dubya's longest seven minutes

Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 opened today. "Philip Shenon, who covered the hearings of the 9/11 commission, described [a] scene [in Fahrenheit 9/11] in an article on the film in Sunday's Times.

'For the White House, the most devastating segment of Farenheit 9/11 may be the video of a befuddled-looking President Bush staying put for nearly seven minutes at a Florida elementary school on the morning of September 11, continuing to read a copy of My Pet Goat to schoolchildren even after an aide has told him that a second plane has struck the twin towers.'

Moore stipples his film with damning (and in some cases doubtful) statistics—for example, that Mr. Bush spent 42 percent of the first eight months of his presidency on vacation—and vituperation. But, Shenon concludes, while "Mr. Bush's slow, hesitant reaction to the disastrous news has never been a secret,…seeing the actual footage, with the minutes ticking by, may prove more damaging to the White House than all the statistics in the world."

Excerpt from
Bush's Monica Moment | by Jack Beatty
The Atlantic Unbound | June 23, 2004
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