Reply #14: I didn't see Slacker Uprising - or even hear about it

[karynnj]

It sounds like pay back.

Kerry's comment on F911 actually was more than not having enough time - it was also that he lived through that. He went out of his way to say that he was completely uninterested in the film.

I think overall F911 HURT Kerry, as it would any Democrat running. If you look at the favorable/not favorable ratings (not the approval ratings), well over half the people had a favorable impression of Bush. As with Obama, that number was higher than his approval rating.

The "connect the dots" sequence in F911, which was very flippant in tone, is basically making the case that is sometimes called Bush Criminal Empire or Bush evil empire. No one on DU would ever have missed the various posts with long back up articles that define each of those dots. Even here, only a majority connect them and believe that in its most extreme version - that GHWB and forces aligned to him took over the US and used the country's power for his own purposes. That is what the connect the dots sequence does.

F911 was LOVED by the far left and much of the left, but not even by all Democrats or left leaning Republicans. I saw this first hand because a book club I belonged to at my liberal reconstructionist synagogue decided that we should all independently see it and then discuss it when we met. Like most Jews, most were liberal Democrats - and all but one who was undecided were for Kerry. ALL hated the movie. I was uncomfortable with that part, but thought other parts - like showing the impact on Iraq and showing the recruiting effort in the slums of Detroit -were very good. Most were genuinely disgusted with the inferences from the connect the dots part - did not believe the dots were true - and objected to the "lines" drawn. (I felt weird mentioning BCCI, which many remembered only vaguely as a scandal involving Bert Lance, who worked for Jimmy Carter.)

While I know it is dangerous to extrapolate from one completely atypical, not representative group, it does mean something when a group of people, most not for Bush starting before he was sworn in, thought the movie unfair. This tells me that it fails the test of being able to swing a NEUTRAL person to become an anti-Bush person. In fact, I think it is that and other things from Move on, ANSWER and the like that led to Kerry being seen as at least as guilty of negative campaigning as George Bush. In reality, the Bush campaign was far more negative - and that is excluding the SBVT - just as I am excluding MM, ANSWER and moveon - even though there was more coordination on their side.) In fact, Laura Bush condoned the SBVT lying because worse things were being said about GWB - and this well publicized comment did not cost her any popularity.

I suspect that Kerry's unwillingness to say anything positive about the film was both political and also his honest opinion. In his own BCCI and Iran/Contra reports, he wrote only what he had 100% solid proof on. I suspect this is both his praiseworthy temperament and his background as a prosecutor. Not to mention, he himself often experienced people taking "facts" on him, giving them the worst possible motivations and then making inferences by adding them together.

The sad thing is that that part loses people who might be made to think by the excellent work done in Detroit and Iraq. MM clearly thinks that his attack on Bush was useful, but I think it likely alienated many people who liked (or even did not hate) Bush. Many of them did not want to see the leader, they thought was protecting them and who was still President, as evil - and that was where MM (and significant parts of DU) were.