Liberal movie propagandist Michael Moore’s films have been reaping dwindling returns for years now, and his latest offering, despite a wide opening release, is no different. Fahrenheit 11/9 opened in 1,719 theaters and took in a paltry $3.1 million on its opening weekend, signaling another flop for the fact-distorting blowhard who fashions himself a “documentary” filmmaker.
The awful showing even has Moore’s fans conceding that his shtick is played out and wondering where it all went wrong.
Owen Gleiberman, writing at Variety, is a Moore admirer who was forced to admit that the Fahrenheit 11/9 numbers are “more than just a staggering comedown” from Moore’s salad days, which are now approaching 15 years in the rearview mirror.
Fractured Fairy Tales
Fahrenheit 9/11, Moore’s 2004 film that focused on the presidency of George W. Bush, earned $119 million. His 2016 film, Where to Invade Next, grossed a mere $3.8 million. Gleiberman asserts a key reason Moore is flagging is that “The Internet has fractured how we get our information.”
Well, yes, that is certainly true, but Gleiberman doesn’t fully describe the consequences of the rise of the Internet Era.
Above all for liberals, it means they don’t get to control the narrative anymore. Not only is there a plethora of alternative ways for Americans to entertain or inform themselves, there is also a much easier mechanism for people to do their due diligence on a book, movie, or television show before giving their patronage.
When Moore’s first film, Roger & Me, came out in 1989, a handful of big city newspaper movie reviewers – the hugely influential “Siskel & Ebert” even crossed over to TV with immense success – held enormous sway in helping new movies attract an audience. These big-time reviewers were almost universally left-leaning, politically.
Yet even the liberal Roger Ebert, who faithfully cheered on Moore’s movies for years until his death in 2013, acknowledged the flaws in Moore’s routine that were evident from the very beginning. In a 1990 column, Ebert acknowledged Moore’s “manipulation of reality” and his “twisting of the facts” in Roger & Me. He airily dismissed, however, the “obvious cheap shots” Moore took throughout the film as a liberty accorded to “satirists and ironists.”
Siskel & Ebert
Never mind that Moore never claimed to be a satirist or ironist while presenting his lies as truth.
“I would no more go to ‘Roger & Me’ for a factual analysis of GM and Flint than I would turn to the pages of Spy magazine for a dispassionate study of the world of Donald Trump,” Ebert wrote.
One would think manipulation, twisting of facts, and the presentation of inaccurate information would be career-ending sins for a “documentary” maker, yet Ebert and his ilk never stopped praising Moore’s shabby work.
We can see it all too clearly today with the ludicrous accusations of sexual wrongdoing backed by no evidence at all against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Somewhere along the way, leftists went from shrugging off pleasing lies to accepting them as outright truths.
At the same time, Americans began to harness the vast troves of information to be found on the Internet, which help them see through such manipulations, driving them to a path diametrical to that which progressive fanatics have taken. Moore’s distortion of the truth won’t work anymore. Americans are not just calling him out on it; they are tuning him out. The numbers do not lie.
Television Twit
Speaking of dwindling returns, is there anything more pathetic than late-night television? The days of Johnny Carson are long gone, of course, but a gaggle of talentless hack imposters pathetically cling to the idea that they too can influence the country as Carson did in his heyday.
It’s amazing that anyone can even contemplate for a second putting a Jimmy Fallon or a Seth Meyers in the same galaxy as the stars of the Golden Age of television, yet we are supposed to believe that late-night “comedians” still have the nation’s pulse.
Jimmy Kimmel
Jimmy Kimmel is one of these faceless ninnies, and he liberally sprinkles shock into his routine to make up for his notable inability to be funny. Kimmel took his garbage act to a new low on Sept. 24 by bizarrely calling for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s penis to be cut off.
Isn’t that hilarious? This is what passes for entertainment on network television these days. This is what passes for talent on the celebrity left. But while leftist television executives fantasize that their “stable of talent” still pushes the needle at water coolers all around America, regular people are simply clicking off the TV.
Faced with documentary filmmakers who refuse to document fact and television entertainers completely unable to be entertaining, can you really blame them?
From Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan to Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi from Michael Moore to the late-night midgets, President Trump must be thankful every day for the sheer mediocrity of his enemies.
