National Public Radio’s Morning Edition on Friday devoted its latest interview on DVDs worth watching to the picks of leftist filmmaker Michael Moore, although they used no pesky label for him. Moore began by snobbishly asserting to anchor Steve Inskeep that he doesn’t like DVDs. He likes going to theaters, even for old movies: “I keep a list on my computer of the various art houses and places that show old films. And I'll drive, literally, for hours to go see something from the 1940s, if I can see on a movie screen."
Don’t alert the people who think long drives are causing global warming.
Unsurprisingly, Moore liked leftist films. First he recommended a movie called Czech Dreams, which mocked how desperate people who were liberated from Soviet-imposed communism wanted to shop, shop, shop. The filmmakers promoted a phony mall opening just to mock the suckers who would celebrate it. In the same Moore-pleasing spirit was Borat:
STEVE INSKEEP: You also have on your list here Borat," which sounds like a nice transition out of "Czech Dreams."
MOORE: Well, I have never laughed so hard for 90 minutes, during a movie, in my lifetime. In fact, a friend of mine who was actually sitting across the aisle, he said to me afterward, he said, ‘I looked over at you and you had gone into a fetal position in your chair... (laughter) ...you were laughing so hard.’ And now, of course, if you know me, you know for me to do the fetal position in a movie theater chair... (laughter) ...it's almost impossible. But he said that’s exactly what I was doing cause I was crumpled over with laughter so much.
This was the movie hailed by Time magazine because Sacha Baron Cohen mocked America.The headline was “Borat Make Funny Joke on Idiot Americans! High-Five!” Naturally, Moore agreed: "And the man's a genius. And I think that he completely, again, coming from Britain and taking a look at us, it was not just funny for funny's sake but also had, I think, some important things to say about who we are as a people."
But the leftism really took off when they began discussing how America was responsible for every casualty in the Vietnam war on both sides:
INSKEEP: Hmm. Well, I wonder what will happen when people hear that another one of your favorites for DVDs is Hearts and Minds?
MOORE: Hearts and Minds, yes. It's certainly my favorite documentary of all time. It may be my favorite film of all time. It is a perfect film, made by a director by the name of Peter Davis. He won the Academy Award for it for Best Documentary, I believe in 1975 or '76. And it is the definitive account of the debacle we know as the Vietnam War.
This film is so well constructed, so emotional, and so many great moments. I still remember, to this day, I remember the filmmakers interviewing Daniel Ellsberg who exposed The Pentagon Papers, and he says to the cameraman, we were sent over there to fight the enemy.
(Soundbite of movie, Hearts and Minds)
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Basically, we didnt want to acknowledge the scale of our involvement there. We didnt want to realize that it was our war, because that would have been to say that every casualty on both sides was casualty caused by our policy. The question used to be, might it be possible that we were on the wrong side in the Vietnamese war? But we weren't on the wrong side. We are the wrong side.
MOORE: When he says that, it really hits you. It really, it's like it's hurts. But you know what? If it hurts it probably should hurt. And we need to confront these things so that we don’t do them again.
INSKEEP: Well, Michael Moore, it's been a pleasure speaking with you.
MOORE: Thank you very much, Steve.
Ronald Reagan said Vietnam was a "noble cause." Imagine instead that Vietnam was a disastrous U.S. massacre, and you have the long-standing zeitgeist of National Public Radio.
