No fewer than three people have urged me this month to go see the propaganda film Fahrenheit 9/11, hoping (I assume) that the movie will convince me to HATE BUSH.

I've read quite a few dissections of the film, positive and negative, and feel no particular need to break my nearly 10-year hiatus from movie-going. As a student of leftist thought, I do want to know what people really mean when they recommend the film. So I ask.

"I won't see the movie. But tell me: what does it say? Does it bring out any specific charges that haven't been discussed publicly?"

Of course, when I say "discussed publicly" what I really mean is "refuted," but what I'm trying to do is draw out a thought pattern. The response I get is interesting.

"You just have to see it," has consistently been the gist of their reply. So I try to take it further.

"Well, what facts presented in the movie did you find particularly convincing?"

"I can't describe it. You have to see it."

My first instinct is to lament the triumph of style over substance. But then I remind myself that the people pushing the movie are the same people who HATED BUSH all along. The movie is just new ammunition -- and for that purpose, innuendo works just as well as fact. It's hard to know whether the film is actually convincing anyone of anything. Certainly, if an undecided voter uses the film's rhetoric to conclude that Bush somehow conspired with the Saudis to perpetrate the attacks of September 11, then that would indeed be a shame -- but not unique in the annals of a country full of UFO-spotters, horoscope-readers, and Oprah-watchers.

Right now, the dominant media is in a full-court press to prop up Kerry, and even that is not without precedent. I remember listening to the news in the 1980s, wondering how Reagan could ever have won an election with all that theY were saying about him. I have to remind myself of the love-fests the media held for Dukakis and later for Gore -- not enough to turn those elections and I hope not enough to turn this one.

The media bias is no secret, and should be an occasion to give Bush some credit: the networks and the powedered noses never gave him a fair shake in 2000 and he still won the election -- then survived an unprecedented attempt to steal the race through creative rule-changing. All in all, an awesome uphill climb. Time to do it again.