Only Stupid White Men Would Believe Michael Moore

If the title Stupid White Men doesn't mean anything to you, then you can't have been anywhere near a bookshop in 2003. Either that, or you are so used to picking your way through the piles of Michael Moore books that you no longer notice them, or the accompanying recommendation: "Staff pick! Really cool — the book that exposes Dubya as a fascist."

Moore is the American slob in a baseball cap who likes to hint — only hint, mind — that President Bush had a hand in September 11. He has a huge following on campuses on both sides of the Atlantic: he, more than anyone else, has persuaded British students that the current occupant of the White House is, like, just such a moron.

Stupid White Men was the bestselling non-fiction hardback in Britain last year, after the Atkins New Diet Revolution; it's now top of the paperback list. Bowling for Columbine, the feature-length documentary in which Moore blames a high school massacre on the Republicans, won an Oscar.

Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, offers his most sophisticated critique to date of American foreign policy: "We like dictators! They help us get what we want and they do a great job of keeping their nations subservient to our galloping global corporate interests."

It takes Moore just a couple of paragraphs to absolve Osama bin Laden of the destruction of the World Trade Centre. "How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have … plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?" he asks.

Viewers of Bowling for Columbine may find this puzzling, remembering the film's insistence that "Osama bin Laden used his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people"; but Moore regards consistency as the hobgoblin of little minds. And, besides, his fast-morphing conspiracy theories are all built on the same, unshakeable foundation. Everything in the world is the fault of stupid white Americans — in which category he apparently includes the September 11 plane passengers: he has a stand-up routine in which he suggests that if the victims had been black, rather than white "scaredy-cats", they would have had no trouble overpowering the hijackers.

Only stupid white men would believe Michael Moore
By Damian Thompson
(Filed: 01/01/2004)

Moore is the American slob in a baseball cap who likes to hint - only hint, mind - that President Bush had a hand in September 11. He has a huge following on campuses on both sides of the Atlantic: he, more than anyone else, has persuaded British students that the current occupant of the White House is, like, just such a moron.

Viewers of Bowling for Columbine may find this puzzling, remembering the film's insistence that "Osama bin Laden used his expert CIA training to murder 3,000 people"; but Moore regards consistency as the hobgoblin of little minds. And, besides, his fast-morphing conspiracy theories are all built on the same, unshakeable foundation. Everything in the world is the fault of stupid white Americans - in which category he apparently includes the September 11 plane passengers: he has a stand-up routine in which he suggests that if the victims had been black, rather than white "scaredy-cats", they would have had no trouble overpowering the hijackers.

The American Right used to dismiss Moore's material as unfunny agitprop, unworthy of attention. That is not quite fair. Bowling for Columbine is a brilliantly constructed documentary; it's hard not to cheer when Moore embarrasses the K-Mart chain into banning the sale of live ammunition to teenagers. The books are dismal by comparison, but even they evince the odd chuckle.

With sales of Stupid White Men creeping up towards four million, the Right has changed tactics. Its new approach is to denounce Moore as a liar - a more promising line of attack. And it is certainly true that Bowling for Columbine turns out to contain more half-truths than an Enron corporate video.

For example, Moore says that Lockheed Martin manufactures "weapons of mass destruction" in Littleton, Colorado, the town where the Columbine killings occurred; he even grills a company executive in front of a scary-looking rocket in the local factory. In fact, Lockheed Martin doesn't make weapons in Littleton; it makes weather and communications satellites that are launched by rocket.

Then there's the scene in which Moore opens an account in a rural bank and is given the free shotgun offered to new customers. "Don't you think it's a little dangerous handing out guns in a bank?" he asks. It's a good question. And the answer is: the bank doesn't normally do anything of the sort. Customers have to wait six weeks for background checks. According to the bank, the scene was staged at Moore's request.

Even the documentary's title is dodgy. It's based on reports that the Columbine killers went bowling on the morning of the massacre. Police investigators later concluded that the reports were untrue. The film makes no mention of this.

So generous is Moore's notion of artistic licence that the internet is now crawling with websites exposing his "lies". Some of his critics have gone further, and attempted to turn his own methods on himself. A documentary-maker called Michael Wilson has been following him around, badgering him for an interview - just as Moore used to do to bloated chief executives. But Moore isn't talking. (Here's a tip for Wilson: if you want to catch up with Moore's entourage on one of his British visits, check out the Ritz.)

Meanwhile, Dude, Where's My Country? is sitting happily in the bestseller lists. Moore's fans don't care how many fast ones he pulls because, hey, he's a funny guy. There is nothing the Right can do to dent his popularity. And perhaps it shouldn't even try.

