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SECOND THOUGHTS ON MOORE
The Age’s Chris Beck interviews ABC movie critic Margaret Pomeranz, who now regrets supporting Michael Moore:
Beck: If you are going to review a documentary, don’t you have to know about more than just the film?
Pomeranz: Listen, Gerard Henderson has got the Sydney Institute to do all his research for him. It’s just me. Am I expected to do all the research? Documentaries are supposedly being presented with fact. I’ve actually argued that we shouldn’t discuss documentaries, just present them. It is much harder to evaluate documentary because there is no possibility of us verifying every factual statement made.
Beck: Henderson said you accepted unquestionably Moore’s thesis.
Pomeranz: I also feel that right-wing columnists really love to bash the ABC. I am going to continually lambast myself over the 9/11 thing - that I was so willing to swallow Moore, hook, line and sinker. I’m such a sucker. I will be more careful in future, certainly with documentary. David [Stratton, Margaret’s co-host] and I both have to learn that lesson. He’s done it since with the (the provocative Australian filmmaker) David Bradbury documentary (Blowin’ in the Wind).
Beck: When you see a fictional film based on fact do you believe it is all true?
Pomeranz: Yeah. I’m gullible.
Beck: The reason you two work is that you both work on an emotional level.
Pomeranz: You see, I am actively against the war in Iraq. So anything that feeds that anti-war sentiment, yeah, I’m much more likely to believe it because it fits in with my existing political beliefs. But we have to be careful because everybody thinks that the ABC is full of Marxists.
Beck: But you are a Marxist, aren’t you?
Pomeranz: No I’m not. I’m a humanist.
(Links added; via Tony T.)
UPDATE. An extract from Dave ‘n’ Margaret’s 9/11 review:
DAVID: I think it is a film of great power because he marshals the facts, all of which we knew already, but so lucidly. He uses some footage we’ve seen before, some with little additions and from different angles, I think this is how he makes it even more powerful. Of course, his use of popular songs as a sort of ironic counterpoint to all of this is interesting too.
MARGARET: What I think is you get all of the facts, some of which we know already, into this package, but there are additional ones.
Everyone needs to learn to do their own research. EVERYONE.
In the information age, the ability to sort true data from false data is vital to survival. Learning how to do research, perform experiments, and most importantly recognize when a belief, no matter how cherished, needs to be discarded as false and wrong, is what will distinguish survivors from corpses in the next world war.
Science doesn’t have to be performed in a laboratory, research doesn’t have to be done in a library. You can record observations by carving notches in sticks, and as long as you keep re-examining your records, you’re still doing research. They’re processes, not the products of technology but the epiphanies of ancient Greeks who would have no idea how to use a computer or even an ink pen. As long as those processes are practiced faithfully, progress will still be made; as long as they are not, all apparent progress is just blind faith that will be shattered the moment reality drops the hammer.
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2006 08 17 at 01:27 PM • permalinkListen, Gerard Henderson has got the Sydney Institute to do all his research for him.
BTW, what’s it with leftie, MSM dimwits like this who can’t use Google to make even a cursory attempt at research themselves? (As Gerard Henderson pointed out, above, all those years ago.) Even if she didn’t want to read anything Googled from the National Review Online, she should have found the politically-nonaligned Spinsanity site’s critiques of Moore (and Coulter!) easily enough.
And I’ve also seen “humanist” used as a euphemism for “atheist” by atheists, and their MSM supporters, who don’t want to state their beliefs too openly.
BTW, is anyone else craving omelettes, or am I just channelling Cindy Sheehan?
Posted by andycanuck on 2006 08 17 at 01:34 PM • permalinkPomeranz: Yeah. I’m gullible.
“Oh…..and I don’t care that I’m gullible.”
Idiot.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 17 at 01:47 PM • permalinkAt least she didn’t compare herself to Erasmus of Rotterdam in her humanist-iness.
Humanism isn’t a political system. As an answer, it’s very ambiguous, but there were no follow-up questions, so we’re none the wiser.
btw I give her credit for owning up to her error and revoking her support for Moore.Posted by daddy dave on 2006 08 17 at 02:28 PM • permalinkI’m a humanist.
To Hell with humans. I’m an orangutanist. The Apes shall conquer the world!
