This footage is as essential as the Naudets’ footage of the end of the World Trade Center. It too deserves to be seen in its entirety. Instead, it was taken over by Michael Moore, who was afraid we would be bored by it. So instead of letting us see this thick chunk of dead time in which the President of the United States squirmed, he spoiled it in Fahrenheit 9/11 by showing only sections of it, adding an on-screen countdown clock to time the President’s inaction, and talking over it, telling us what we were already seeing: “Mr. Bush just sat there.”

Whatever we would have thought about this footage on our own was not good enough for Michael Moore. He ruined it in the name of entertainment, encouraging us not to think while he showed pictures of a man he claimed wasn’t thinking.