Dil Mange Moore

Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 won the People’s Choice Award despite not doing well at the box office. A report by Ervell E. Menezes

When Farenheit 9/11 won the People’s Choice documentary award last week it surely was a momentous honour for Michael Moore who immediately dedicated the trophy to the soldiers in Iraq because whatever anyone may say is an unjust war. Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was also named the best feature film. Ironically both these films didn’t do well at the box-office.

"To me, really, this is the ultimate goal because one doesn’t make work for the elite. To me the people have spoken," said Mel Gibson of this honour and I’m sure Moore feels the same. There was a good line in the French film Swimming Pool (at the Mumbai film festival) which went "awards are like fibroids, every ars`85le gets it sometime." But I guess a People’s Award is a bit different. It is like a vote of confidence.

"This country is still all of ours, not right or left or democratic or Republican," Moore told the audience. It also shows how important the people’s vote is. And what an indictment of President George W. Bush it was. That the other presidential candidate John Kerry wasn’t able to take advantage of it is indeed sad, but then if one looks closely at the latter half of the 20th century it only showed the paucity of Presidential material.

I thought the portion in which Bush, speaking to school kids about "My Pet Goat," took quite an age to react was simply outstanding. But a Bush supporter (an Indian living in the US) defended the act by saying he didn’t want to scare the children. I’m not so sure. For me, Bush was still in a daze.

There’ll be those who will defend Bush and as the election proved, the country was sharply divided between the two candidates. For me Bush is more a preacher than a President but he has his supporters, not surprisingly, from the Bible belt. There are others who just despise him and these are the more learned, thinking folks. Iraq is a big blot and to think that Bush took the more intelligent British Prime Minister Tony Blair (The Economist called him "a well-mannered butler") with him is indeed amazing. Then Gautanomo Bay is another sore thumb. Can the United States talk about democracy when they orchestrate such torture measures? And only on suspicion.

But Bush has been supported by the big business, the same folks who probably bagged the big contracts to rebuild Iraq. That’s what the System is all about, a quid-pro-quo for after all where were the weapons of mass destruction ? And staunch anti-US critic Noam Chomsky has written reams and reams of the US foreign policy after World War II. How the Butcher of Lyons and other Nazis were sent to Greece and other European countries to quell any domestic revolt, which in effect means that what the US calls democracy is only the proliferation of the US multinationals abroad.

Moore got the footage of "My Pet Donkey" from the teacher who had made her own video on the President’s visit to her school. But Farenheit 9/11 has more, much more evidence of Bush’s dithering, dishonest and gravely damaging moves on what he piously calls "the war on terrorism." Then Bush’s links with James R. Baath, the man who became the Texas money manager of the billionaire Bin Ladens, also stands exposed as does Bush’s efforts to "escape’ being drafted by the Texas Air National Guard. And who but the United States built Osama Bin Laden. But that was because they needed him to fight the Russians.

Didn’t the US do the same with other South American leaders like Pinochet, Allende and co? In fact, South America has been hypothecated to the United States and Walter Selles’ The Motorcycle Diaries makes this amply clear in his travelogue in which a young Che Guevara and his friend go through South America. It was probably this trip and the poverty they witnessed that made Che a revolutionary.

Incidentally, Selles has been voted by The Guardian as one of the 40 best directors in the world.

It is exposes like Michael Moore’s that eventually turns the tide against the System. Constant dropping of water wears the stone, they say. That’s what happened to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) with their India shining line and the Indian electorate has proved its wisdom times out of number.

So folks like Michael Moore are good for the United States. What they need most is a change in their foreign policies. They have antagonised the world for far too long and the sooner they realise this the better. For themselves, especially.

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