The Best Goebbels of All?

The New York Times > Arts > Frank Rich: "'The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms' was the first movie to be adapted from a Ray Bradbury story. This month Mr. Bradbury, now 83, complained that Michael Moore had appropriated the title of 'Fahrenheit 451,' his classic novel about book-burning totalitarianism, without permission. Mr. Moore hijacked the title because he knows it elicits fear, and his right-wing radio critics liken him to Goebbels because of his willingness to manipulate facts to whip up an audience accordingly. Sometimes they have a case. Mr. Moore is not aspiring to journalistic objectivity when he stirs Prince Bandar, various bin Ladens, the Carlyle Group and the Bush family into a malevolent conspiracy of grassy-knoll dimensions.

Yet Goebbels is in fashion everywhere these days. As Mr. Moore implies that the Bush administration is in cahoots with the native country of 15 of the 9/11 hijackers, so the Bush administration has itself used a sustained campaign of insinuation to float the false claim that Saddam Hussein was in cahoots with those hijackers, too. As Mr. Moore seeks to shape the story of what happened on 9/11, so the White House, President Bush included, collaborated on a movie project with the same partisan intent, 'D.C. 9/11: Time of Crisis,' seen on Showtime last fall. Instead of depicting Mr. Bush as continuing to read 'My Pet Goat' to second graders for nearly seven minutes while the World Trade Center burned (as 'Fahrenheit 9/11' does), 'D.C. 9/11' showed the president (played by Timothy Bottoms) barking out take-charge lines like 'If some tinhorn terrorist wants me, tell him to come on over and get me -- I'll be home!'"