Posted by: Kale_Ko_Chartikala July 8, 2004
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spotted this on the Guardian Unlimited site and thought you should see it.
To see this story with its related links on the Guardian Unlimited site, go to
http://www.guardian.co.uk
The lie that killed my son
Lila Lipscomb believed in Bush's case for war in Iraq. But when her son died in
action, her faith in the American way was shattered. Emma Brockes meets the
Michigan mother at the heart of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11
Emma Brockes
Thursday July 08 2004
The Guardian
Two years ago, if you had asked Lila Lipscomb what she stood for, she would have
referred you to the flag in her garden and her four grown-up children. Her
priorities were, in descending order of importance, family, faith, country and a
place where all three met, what she might have called "service": two of her
children were in the military and she worked in the public sector, at an
employment agency designed to get people off welfare. She is, as she puts it,
"an extremely strong woman. And I've raised my daughters to understand that they
come from a long line of strong, independent women. So the men in our lives have
to be very unique. Hence Pops."
Pops is her husband, Howard, a car-factory worker. He has accompanied Lipscomb
to London today by way of moral support and sits across from her in the hotel
suite, eyes brimming. What she is saying is not easy for either of them.
Lipscomb describes an event that changed their lives and forced a seismic shift
in their political perceptions; a shift that she hopes millions of her fellow
Americans will be making between now and election time in November. To her
surprise, and the surprise of all who know her, Lipscomb is becoming a
figurehead in the fight to oust George Bush.
It is two weeks since Fahrenheit 9/11, Michael Moore's polemic on the war in
Iraq, was released in America, and in that time Lipscomb's voice has emerged as
the film's most powerful. As with any project generated by Moore, the film will
be loved and loathed in equal measure, but whatever one thinks of him, it is
hard to resist the testimony of 50-year-old Lipscomb, a mother from Flint,
Michigan, who still flies a flag in her garden, but is down to three children
and a handful of ruptured assumptions where other certainties used to be.