Saw bowling for columbine last night...

[tcsenter]

1) I'd like quotes and links to your claim that 'leading sociological schools of thought' agree with that statement.

As opposed to quotes and links supporting your claim that Heston is a bigot? I don't have "a link" to everything on the planet. More on that...

If you have seen the movie, you should recall that Moore addresses this theory, but then goes on to say how Canada is just as diverse and has MORE guns per capita, yet they do not have this problem.

Not surprisingly, Moore gets it wrong on both counts (imagine that). Come to think of it, I have shown in other threads that Moore gets it factually and materially wrong almost every time he completes a sentence, usually by some order of magnitude, but that is beside the point.

Moore cites 7 million firearms in Canada and 200 - 250 million in the United States. Canada's population is approximately 28 million vs. 280 million for the United States. That means the United States has roughly 10x the population of Canada but 28 - 35x the number of firearms. Do the math, Canada doesn't come close to the per capita firearm ownership of the United States. NEXT!

Canada isn't remotely as as "diverse" as the United States. Perhaps if you simplisticly define "diverse" as 'different ethnicities and national origins', then yes Canada is as diverse. But if you look at representation among the population, Canada doesn't even come close.

The total non-white minority population of Canada barely exceeds 11%. In particular, blacks represent about 2.1% of Canada's total population. 2.1! No single identifiable minority group represents more than 3% of Canada's population. As diverse as the US? Not even in the ballpark. Canada is as lilly white as any European country. NEXT!

Moore builds all of his positions on false premises, straw men, and outright lies. The above is an extremely representative example of this.

2) Heston has Alzheimer's disease. It is rather 'clear' that it was affecting him during the interview. Really now? how so? I just saw this movie a few days ago. Give me even one example of something that makes it evident that he is being affected by the disease during the interview.

Hello! Heston is a renowned actor famous for his commanding and powerful oratory skills. The only possible way to explain his incoherence, seeming confusion, and bumbling that day was the effects of Alzheimer's. That or he was intoxicated, and there is no reason to believe the latter.

3) Yeah, we all know the NRA convention had been planned before. But it could have been, and should have been cancelled, out of respect for the 15 people that died at the hands of high powered guns. That would have required nothing more than common sense and a bit of good judgement.

Well first, none of the firearms used in the Columbine shooting are remotely classified as high powered, but that is beside the point.

Would a liquor and beer retailer's association cancel their annual convention due to a string of recent drunk driving deaths? Would an automobile dealer's association cancel an annual event due to a string of recent drunk driving deaths? Would Ford cancel an annual event because some drunk plowed into a crowd of school children with his Ford Explorer? Would an agricultural fertilizer company cancel an event due to the Oklahoma City bombing? Would a fuel oil retailer's association cancel an event due to the Oklahoma City bombing? Would Rider Truck cancel an annual event because of the OK City bombing?

The answer is no on every point. Moreover, would anyone expect them to? Again, the answer is no, nobody would care, because there is absolutely no connection or relationship whatsoever between Ford and some deranged man who plows his Ford Explorer into a crowd of children.

4) You mention a columbine parent testifying before congress in support of the NRA. Where can i see this? Also, as shown in the movie, the father of a student who was murdered there rallied against the NRA coming to town. Yet they came anyways. Even the mayor of Littleton said they should not have come, yet they came anyway.

Someone already linked to the speech. So if I came up with one person who wanted the NRA to be there, and then you came up with one person who didn't want the NRA to be there, and I came up with another, and you likewise came up with another, who would win?

I'll tell you the answer to that. More than 6,000 people attended the NRA's annual meeting in Denver. Fewer than 300 protested. 6,000 beats 300 every day of the week.

The same happened in Flint, Michigan, when the NRA had a rally at the IMA Sports Arena shortly after the six year old girl was shot and killed at school.

More than 4,000 people attended in support of the NRA, there were a dozen protestors. 4,000 beats a dozen every day of the week.

If you want the NRA to stop having meetings, rallies, and conventions, may I suggest you form your own organization and convince 3.5 million people to join and actively support the organization as the NRA has. That way when the NRA has a rally or convention, you might be able to drum up more protestors than a miniscule fraction of those attending in support of the NRA. But you have your work cut out for you, tens of millions of dollars have been spent trying to accomplish just that. So far, none have managed to remotely approach the NRA's membership and support among the public. Good luck!

 

[308nato]

Originally posted by: SherEPunjab

Originally posted by: 308nato

Originally posted by: SherEPunjab

Originally posted by: 308nato
Darrel Scott addresses Congress

are you actually giving me a link from an NRA website? Surely you can do better...

Use your own Google button then brightboy.

I've read it bright boy.

What does it reveal? Nothing more than the guy is a devout Christian. He is using that opportunity as a platform for his beliefs. I too dont' believe that the NRA is to blame, and I didn't say that, nor do I think Michael Moore implied that. The NRA is, however, the largest firearm organization and they support all sorts of gun shows where firearms like those used in the columbine massacre can be purchased.

