Via Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore has brewed up such a tempest that not even all anti-war liberals are defending what they see as a dishonest film and the "film-maker" behind it.

The latest slam against Fahrenheit 9/11 comes courtesy of Will Self. Writing in the July 8 edition of The Evening Standard newspaper, Self writes that although his opposition to the War in Iraq was profound, he is equally disgusted by the one-sidedness and propagandistic nature of Moore's latest movie.

The review, entitled "Not clever, not funny, not nice," Self begins:

That this tendentious compilation of TV clips and manipulative japes should have won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes festival is a sorry comment on the film industry, and European film-makers in particular.

We live in interesting and momentous times, of that there can be no doubt; but that this film should be judged the response to them most worthy of accolade says more about sentimentality and knee-jerk anti-Americanism on the liberal Left than it does about either the quality of Michael Moore's work or the regime it attacks.

Self proceeds to point out his opposition to the war but that Moore does nothing but a disservice to any honest attempt to oust Bush from office:

Don't get me wrong, until it was absolutely unstoppable, I was a vocal opponent of the invasion of Iraq; and until Stop the War [prominent anti-war group] was revealed as a tool of opportunistic Trotskyites and Saddam apologists ... I was an active supporter. But none of this inclines me to unthinkingly endorse Fahrenheit 9/11.

It isn't clever, it isn't funny, and, far from representing a vital rallying point for the Democrats' campaign to oust Dubya from the White House, it is a simplistic rant that highlights - albeit from an opposite polarity - the isolationism and Manichaeism which runs throught he American political world view.

Self is infuriated by what he sees as the twisting of the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which he decries, by Moore, and though Self makes no secret of the fact that he believes Bush covered up his relationship between himself and bin Laden's family, he sees Moore tweaking this event into a full-blown conspiracy theory:

However, instead of analyzing the complexities of Saudi politics which led Osama to become an implacable opponent of the house of Fahd and its U.S. allies, while many of his relations remain in cahoots, Moore, carried away by his conspiratorial view of a grand cock-up, covertly advances the preposterous thesis that the Bush regime may have actively colluded in the attacks of 9/11.

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