MR. CRANKY HATES GUNS AND THE NRA: But he doesn’t like Michael Moore or Bowling for Columbine either:

So, given my modest leanings, you’d think I’d enjoy Michael Moore’s politically correct take on the issue. Alas, no. In fact, the issue is part of the problem, as Moore seems to delight in finding a moral point of view he can pound into his audience over and over again with an increasingly heavy hand. It’s all spelled out as he tells you what he’s going to tell you (guns are bad), tells it to you (guns are bad — watch these people get shot), then tells you what he just told you (guns are bad). Letting the audience draw its own conclusions is apparently far too dangerous.

Additionally, Moore seems to have caught some sort of left-wing attention deficit disorder as the topic runs from guns to racism to American foreign policy to media bias to class division to nationalized health care to killer bees. He also seems to be losing his timing for when to be funny and when to be sober.

Phil Donahue likes the movie, though.

UPDATE: A Canadian reader emails:

I just wanted to mention one of the reactions I’ve heard in Canada to “Bowling for Columbine.” A Montreal journalist friend of mine, who otherwise loves the film and generally agrees with Moore’s ideas on gun control, nonetheless found the Canadian segment of the film to be inexcusably dishonest. The reason: Moore fails to make any mention of our own homegrown Columbine, the Dec 6, 1989 massacre of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique by a deranged gunman named Marc Lepine.

But that might have undermined his thesis about us peace-loving, gun-controlling Canadians.

Regards,

Gregory Gransden

Montreal, Canada

Well, there’s no place for inconvenient facts in this film, that’s for sure.