The ABC kerfuffle

Democrats urge ABC to withdraw 0/11 movie.

The whole time I've been following this controversy, I have thought of the conversations I had with my liberal friends all through the summer of 2004. I had gone to Farenheit 9/11 (bought a ticket to another movie, mind you--Moore wasn't getting one penny of my money), and afterward, when I would bring up one of David Kopel's 57 irrefutable Moore falsehoods, my friends would merely smile and say, "So? Moore's our Rush Limbaugh. Big deal." When I asked what falsehood Limbaugh had ever perpetrated that was one-tenth as tententious as (to name one of dozens) Moore's Afghan pipeline canard, they'd say, "Well, Femi-Nazis," and then parrot Roger Ebert's idiotic statement, "The important thing in a documentary isn't truth, it's emotional impact," a position so morally obtuse as to defy response.
The current right-wing defense of the ABC movie misses the point.

So now? I want the ABC movie to be false. A hundred libelous distortions of the Clinton administration won't be enough for me. A thousand will barely sait me. A want long denunciations to be published in The Nation and Mother Jones, complete with links and footnotes and circles and arrows and stuff. And then I want to respond. "So? It's our Farenheit 9/11. Big deal.'"

To paraphrase George Will in another context: No, two wrongs don't make a right. But maybe an 18th or 27th wrong might wake a few people up.