Michael Moore: to young people, the 'fat man in the cap' is an unfunny joke

Telegraph Blogs (U.K.) ^ | September 9, 2009 | Will Heaven

[Schnucki]

“Who’s the fat man in the cap?” - this delightful question was put to me this afternoon by a younger cousin looking over my shoulder, who is just about to start at university. The fat man in the cap, as it happens, is Michael Moore. And how wonderfully satisfying it is to hear that the liberal film-maker is not as well-known as once he was. It’s telling, too, that I found myself explaining him using Al Gore as a comparison - the green crusader has utterly eclipsed Moore with An Inconvenient Truth.

Interested to see if my cousin represented a wider consensus, I phoned a graduate friend who I suspected was a Moore sympathiser: “Nope. He’s just a fat guy with a loudspeaker,” she replied. “Like the teacher at school who thinks he’s down with the kids, and reckons they’re laughing with him when they haven’t been for years.” I check with a few others - some feel the same, and the rest need reminding who on earth Michael Moore is.

I wonder, is there a more serious reason than his weight behind Michael Moore’s demise? Seven or eight years ago, his films - such as Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine - were incredibly fashionable, and he was one of the most talked about directors around. But although his new film - Capitalism: a love story - has received an eight-minute standing ovation from the luvvies in Venice (”the longest in memory”, according to Moore’s twitter account) for most people, his hypocrisy is too much to bear.

Don’t be fooled by the scruffy cap and trampish demeanour. Moore is as well-to-do as the “stupid white men” which he has made millions of dollars from criticising. The Guardian interviewed him shortly after he became a best-selling author

[skully]

He’s not a fat man with a cap, so much as he’s a fat man full of crap.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Fat f*** says what ?