Random Michael Moore Deceits [#55]

Those Poor Stupid Recruits

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For those of us who were unfotrunate enough to sit through Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11, one scene that I'm sure will be remembered is the scene with "the recruiters". Moore painted a pitcure ( without actually saying it) that our Military recruiters actually seek out minority and poor Americans for recruitment for service in the armed forces. He showed edited scenes of two Marine Corps recruiters leaving one shopping mall where they were recruiting in favor of another mall which Moore explained was the "poorer" mall (implying that the recruiters would find easy prey there). I thoroughly explored this scene in my post last year on the subject. READ IT HERE.

My research for the article revealed two things;

1) Moore's contention that poor minorites are over-targeted for recruitment and over-represented in the Military is patently false.

2) Michael Moore is either stupid, or a liar, since an easy check of the demographics of those two malls shows the recruiters decided to work at the more affluent area, which is the opposite of what Moore claimed. ( my previous article spells this out pretty well, and the reader's comments expand on the research even more) I guess he never figured any one would ever check his story so closely.

Interestingly enough, since my article, another study has been done which shows Moore is more off-base than even I previously thought. After watching Moore's movie, one would certainly get the impression that people in the lower 40% of the economic scale were basically carrying the lion's share of the "burden" of our country's military service, while those who were in the top 40% were grossly under-represented. Shocker, Moore is completely wrong.

Mark Tapscott has the rest of the story.

"In fact, the percentage difference between the richest and poorest quintiles increases between 1999 and 2003! And the highest percentage is actually in the second richest quintile of recruits, followed by the richest quintile. It is no exaggeration to say America's most prosperous families bear the greatest share of the burden of fighting in America's defense."

By now, I don't think there is a person alive who believes Moore's movie if full of facts, in fact, proving him wrong is so easy, the sport of it is almost non existent anymore.

HOWEVER,

The fun of proving him wrong will probably never wear off, so surf on over to the Tapscott Copy Desk and check out the research. [http://tapscottscopydesk.blogspot.com/2005/10/data-shows-military-recruits-highly.html]"

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