The Mouse and the muckraker :: Namibia Internet Gateway cc ::

Articles: The Mouse and the muckraker

Posted by admin on Friday, May 07, 2004 - 12:40 AM

Michael Moore's new documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11" is about the relationship between President Bush's family and the Saudi elite, including Osama bin Laden's family, and calls into question the president's actions before and after the terrorist attacks in light of these ties. It promises to be controversial, and the filmmaker had planned to release it at the height of the presidential campaign this summer. But the Walt Disney Company, whose Miramax division financed the film, now refuses to let Miramax distribute it to movie theaters.
Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, says Disney chief Michael Eisner asked him to pull out of the deal with Miramax because the film would anger the president's brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, and endanger the tax breaks the Sunshine State gives Disney World. Disney has issued a sort of non-denial denial, saying "it's not in the interest of any major corporation to be dragged into a highly charged partisan political battle." It's censorship, pure and simple, a craven cave-in to political pressure, and it shows Disney for the greedy corporate scoundrel that it is, putting profit and expediency before free expression. Mr. Eisner has had trouble with a falling stock price, just survived a stockholder push to replace him and fended off a takeover bid, so the last thing he needs is a tax problem and an angry right wing fomenting a boycott from the middle American families that are Disney's bread and butter. It's quite likely that Mr. Moore will find a new distributor for his film, and that it will be in a theater near you this summer. Mr. Moore's last film, "Bowling for Columbine," did very well at the box office and won an Oscar for best documentary; his books have sold millions of copies. He has an audience and he will find it. Typically, Mr. Moore, a gifted publicity hound, has been all over the TV news, stirring up more interest in his film than it might otherwise have received had Disney not tried to squelch it. But the irony of the movie's title, a reference to Ray Bradbury's tale of a totalitarian state that burns books and distracts its people with an all pervasive pop culture, should not be lost on anyone. When an Oscar winner can't get a major movie company to distribute his film, when a broadcaster, Sinclair Broadcast Group, prevents eight of its ABC stations from showing a sober "Nightline" tribute to America's war dead in Iraq because it doesn't want to offend the Bush administration it contributes money to, then Americans should be very afraid of the fate that awaits free speech on America's airwaves and movie screens.

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