I would put it akin to the following situation: if there was a major world Islam convention in NYC 1 week after September 11. Was Islam responsible for what happened, no. But it would be in good taste to postpone such a convention had it been scheduled. Some things are just common sense.

It would have been a good gesture on their part to have postponed it, rather than have the city filled with guns just a week after many of its citizens had been victimized by that very instrument.

I'll stand by my word that Heston is a bigot and his NRA rally was stupid considering the timing of the event.

edit: and 308nato, do you care to give responses to my other points? You'll probably say no, i dont' have time or give some other p*ssy lame ass excuse to avoid it, but hey, who knows, maybe you'll surprise us. Feel free to, Tscenter isn't the only one who has to respond.

If there is a pu@@y or lame ass around here it sure as the hell isn't me. I wish I had the time to research everything for you but I don't. The last thing on my list of daily imporntant items is "help the mentally impoverished understand the error of their ways".

 

[tcsenter]

Also, as shown in the movie, the father of a student who was murdered there rallied against the NRA coming to town. Yet they came anyways. Even the mayor of Littleton said they should not have come, yet they came anyway.

Who gives a damn?

The only fair thing to do is for those who believe the NRA should have canceled their annual meeting is bust out their wallets and pay for the millions of dollars the NRA would lose in cancellation fees, the millions of dollars attendees would lose in cancelled hotel room fees, cancelled airline ticket fees, and compensation for the time off work that was wasted because a handful of stupid people who already don't like the NRA would EXPLOIT a tragedy to stop the NRA from having a convention.

When you cancel airline tickets, train tickets, hotel reservations, banquet center reservations, meeting room reservations, et. al. at the last minute, you lose your deposits or incur a cancellation fee. Thousands of people took vacation or compensation time from work to attend this convention. Hundreds of vendors invested necessary expenses to reserve vendor space and make travel arrangements.

The least that the Mayor of Littleton could do, if he wanted the NRA to cancel their annual convention, was to personally compensate every person who would lose money. If he wasn't willing to do that, then he should keep his filthy trap shut.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: 308nato
Michael Moore got booed and hissed out of england 2 weeks ago.

He is to liberal for the British ?

He is the poster boy for whiny little turds with to much time on their hands.

I'm British and didn't hear about this. Links?

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: 308nato
Michael Moore got booed and hissed out of england 2 weeks ago.

He is to liberal for the British ?

He is the poster boy for whiny little turds with to much time on their hands.

I'm British and didn't hear about this. Links?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=946813

 

[Swag1138]

Originally posted by: axiom
Moore does make good points in this film. Specifically, his points about the "fear" in America are pretty accurate. However, he's 'just a bit outside' with his pitches towards Gun owners. He neglects the most important human quality...self responsibility. Moore is activist no doubt about it. He's got presence and wit. He is certainly not an objective guy though so take his movies with a grain of salt.

Moore makes NO points in the film! At least none that he set out to make. He set out to be anti-gun, when the ONLY point he made was that america is a country founded on fear. He didnt make a SINGLE anti-gun point. In fact, he defeated his own argument against guns by making the point about Canada having more guns, and being less violent.

Hes a jackass. An entertaining jackass, but a jackass nonetheless

 

[DivideBYZero]

Originally posted by: Carbonyl

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: 308nato
Michael Moore got booed and hissed out of england 2 weeks ago.

He is to liberal for the British ?

He is the poster boy for whiny little turds with to much time on their hands.

I'm British and didn't hear about this. Links?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=946813

Thanks. Gee he really made a c0ck of himself...

I'm reading Stupid White Men right now, but he lost some respect for that.

You can't give it all the 'Big bad corporate' and the 'pay a decent wage' speech that you get in the book, then bitch about $750 for a couple of hours of ranting.....

 

[308nato]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: 308nato
Michael Moore got booed and hissed out of england 2 weeks ago.

He is to liberal for the British ?

He is the poster boy for whiny little turds with to much time on their hands.

I'm British and didn't hear about this. Links?

Independent UK This sight is down for me now but this was the full story.

An excerpt.....

American satirist Michael Moore has stormed out of Britain after a bust up with the London theatre hosting his one-man show. The Bowling For Columbine moviemaker performed Michael Moore - Live! to packed audiences for two months before Christmas at The Roundhouse in Camden, North London. But on the penultimate night he reportedly flew into a rage, verbally attacking everyone associated with the theatre because he thought he wasn't being paid enough. During the performance he complained he was making just $750 a night. A member of the stage crew says, "He completely lost the plot. He stormed around all day screaming at everyone, even the £5-an-hour bar staff, telling them how we were all conmen and useless. Then he went on stage and did it in public." Staff retaliated by refusing to work the following night, which led to the show being held up for an hour. Eventually he made a groveling apology to staff and the angry audience finally took to their seats. A source reports that Moore then packed his bags and flew to New York the next day without saying thank you or goodbye to anyone.