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2006 08 17 at 03:00 PM • permalinkGood point, #11 and others. While “humanism” now means atheism (with perhaps a dash of Marxism), it started off as a movement within Christendom. Perhaps Margaret should read Erasmus’ Praise of Folly. Or does this movie person actually read at all? As pointed out by others above, she certainly doesn’t seem to read Google…
Posted by AlburyShifton on 2006 08 17 at 03:06 PM • permalink#10 #15 I think you’re on the wrong track here. You can be a humanist and be either left or right.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 08 17 at 03:10 PM • permalinkRe #11—LOL! Thanks for the historical clip there, PW!!!
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2006 08 17 at 04:21 PM • permalinkIt is much harder to evaluate documentary because there is no possibility of us verifying every factual statement made.
Lazy twat.
Who says you can’t possibly verify every factual statement made? Sure you can, you just have to put in a little work. I mean, make your intern do it or something.
Impossible? She probably says the same thing about balancing her checkbook.
Leftist Super Nanny ABC is reporting the aftermath of the Lebanon conflict as if it is all about the humanitarian issue, rather than a pause in the relentless geopolitics which will see more and greater strife emanate from the axis of evil.
Between them and the ACLU types, the west is being paralysed from within while arguments seem preoccupied with the abortion or euthanisation of civilisation as we know it, rather than its survival - which depends solely on Kyoto, they say.
Keep it up guys, and even stem cell research will be too little, too late to save all of our (that includes your) sorry arses.#22. Further news of winds of change at ABC…
CREDIT where it’s due. As a long-time critic of the ABC’s endemic culture of ideological bias, I’ve been surprised and encouraged by just a few recent signs of sanity, balance and intellectual openness in the national broadcaster’s presentation of important issues.
Marxism is the best way to organize academics.
By working them to death in Arctic camps and massive, mis-designed public works?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2006 08 17 at 06:38 PM • permalinkI think this is what she meant…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_wordsPosted by thefrollickingmole on 2006 08 17 at 06:59 PM • permalinkSpeaking of pathetic moonbats, Hotair’s links confirm what I thought about the woman who disrupted the flight the other day from London.
She’s a ‘60s peace activist who took the final step over the rainbow. I just knew it! abc story and her own article for a Pakistani paper. Cat Stevens is cited, more than once.
Mayo’s articleNote, she was actually referring to their review of Fahrenheit 9/11, not Bowling for Columbine, though of course they got sucked in by both.
David and Margaret are annoying at times but are a breath of fresh air when compared to those up-themselves latte-sippers who now front the SBS Movie Show. Here’s their take on Fahrenheit 9/11... basically “it’s badly made but completely true and correct”.
Posted by russell2pi on 2006 08 17 at 07:43 PM • permalinkLet us not forget that today is the 40th anniversary of the battle of Long Tan, we must also remember how long it has taken for these brave guys to be given the respect that they deserve. Back in the Vietnam era the left where undermining our society, the maritime unions refusing to ship supplies to our forces in Vietnam, returning soldiers being spat on in the street. Kim Beazley was crying in parliament yesterday in part over an anonymous letter sent to an injured soldiers Mother hoping that he died of his injuries because he was a killer. These are the same diseased minds that support terrorists and weep for the likes of David Hicks and the rest of societies evolutionary challenged species. The more we push against this ignorance in our midst the sooner it will crack because as we know they have no strength of character or backbone.
Any self-respecting business would have fired this woman for admitting she was too lazy to do basic research. Looking things up is one of the first things you learn to do in grammar school composition. When we wrote papers—little essays or big senior theses—we were expected to be able to back up everything in them with facts, or get marks off. Or at least, that’s how we did it back in the dark ages when I was a kid. I guess now everything is postmodernistic “interpretation.”
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2006 08 17 at 07:55 PM • permalinkPomeranz: No I’m not. I’m a humanist.
No, dear, you’re simply very, very stupid. How many decades has it been since Sergei Eisenstein and Leni Riefenstahl? What possible qualifications can you have for being employed in the position you currently hold?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 17 at 08:20 PM • permalinkHere’s a wacky thought for Ms. Pomeranz: Maybe you “progressives” should learn to think about your screw-ups BEFORE you make them, just because they make you feel good?
I mean, sure, having to eat crow over Michael Moore, funny to watch, especially when you have to fight him for the crow. But the Ayatollah Khomeini? The killing fields of Cambodia? Not so funny.
