Random Michael Moore Deceits [#10]

Willie Horton ad [from Bowling for Columbine]

Moore's clever techniques of inversion reach an apogee with the Willie Horton ad. Political historians will remember that in the 1988 Democratic primaries, candidate Al Gore criticized Gov. Michael Dukakis for a Massachusetts furlough program under which Willie Horton — who was serving a murder sentence of life without parole — was given a weekend furlough, and raped a woman. During the fall campaign, the pro-Bush National Security Political Action Committee ran a Willie Horton commercial.

The official Bush campaign ran its own advertisement, "Revolving Doors," which attacked the furlough program but did not mention Willie Horton.

But Moore pastes text from the National Security PAC ad over film from the Bush commercial, thus creating the impression that Bush invoked Willie Horton. Moore falsifies the advertisement by pasting onscreen the text: "Willie Horton released. Then kills again." This libels Willie Horton, who perpetrated a rape but not a murder during his furlough. The audience already knows that it is supposed to be angry about the Willie Horton ad, because it was unfair and because it politically seduced gullible Americans. So Bowling does a "Willie Horton" of its own on the audience, making the film's version of the ad into a falsehood and so turning the audience into dupes of a Willie Horton ad — just like the 1988 dupes of the original ad. For good measure, the ad makes the audience believe that a black man is guilty of a crime he never committed; Bowling thereby perpetrates the same manipulation of racial fears which it accuses the media of perpetrating."

source