier set of comments), along with many other pro- and anti-Moore users, has been overlooking the obvious for a while: Moore is an artist concerned with inducing an emotional response from the viewer, not a historian concerned with historical research methods. On that note, the users focused on history and politics shouldn't be writing about "Bowling for Columbine;" the arts and lit people ought to be writing it. The articles on rhetorical device and literary technique (concepts related to all artistic technique), e.g., are far more helpful here than any article on history and politics. 172 07:01, 18 Feb 2004 (UTC)
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