What is your opinion of MICHAEL MOORE?

Thing of it is, if you look into things yourself once in a while, you'll get a better idea than just asking others to do it for you. Okay, here's one claim (it's long):
"Michael Moore’s deep seated personal hatred for Charlton Heston drove Moore to fabricate numerous utterly false film montages slandering Mr. Heston. A central theme of Bowling for Columbine is Moore’s assertion that the National Rifle Association and its then-president Charlton Heston are indifferent to the victims of firearm injury. From the very beginning Moore misleads his audience by using misleading film montages to suggest that the NRA held a boisterous “large pro-gun rally” in Denver soon after the Columbine High School shootings in nearby Littleton. In one of these Moore montages a clip of weeping high schoolers is immediately followed by a snippet showing Charlton Heston holding aloft a muzzle-loading musket and proclaiming with a smile, “I have only five words for you: ‘from my cold, dead, hands.’”

Stitched onto this is a clip showing a billboard advertising the NRA gathering which is enhanced by an overdub of Moore’s voice darkly intoning that “Just ten days after the Columbine killings, despite the pleas of a community in mourning, Charlton Heston came to Denver and held a large pro-gun rally for the National Rifle Association.” Then the film snaps back to Charlton Heston who is just then saying “I have a message from the mayor, Mr. Wellington Web, the mayor of Denver. He sent me this: It says ‘don’t come here. We don’t want you here.’ I say to the mayor, this is our country, as Americans we’re free to travel wherever we want in our broad land. Don’t come here? We’re already here!”

This carefully crafted film montage is calculated to plant in the mind of every unsuspecting viewer the idea that Charlton Heston and the NRA callously blundered into Denver soon after a local tragedy and began thumbing their noses at tearful mourners. Here are the facts that Michael Moore concealed form his ticket buyers in order to distort their perceptions and fatten his bank account:

One: There was no “large pro-gun rally.” The gathering was an annual NRA meeting, the time and place of which were set years before the event.

Two: The NRA is a New York non-profit corporation which is bound by New York law to hold annual member meetings.

Three: New York law requires a minimum ten-day notice to all voting members of any change in the time or place of an annual meeting. The Columbine shooting happened a scant eleven days before the long-planned NRA annual meeting, so there was no time to notify the NRA’s four million members of a last minute change of venue.

Four: The Denver meeting was a dour bare-bones affair. Out of consideration for the folks in Littleton the NRA cancelled all of its usual sporting events, dinners and rallies. The only event was the annual members’ vote. The Rocky Mountain News announced: “President Charlton Heston and the group’s executive vice president Wayne La Pierre, said all seminars, workshops, luncheons, exhibits by gun makers and other vendors, and festivities are cancelled.”

Michael Moore knew all of this before he entered his editing room; he knew the NRA was bound by law to hold a meeting; he knew it was impossible for them to change the location of their annual meeting; he knew the NRA had done everything humanly possible to be subdued and respectful. Furthermore, the film clip of Charlton Heston holding a musket was shot a year after the Denver meeting at a venue in Charlotte, North Carolina. Mr. Heston had just received the musket as a gift; his words “from by cold, dead, hands” was meant as a gesture of gratitude to those who had given him an exquisitely crafted keepsake. He was saying “I will cherish it always.” Michael Moore knew all this; he chose to carefully stitch together the clip of Heston holding the musket and the clip of weeping students because Moore chose to slander Charlton Heston. Moore’s slanders are never inadvertent slips of the tongue; they are carefully premeditated pieces of cinematic craftsmanship. Moore’s deceptions are the result of great effort.

Michael Moore expresses his hatred of Charlton Heston once again in the video-clip collection wherein Heston seems to be defiantly challenging the mayor of Denver. This sequence is a master work of uber editing heavily peppered with Frankenbites. What seems to be coming from Heston’s mouth is actually audio lifted from seven sentences which were plucked from five separate parts of a speech, together with part of an entirely different speech.

Let’s deconstruct this classic bit of Michael Moore mummery: Associating the scene of the weeping students with the clip of Heston holding the musket is meant to mislead you into believing that Heston was heedless to their grief. Moore wants you to hate Heston. Next comes the breakaway shot of the billboard announcing the NRA meeting. This breakaway is necessary because the viewer must be distracted long enough to forget that Charlton Heston, who was wearing a purple tie and a lavender shirt before the breakaway shot, is suddenly wearing a red tie and a white shirt after the breakaway shot. As if by magic the draperies behind Mr. Heston have changed from maroon to blue. Clearly, this whole segment is false history that Moore invented in his editing room. Moore’s bedazzled fans are so uncritically attached to him that they would never think to examine his films closely, but this is the Age of Tivo when anyone, including you, can sit at home and examine any Michael Moore movie frame by frame. Used copies of Michael Moore movies are available on Amazon.com for less than three dollars each; you can confirm the truth for yourself and not a nickel your purchase price will go to Michael Moore.

Moore carefully edited out the part of the speech where Charlton Heston says “As you know, we’ve cancelled the festivities, the fellowship we normally enjoy at our annual gatherings. This decision has perplexed a few and inconvenienced thousands.” It’s hard to demonize a man who is showing compassion, so Moore edited out all signs of Heston’s compassion.