Another that may be working....

An excerpt....

I took my son to see Michael Moore live at the Roundhouse, in north London, before Christmas. The US radical and author of the best-selling book Stupid White Men was (mostly) clever, funny, angry, sharp, iconoclastic and sceptical about the lies and humbug processed by the US government and big business. Sure there were some flunked bits ? you expect that, the troughs are part of the adventure, an evening with a well-worn rebel.

What we did not expect was to feel so enraged at one point that we almost walked out. It was when Moore went into a rant about how the passengers on the planes on 11 September were scaredy-cats because they were mostly white. If the passengers had included black men, he claimed, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody. God save us from such stupid white men....

....

 

[Zebo]

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: Carbonyl

Originally posted by: DivideBYZero

Originally posted by: 308nato
Michael Moore got booed and hissed out of england 2 weeks ago.

He is to liberal for the British ?

He is the poster boy for whiny little turds with to much time on their hands.

I'm British and didn't hear about this. Links?

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=38&threadid=946813

Thanks. Gee he really made a c0ck of himself...

I'm reading Stupid White Men right now, but he lost some respect for that.

You can't give it all the 'Big bad corporate' and the 'pay a decent wage' speech that you get in the book, then bitch about $750 for a couple of hours of ranting.....

I'm the first to admit there is racism in this country but Moore seems to be preoccupied with pinning the tail on whitey for all this violence and shootings which gets a little old. At some point one has to relise you don't hear all those gun shots in white places and whites arnt the only ones pulling the triggers. Once again self hate. Most commedians do though fom things I've heard.

 

[tcsenter]

Moore makes NO points in the film! At least none that he set out to make. He set out to be anti-gun, when the ONLY point he made was that america is a country founded on fear. He didnt make a SINGLE anti-gun point. In fact, he defeated his own argument against guns by making the point about Canada having more guns, and being less violent.

Actually Moore didn't set out to be against guns, per se. He set out to explore reasons why 'America' is so violent and other 'similar' countries are not.

He went to Canada to show that guns are not implicitly to blame, as many simplistic pro gun control arguments would have us believe, since Canada has a lot of firearms, too, but it doesn't have our violent crime. Moore was trying to show that it is far too simplistic and, moreover, probably a material fallacy to say that 'guns' are to blame for our higher violent crime. On its face, I welcome that 'refreshing' view as opposed to the lock-step orthodoxy of antigun arguments which essentially hold that guns are the problem.

In that limited sense, Moore does make 'a good point', except that is where Moore's good point begins and ends. He uses that 'good point' as pretext for building Moore's predictable anti-media, anti-white, anti-corporation, anti-capitalism, pro-socialist, pro-union thesis.

 

[tcsenter]

I'm the first to admit there is racism in this country but Moore seems to be preoccupied with pinning the tail on whitey for all this violence and shootings which gets a little old. At some point one has to relise you don't hear all those gun shots in white places and whites arnt the only ones pulling the triggers. Once again self hate. Most commedians do though fom things I've heard.

Hey, check out why Moore hates whites:

I write about it in my book - every bad thing that has happened to me in my life, every piece of harm, has been from white people. I have never had a black car salesman rip me off. I have never had a black landlord hold back my security deposit. I have never had a black teacher hold back giving me a grade I deserved.

I go back to when I was a kid. I?m thinking, ?Jeez, every single thing has had a white face on it. Why would I be afraid of anybody black??.

BWHAHAHAHA! Well...now you know. Michael Moore believes that ONLY the white race is capable of wrong-doing. Good grief someone should notify our authorities that EVERY non-white person in prison is INNOCENT!

Well Golly Jeepers, a black man murdered my sister at the age of 25 and a couple black teens stabbed a good friend of mine nearly to death. I guess that means I should hate blacks. Oh wait! That's right, blacks are incapable of wrong-doing, so my sister and friend must have been asking for it.

Moore takes internalized 'white guilt' to a whole new level. He actually believes that every bad, immoral, and evil thing in the world exists because of whites.

There may be some 'truth' to that. Without the contribution of the white race to the world, we would all be living in dung huts, have no written language, picking lice out of each other's hair as a social reinforcement behavior, urinating on each other to prevent parasites, shoving bones through our lips, and cowering at the sight of the moon.

So Moore may have a point, there isn't much class envy or warfare, robbery, muggings, burglary, fraud, pollution and corporate greed in spear-chucking cultures. Tribal warfare, wholesale slaughters of men, women, and children, rape, and slavery, yes, but no corporate greed.

Funny, though, I don't see Moore "rejecting" his Western income, home, automobile, life-style, and his lard-heavy ass, trading them in for a dung hut and a spear.