(or: Why so many critics miss the message of Fahrenheit 9/11)

There�€™s a scene in the classic sci-fi novel The Space Merchants that is so damn perfect.

First of all, like most science fiction, we have the futuristic but recognizable dystopia. There�€™s no public/private, commerce/government sectors anymore; commercial values are the only values, and you are either living good at the top of the food chain scamming the common people or you are an unaware consumer scrambling for your next artificially induced fix. The brainwashers and the brainwashees.

Of course, the whole setup rests on the acceptance of commercial exploitation by the people at the top �€“ the sharp characters not unlike many a marketing guru in the here and now.

The protagonist of the novel is one of these slick individuals, an advertising executive and expert �€œcopysmith,�€� until a rival has him stripped of his identity and sent to work as a common laborer in a suitably horrific, sci-fi version of a third-world sweatshop. It�€™s there that he meets members of an underground resistance movement.

What�€™s perfect, besides the truths underlying the fantastic tale, is our protagonist�€™s reaction when he is identified as a potential movement recruit and given introductory literature on the group, the World Conservationists Association, or WCA.

�€œI thought the broadside was (a) the dullest, lousiest piece of copysmithing I had ever seen in my life; (b) a wildly distorted version of reality; (c) a possible escape route for me out of Chlorella and back to Kathy.

�€œSo these were the dreaded Consies! Of all the self-contradictory gibberish �€“ but it had a certain appeal. The ad was crafted �€“ unconsciously, I was sure �€“ the way we�€™d do a pharmaceutical-house booklet for doctors only. Calm, learned, we�€™re all men of sound judgment and deep scholarship here; we can talk frankly about bedrock issues. Does your patient suffer from hyperspasm, Doctor?

�€œIt was an appeal to reason, and they�€™re always dangerous. You can�€™t trust reason. We threw it out of the ad profession long ago and have never missed it.�€�

And there you have the crux of many a leftist argument against Michael Moore�€™s Fahrenheit 9/11 �€“ that it should have been more like WCA literature, a calm, learned appeal to reason. It did not flatter my �€œdeep scholarship�€� and �€œsound judgment.�€�

Sorry, but it wasn�€™t made for you, Doctor. And have you seen Z Magazine? In These Times? The Progressive? Tell me how many will fill the theaters to see the movie equivalent.

I never understood why it was supposed to be scholarly. I always understood it to be a movie, and as with most good movies, I saw it as a fiction by an auteur with something to say. Distorted reality, agitprop, polemical, sure, isn�€™t that the nature of the beast? But can you trick the beast to reveal itself? That’s what I think Moore does, by making a film about the propaganda forcefed to Americans daily. That�€™s what I�€™d call a higher truth.

It�€™s a nod and wink, it�€™s smart, it�€™s �€œhere�€™s a big middle finger to your dishonest war scam, oh corporate media and corporate government goons.�€� Made with style, pop culture references, jokes �€“ i.e. love and respect for American culture. I�€™m sorry, lefties, but you can�€™t get behind that?

How about a steady drumbeat of suggestions that Bush knew, or that he is trying to protect the Saudis, done in craftily enough so as avoid easy dismissal as a tinfoil hatter?

To my mind, the most cogent criticism has centered on the lack of material on Israel�€™s involvement with the neoconvict agenda. Israel is one huge Middle Eastern problem, and Washington�€™s proxy ME military force, and maybe Moore shouldn�€™t have ignored it, but that doesn�€™t take away from the point of the film: that Americans are kept behind an electronic media Berlin Wall, as Greg Palast puts it.

Moore keeps the focus on the Saudis, and, whatever Israel�€™s role, they are involved. And Bush is covering for them. Whether fact or fiction, it�€™s accepted that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi. Bush and his cronies do have quite an incestuous relationship with leaders in Saudi Arabia. And the media is AWOL on all of this.

They are MIA on Israel too, to be sure. But how does F911 hamper anyone�€™s further research into U.S. policy regarding Israel and vice versa? If anything, it encourages it, by dint of the fact that the film attempts to dispel the dominant media version of events, and not, I would submit, to replace it. One man, one point of view, one film �€“ has Moore ever said it was anything else?

In other words, it�€™s not a frank, dull talk about your corrupt government and complicit media, easily forgotten in today�€™s media milieu, it�€™s an expert �€œcopysmith�€� with a simple and powerfully delivered message: You are being lied to. Badly.

Millions who don�€™t read the Internet or Z Magazine now know:

– of the Carlyle Group�€™s one-day $237 million profit from the public offering of United Defense six weeks after 9/11

– of the friendly chat between Bush and Saudi Ambassabor �€œBandar Bush�€� on Sept. 12.

– of Colin Powell and Condi Rice sounding like lefties as they repeat �€“ before Sept. 11, 2001 — what we knew all along: Saddam is boxed in, has not been able to develop WMD and is no threat to the U.S.

– of the first concern of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld after 9/11: invading Iraq, a country that never attacked the U.S.

– of Bush sitting in the classroom thinking�€�who knows? Moore uses the footage to speculate on the compromising information Bush would like to remain hidden; it looks to me like someone thinking, �€œand so it begins.�€�

– of the protest scene at Bush�€™s inauguration, disturbing for its �€œpeople versus the police state�€� familiarity and its lack of media coverage.

– of the joke that is Homeland Security and the TERROR WARNINGS, which was illustrated by a clever segue from small town Americans wondering about a supposed Al Qaeda threat to the real threat �€“ an obviously insane John Ashcroft (singing �€œLet the Eagle Soar�€�).

– of the Unocal connections to the Afghanistan invasions: the puppet president and the U.S. Ambassador are former Unocal officials, the go ahead of the long-planned-for natural gas pipeline.

And then there�€™s Iraq. Moore devotes the last third of the film to the war in Iraq, and it changes from clever skewering of administration corruption and media complicity to an emotional condemnation of using young Americans for a criminal mission �€“ an �€œoperation�€� as Cheney called it Tuesday night �€“ to rape a country.

One of my favorite criticisms of the film from the right has been the complaint that Moore only shows you the happy Iraq. In footage taken prior to the invasion, we see Iraqis going about their daily lives �€“ a wedding, kids playing, buses moving in traffic, people riding bikes, a haircut in a barber shop, and a child flying a kite, the delicate image of paper riding on air shattered by bombs falling on the city we just glimpsed.

The segment is the right wingers�€™ favorite example of propaganda, so-called because it doesn�€™t show the evil of Saddam. Yet to me, it�€™s the best example of why Moore�€™s film rises above propaganda. This Iraq, the everyday Iraq we would recognize, enjoy if we were there, feel bonds with, could never be acknowledged in the media. In fact, the media went to great pains to paint Iraq as a �€œhellhole,�€� to demonize and reduce a country to one man, a dime-a-dozen corrupt leader made out to be the next Hitler. There is no reason for Moore to reiterate what we�€™ve all heard ad nauseum. Instead, his film is designed to show you the counter to what is pushed on you relentlessly. So we get unsanitized war footage, an interview with a bereaved mother, candid talk from soldiers.

From the start, the film works in concert with corporate media propaganda, undermining it every step of the way, until we get to the country�€™s most shocking crime, an illegal invasion, and we see what has been missing in the media all along �€“ an appeal to our humanity.