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2006 08 17 at 08:28 PM • permalink“I was so willing to swallow Moore”- I knew she’s got a gob like a skip, but shit on a stick, that’s blue whale capacity.
When we take over the ABC, ol’ Mag’s got a bright future at a freak show- “The Human Hoover”.
And “Blowing In The Wind” was utter bollocks- I took on the maker of this shoddy, sensationalist shite on SBS after it was broadcast and he folded quicker than a 5 star restaurant napkin. Made the fatal error of talking to the only five hippies in Central Queensland, and wrote off the rest of the population as hopelessly compromised inbred yokels (true, in a lot of cases).
What shat me even more than the poor research and polemic content of this porly slapped together tripe from a Michael Moore wanna-be was that we paid for it- at least fat boy raises his own venture capital, or gets studio backing (hypocritical? Sure. Costs taxpayers? Nup).
The problem for Bradbury and his ilk is that no studio would touch a gobbler like this with a 20 foor cattle prod, but it’s not a problem when some radish from the AFFC will scribble out a cheque immediately for such an item of public concern and national interest, or at least he and his coterie of Oxford St cowboys think it important.
Why do people so lacking in relevance and actual public aknowledgement receive so much oxygen?
# 33 Both sides according to Howard in Parliament yesterday -
And I think the nation collectively, Mr Speaker, whatever our views may be, and I include those who supported the war as well as those who opposed it, we collectively failed those men at the time, and they are owed our apologies and our regrets for that failure, Mr Speaker.Fahrenheit 9/11… basically “it’s badly made but completely true and correct”.
Three strikes, you’re out. It’s not badly made nor is it true, or correct! It’s a slick, entertaining, persuasive pack of lies.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 08 17 at 09:21 PM • permalinkHumanist. Hmmm. In its basic guise, you would think that a “humanist” would care about humans in all of their wonderful variations, more than they would care about Mother Gaia or hating George Bush or whatever else they profess to care about. It seems they would care about humans in absolute numbers if nothing else. Remember during the 12 year “rush” to the Iraq War, we were bombarded almost daily from the “humanist” side about how the
USUN sanctions were killing 5000 Iraqi children a month? So taking the absolute looniest most biased Iraqi War death toll (Lancet study) of 100,000 as rote, and extrapolating the human cost of sanctions (from the same ideological sources) at 5000/month x 12 years, heck we non-humanists are about 600,000 live humans ahead of the humanists. And that doesn’t even begin to account for the several hundred thousand humans that kindly old secular humanist Uncle Saddam offed during his 25 years or so of benign rule.Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 17 at 09:29 PM • permalinkI’m betting she’s a disciple of Raya Dunayevskaya, who started the Marxist-Humanist movement in the ‘50s. I ran into some of them in the late 80s/early 90s. Mostly idle children of upper middle class parents.
Mostly they referred to her as ‘Raya’ (I always assumed it was because so few could pronounce Dunayevskaya.) as if they were referring to Jesus. Her (obscurantist) word was gospel.
The ones I knew were twits, one and all. Poseurs. Fakes. Phonies. Educated past their intelligence in theatre and arts and journalism and literature, etc.
Posted by JorgXMcKie on 2006 08 17 at 09:35 PM • permalink43. Sorry, history major, not math. The non-humanist side only get credit for 3 years of live Iraqi children, not the 12 before the invasion. So non-humanist policies are “only” 80 thousand humans ahead of the humanist policy of keeping “Saddam in a box” as one of my “humanist” friends called it.
Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 17 at 09:45 PM • permalink#44, “Educated past their intelligence”—talk about hitting the nail on the head. Such a succinct way to describe the problem with nine out of ten university graduates these days (not to mention acacademics).
Posted by russell2pi on 2006 08 17 at 09:50 PM • permalinkA pen pal. How quaint. I have an aunt that still has pen pals.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 08 17 at 10:42 PM • permalinkOT, another long-running fraud-umentary that the ABC helped make has had no traction with their fact-checking department.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/articleprint.php?num=201The pity is that she knows Moore’s film is a load of bull, but that hasn’t prompted any kind of reappraisal of her opinions. Being “against the war” is so 2003, and so not relevant to the current situation.
Posted by daddy dave on 2006 08 18 at 12:21 AM • permalinkFer crying out loud. give the woman a break; what do you expect from people whose job is to gush approval over good movies so viewers maybe watch them?
