Left-leaning columinst Christopher Hitchens comments on Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11:

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of “dissenting” bravery.

Watch out, Hitchens! It looks like Moore can’t handle criticism very well:

“Any attempts to libel me will be met by force,’” Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore told the New York Times on Sunday (June 20, 2004). “The most important thing we have is truth on our side. If they persist in telling lies, knowingly telling a lie with malice, then I’ll take them to court.”

Slate’s Jack Shafer goes on to defang Moore’s empty threats of litigation:

[...] [N]o court would be inclined to find in Moore’s favor if a critic accused him of lying once or twice or 12 times in Fahrenheit 9/11, or accused him of bending facts to his convenience, or damned him for being disingenuous. This sort of subjective expression of opinion is protected under the law, and there’s nothing the blustering Moore can do to stop his critics from making them. Given the thousands of wildly hostile film, book, and restaurant reviews published each year, court dockets would be overflowing with libel suits if bringing one was as easy as Moore pretends to think it is.

(links via James Hudnall)