Random Michael Moore Deceits [#20]

"now watch this drive" [from Fahrenheit 9/11]

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that’s what you get if you catch the president on a golf course.
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By the way, the clip of Bush making a comment about terrorism, and then hitting a golf ball, is also taken out of context, at least partially:

Tuesday night on FNC’s Special Report with Brit Hume, Brian Wilson noted how "the viewer is left with the misleading impression Mr. Bush is talking about al-Qaeda terrorists." But Wilson disclosed that "a check of the raw tape reveals the President is talking about an attack against Israel, carried out by a Palestinian suicide bomber."

"Cyberalert," Media Research Center, July 1, 2004, item. 3.

Interestingly, as detailed in Bill Clinton's autobiography My Life, in November 1995. when President Clinton learned that Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had been shot, Clinton went out to the White House lawn and hit golf balls while he waited to learn if Rabin would live. That Clinton played golf after learning of a terrible crime in Israel obviously does not mean that he did not care about the crime. If a television station had recorded some footage of Clinton hitting golf balls that awful night, it would have easy for a hyper-partisan film-maker to use the footage against Clinton unfairly.

Moore wraps up the vacation segment: "It was a summer to remember. And when it was over, he left Texas for his second favorite place." The movie then shows Bush in Florida. Actually, he went back to Washington, where he gave a speech on August 31.

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Moore then shows a clip of Bush on a golf course, taking a break to answer reporters’ questions. Bush says, “We must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive.” And then he swings the golf club. Moore wants to leave us with the impression that Bush is talking about terrorist threats to the United States, and that making such a statement and following it with a golf swing is a profound show of unseriousness. Actually, Bush’s statement, made on August 5, 2002, was about a suicide bombing in Israel (http://usembassy-australia.state.gov/hyper/2002/0805/epf102.htm), and he made the statement between golf swings because he was asked about it on the golf course. (Indeed, when President Clinton learned of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, he played some golf as well, http://www.jewishsiliconvalley.org/clinton.html.) Why this should mean that Bush was not serious is not apparent.

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