Michael Moore has written an open letter responding to many of the criticisms that have come out against him, as well as Disney’s excuses for why they are doing this:

Disney told him a year ago they would never distribute the film. Moore points out that Eisner did not stop the film a year ago, as he could have, that Miramax promised it would be distributed by them, and that Disney itself spent $6 million on the film in that past year–hardly the actions a company would take if they had always planned on not distributing the film.

Disney stopped distribution because the film is political, and Disney is not. Moore points out that they distribute Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh regularly, and that they even distributed one of Moore’s films, one with a political edge, in 1998, and election year.

Disney only distributes family fare. True, Moore concedes–but only under the Disney label; one of the reasons they have Miramax is to distribute more adult films, like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, two films that are most decidedly not “family fare.”

Moore is really behind all this as a publicity stunt. Moore points out that films which switch distributors at the last minute have often failed. And let’s not forget that this film hardly needed something new to be controversial; this film is a giant controversy all in itself, and needs no help from something like this. Moore does not touch on a more blatant fault in accusations I have seen–that Disney is as often being targeted as complicit in this, that it is all a publicity scheme plotted by Disney and Moore. Which, of course, is absolute BS, as Disney is getting a huge black eye from this, not to mention the fact that the film will almost certainly be distributed by someone else; how will Disney profit from that?

As usual, Moore’s critics have tried to smear, ridicule and marginalize the filmmaker, and as usual, they do it by making extremely limited claims, making them sound bad while they are actually full of holes, and then pretend they are iron-clad and somehow represent the entirety of Moore’s work. The most common example is the job his critics did on “Bowling for Columbine.” Critics claimed that Moore was lying when he claimed that the Lockheed-Martin plant in Littleton, near Columbine, did not manufacture arms (they did), or that Moore portrayed Charlton Heston as speaking in Colorado 10 days after the Columbine shootings when he “actually” gave the speech 900 miles away and a year later (which is false–Moore’s account was accurate). Moore refutes these false claims on his site, but when you find yourself speaking to conservatives, they always proclaim that Moore’s films are “full of lies” and point to the fake attacks.

So these new claims are not really all that new, but unfortunately, they have possibly helped convince a lot of people that Moore is less than reputable. He’s not slick, like his critics are, I’ll give you that, but he is honest, and is far, far more accurate than the right-wingers. It is sad that a few people at the Academy Awards in 2003 (not the whole audience, not even a sizable part, but a few people up in the upper tiers) booing Moore when he gave his speech have somehow given conservatives a form of traction to discount him in the eyes of many people. The truth is, Moore is like a film version of 60 Minutes, but with wit, passion, and humanity. I may not always agree with him on everything, but I do respect him.