The Moore's last laugh

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal"><script language="javascript">doweshowbellyad=0; </script><br /><img align="left" src="/photo/708513.cms" alt="/photo/708513.cms" border="0" />The title of Michael Moore''s latest movie <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Fahrenheit 9/11 </span>is a take-off on sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury''s futuristic novel <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">Fahrenheit 451</span>, a tale of censorship and defiance in which firemen start fires to burn books.<br /><br />Judging by the timing, purpose, and the kind of heat the movie has generated, 911 would seem an apt title. As is obvious, the subject of the movie is the catastrophic terrorist attack on the US.<br /><br />Correction: it''s about George Bush, his administration, and their blunderings and cover-ups vis-a-vis 9/11. Word is that Moore is so brutal on the current American dispensation that they wish both the movie and its maker would incinerate in their own intensity. <br /><br />Moore, 50, is a familiar Bush-hater and baiter. His production company, quirkily named Dog Eat Dog Films, recalls the canine ferocity with which he has been attacking the American right. <br /><br />A liberal hound in a country where true Democrats have become pussy cats, Moore was distraught when Bush stole the election from Al Gore. He calls Bush "a thief-in-chief" and a "squatter at the Oval Office." <br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section2"><div class="Normal"><br />He hasn''t gotten over the scam. In a rambling rant at the 2003 Oscars, when he won the best documentary award for his work Bowling for Columbine, he termed Bush a "fictitious president". <br /><br />An awkward, scruffy, overweight figure in a trademark baseball cap, Moore isn''t the typical Hollywood stud or smoothie. He was born and raised in Flint, Michigan, and still retains the traits of a small-town, workaday American. <br /><br />His first film, the 1989 documentary Roger and Me, centered round the closure of the General Motors plant in his hometown which employed many members of his family. <br /><br />Enraged at the lay-offs, Moore tried to buttonhole the company''s elusive chairman Roger Smith. In the process, he decided to make a film about his experience. <br /><br />It was the kind of in-your-face technique that would become a Moore hallmark. In Bowling for Columbine, an edgy look at America''s gun culture following the horrific school shooting, he brings off a similar ambush interview with aging actor Charlton Heston, who heads the pro-gun lobby in the US. <br /><br /></div> </div><div class="section3"><div class="Normal"><br />He is equally provocative in his writing, with an output that includes titles such as Downsize This!, a rant about corporate America, Stupid White Men... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation, and Dude, Where''s My Country? <br /><br />But none of his earlier works received as much acclaim as Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the Palme dOr at Cannes. In some of the movie''s most talked-about moments, Moore uses discarded TV footage to show Bush as a dimwit. <br /><br />There is the familiar shot of Bush being intimated about the WTC attack at a school function. His face registers shock and his eyes glaze. <br /><br />But he continues to read to elementary school students for seven long minutes after being told of the biggest terrorist attack in history. A close-up shows the title of the book: <span style="" font-style:="" italic="">My Pet Goat</span>. <br /><br />In Moore''s hands, Bush is a lamb to the slaughter. In liberal eyes, it is a deserving fate for an American President who has tethered a proud country and a civilisation to post.</div> </div>