And Moore no doubt encouraged the pitifully patriotic, Army-loving, Jesus-trusting mother to make her distraught pilgrimage from Flint, Mich., to the White House after her son is killed in Iraq. Hailed by some as the emotional climax of the film, the battle-hardened Hitchens more accurately described it as “nauseating.”

But slam Moore all you want for his political motives and manipulative methods. He didn’t make President Bush rush us off to an ill-advised war, act goofy in public or say so many embarrassingly dumb things on camera.