In The International Herald Tribune Frank Rich writes about Michael Moore's movie
Fahrenheit 911 and the first paragraphs caught my eye, because I saw the footage he describes last year on German TV:
"But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that? And watch him suffer." - Barbara Bush on "Good Morning America," March 18, 2003.
She needn't have worried. Her son wasn't suffering. In one of the several pieces of startling video exhibited for the first time in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we catch a candid glimpse of President George Bush about 36 hours after his mother's breakfast TV interview - minutes before he makes his own prime-time TV address to take the nation to war in Iraq. He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut.
"In your wildest dreams you couldn't imagine Franklin Roosevelt behaving this way 30 seconds before declaring war, with grave decisions and their consequences at stake," said Moore in an interview before his new documentary's premiere at Cannes last Monday. "But that may be giving him credit for thinking that the decisions were grave."
The German news magazine Frontal21 aired the footage (made into a "silent movie" for the satiric clip of the show) in April 2003 and I've been sending the link to it to friends and family. It shows once more the compassionate president in action.
I don't know if people here saw the footage before, in its raw or satirized state, but here is the link to George W. Bush bereitet sich auf eine Rede vor (George W. Bush prepares for a speech)(Windows media)
Here it is for Real player
If you'd like me to translate the "silent movie" captions please let me know, but it is not really necessary to enjoy the clip.