This exposes the lefty reflex in our public broadcasters - its like a g-string panty displayed above low-rider jeans, obvious and trashy. Is it worth getting into bashing the person rather than just letting them know its a mistake?
From the font of all fact-checked knowledge, Wikipedia:
“Humanism is a broad category of active ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationalism.
Humanism entails a commitment to the search for truth and morality through human means in support of human interests. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or divinely revealed texts. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature.
” Atheism, by the way, is not required.#52- B1 and her fellow cadaverous cavendish don’t gush approval over good films, they gush over ones that match their narrow world view and meet the guidlines of luvviedom- mockumentaries that bag conservatives/big business/capitalism/any religion other that enviromentalism or Islam and anything foreign language, especially French. Paedophillia is to be raved over if it meets a marxist/social justice context criteria.
Which is exactly why this daft old bint and her goofy-toothed, supercillious, smug, superior partner in prattdom deserve every bit of ridicule directed towards their facile, self-impotant selves.
That plus the fact that the old trout wears ear-rings like EJ Holden hubcaps.
At least SBS had the eventual good taste to rid the airwaves of the gibbering cretins that replaced this pair of dribbling, predictable pillocks on the original Movie Show.
The really pathetic thing about the whole thing is, just how many actual paying multiplex punters give a prolapsed baboons rectum what any of these original thought free zones think?
Say what you will about Michael Moore, but there is no doubt he really cares about what is most important in his life.
Pomeranz: Documentaries are supposedly being presented with fact.
Which we all did suppose, until _Bowling for Columbine_.
At which point, anyone with intgerity had to admit the existence of “mockumentaries”.
Especially those done by one Michael “Fathead” Moore.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2006 08 18 at 03:22 AM • permalinkMichael Moore is to documentaries as Dan Rather is to documents.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2006 08 18 at 05:27 AM • permalinkSo anything that feeds that anti-war sentiment, yeah, I’m much more likely to believe it because it fits in with my existing political beliefs.
How can she say that and possibly keep her job?
Posted by James Waterton on 2006 08 18 at 05:53 AM • permalinkIsn’t it surprising how Margaret Pomeranz knows nothing about reality and nothing about philosophy.
Beck: But you are a Marxist, aren’t you?
Pomeranz: No I’m not. I’m a humanist.
There are possibly seven types of humanism:
* Evolutionary humanism (Julian Huxley)
* Behavioural humanism (B.F. Skinner)
* Existentialist humanism (Jean Paul Sarte)
* Pragmatic humanism (John Dewey)
*Marxist humanism (Marx)
* Egocentric Humanism (Ayn Rand)
* Cultural Humanism (Corliss Lamont)Marxism is a form of humanism. May not necessarily be the one she adheres to. But quite frankly, I don’t see her being an egocentric humanist a la Rand.
Also, note Corliss Lamont. Yes, he is a relative of Ned Lamont, Freshmaker extraordinare.
Julian Huxley is the brother of literary genius Aldous Huxley.
re: #53
humanism rejects transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on faith, the supernatural, or divinely revealed texts. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of human nature.
“
Atheism, by the way, is not requiredThe last paragraph that you cited explicitly states that humanism denies any possiblity of the Divine, faith or the supernatural.
Question: How can you be a humanist according to this definition, and still believe in a supreme being or deity, which I believe (no pun intended)defines the difference between a believer(religionist, agnostic) and an atheist?
Maybe it’s a matter of definitions. To me, an agnostic is someone who doesn’t believe in gods, while an atheist is someone who believes there are no gods.
“If atheism is a religion, then bald is a hair style.”
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2006 08 18 at 11:11 AM • permalinkShe’s an elderly,bat eared,overbleached,simpering dwarf playing
little woman to his patronising “intellectual” chilliness.
The two of them spend heaps of our money swanning about the world to Cannes and Sundance and crap and for what?
Put them on the same flight as the terrorist from Gitmo and Phat Phil,throw in all the brain dead washed up comedy/panel show hosts,the entire casts and crew of 4 corners,7.30,Australian fairytale and Radio National’s minions.Oh and Ms Mayo for Captain and crew.
You know it makes sense..
You Know It Makes Sense..#69
What about a person who has no beliefs that require either the existence or nonexistence of a god? Is there a word for that?
Posted by Tatterdemalian on 2006 08 18 at 01:11 PM • permalink
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Yeah, a humanist who only cares about people in blocks of a million or more.