Is it true that France and Poland are bickering about G W Bush, Michael Moore, and the American way?

I would imagine that it is a given that Poland and France would be at odds about the value of conducting politics in the American Way. That's more or less a certainty.

As to the rest -- the issues of Bush/Kerry and Moore right now loom large in both countires. Consider what the French are saying these days: The IHT reports today (here) that neither the right-of-center (Le Figaro) nor the left-of-center (Liberation and, too, Le Monde) newspapers in France credited Kerry with sufficinetly distancing himself from Bush during the Convention, especially on the question of Iraq (it is ironic that none of the papers have much good at all to say about Bush, mainly due to his recent isolationist foreign policy).

Of course, they should be reminded that Kerry could hardly attack the electability issue if he wore an “I love Fahrenheit 9/11” button instead of an American flag in his lapel from now until the time of the elections. (The French papers, on a continued love fest with Michael Moore, noted that Moore was conspicuously absent from playing a major role in the Convention). The French news media might want to ask the more important question of who, in the next four years, is more likely to pay heed to the European nations who had opposed the military conflict, Bush or Kerry?

In the meantime, Moore's film made its first appearance in Poland last week. Although one major Polish newspaper was reported by the AP and the BBC (read about it here) as positioning itself substantially in opposition to the content of the movie, my reading of the Polish presses reveals a more generous set of responses. One major movie review website gives the film on average of 8 out of 10 stars and other news sources (here, but in Polish) claim that the film begins a new era in the role of cinematography in shaping political discourse.

Interestingly, Moore taped a special opening message to Poles and this is displayed before the showing of the movie. In it he states that “democracy isn’t carried in on the barrel of a gun,” that the “desire for it must be born within a people.” He analogizes here to the historic transformations occurring in Poland in recent decades.

What reaction on the part of the Poles? One of my favorite of the weeklies, „Polityka,” (here, though it is in Polish) is adamant in its belief that Moore’s film is not a simple piece of propaganda. The news weekly applauds Moore’s effort to piece together disparate events and speaks admirably of Moore’s gift of building a brilliant cinematographic argument. I would guess many movie-goers in Poland would agree with this statement. I should note that „Polityka" continues to be one of the more popular news weeklies in the country. Does it represent the voice of the majority? Perhaps it does -- at least of the "Fahrenheit 9/11" movie going majority.