The truth is that George W Bush owes Moore a debt of gratitude. He wouldn't be president today if it weren't for the Green candidate, Ralph Nader, who vacuumed up votes that would otherwise have gone to Al Gore. Moore was Nader's biggest celebrity backer. So we can be reasonably sure that at least 538 Florida students voted Green because Mike told them to, thereby handing Dubya his winning margin.

And next time? Strange though it might seem, Moore could help the President achieve a second term. There he stands, inciting his audience to ever greater heights of Bush-hatred. The snag is that, although this goes down a treat in cappuccino-sipping Berkeley, it doesn't play so well among blue-collar voters who think Saddam deserved to get his ass kicked.

Histrionic invective directed against relatively popular sitting presidents rarely pays off, as the McGovernites discovered in 1972 and the Clinton-haters did in 1996. The sheer incontinence of the attacks on Bush by Moore and his Hollywood friends could help deliver the Midwest to Bush.

And Bush knows it, too. There's a curious passage in Stupid White Men in which Moore confesses that, on the rare occasions he has met George W or Jeb Bush, they have teased him in an almost affectionate fashion.

Indeed, the more vigorously Moore attacks the President, the better Bush's approval ratings. Funny, that. And Moore's lifestyle has been awfully lavish of late. One doesn't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it makes you think, doesn't it?

OKAY....here's what I found....read some of the reviews...LOL.

Top Book Sale: Dude, Where's My Country? Reviews Dude, Where's My Country?

by Warner Books
Amazon Sales Rank: 7
Author: Michael Moore
List Price: $24.95
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Release Date: December 31, 2003
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Review: The fools who haven't bothered.....

Michael Moore has again written a book that gives voice to the frustrations and irritations that enlightened, intellectual Americans are feeling about the deceitful government and its irresponsibility. I loved this book, and it gets 4 out of 5 stars only because I wish it was as long as his previous efforts. The "critics" below me, who have nothing more to offer than Moore is "fat" and that he ought to leave the country, are quite typical of the fools who swallow everything fed to them without actually bothering to educate themselves. By the way, here's a little advice to the idiotic reviewers beneath me who decided to bash Moore's work without understanding it, or bothering to give it a genuine read: Please learn to spell correctly. If you want to appear like you know what you're talking about, even a little bit, learn to spell and speak correctly so that people like me don't keep laughing at jack-asses like you.

Review: It's all becoming so clear...

I'm not much of a reader, but I am a total cable news and political junkie. I've been extremely uncomfortable with the path our country has been on for the past 3 years. This book helps me understand and articulate why. It's very well organized, easy to read with some humor, bold statements are backed up with facts, booknotes and references; and finally, I realize I'm not in the minority of this country.

I read 70% within about 3-4 hours. I took a lot of notes and underlined many sections. Ironically, it has a chapter that's geared to helping you talk to your conservative brother in-law, which is funny because my new brother in-law and I got in a major argument over dinner 2 weeks ago. Now I'm ready for a rematch.

Please read!!!!!!!

Review: Excellent Research - Brilliant Writing

Michael Moore is back fighting the good fight. His indictments of the Bush Administration are harsh, but they represent many of the feelings and questions many people have of our current President. This book is entertaining, difficult, funny, and alarming. If even half of it is true, and I'm betting much more than half of it is, we're in big trouble in the US. Regardless, this book will make you think, and it will make you question. It's part of the ongoing battle between progressive writers and conservative writers fighting to tell the history of the past 3 years. With writing like this, the progressives are winning, and winning big. Go Michael Moore!

OOPS the above was the wrong book....here it tis....number 139

Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!
by Michael Moore

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Hardcover: 304 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.00 x 8.58 x 5.82
Publisher: Regan Books; 1st edition (February 19, 2002)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Stupid White Men, Michael Moore's screed against "Thief-in-Chief" George Bush's power elite, hit No. 1 at Amazon.com within days of publication. Why? It's as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any right-wing bestseller, as irreverent as The Onion, and as noisily entertaining as a wrestling smackdown. Moore offers a more interesting critique of the 2000 election than Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party (he argued with Nader, his old boss, who sacked him), and he's serious when he advocates ousting Bush. But Moore's rage is outrageous, couched in shameless gags and madcap comedy: "Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.... Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!... We are no longer [able] to hold free and fair elections. We need U.N. observers, U.N. troops." Moore's ideas range from on-the-money (Arafat should beat Sharon with Gandhi's nonviolent shame tactics) to over-the-top: blacks should put inflatable white dolls in their cars so racist cops will think they're chauffeurs; the ever-more-Republicanesque Democratic Party should be sued for fraud; "no contributions toward advancing our civilization ever came out of the South [except Faulkner, Hellman, and R.J. Reynolds]," because it's too hot to think straight there; Korean dictator Kim Jong-il "has got to broaden himself beyond porn and John Wayne" by watching better movies, like Dude, Where's My Car? (which contains "all you need to know about America"). Whatever your politics, Stupid White Men should make you blow your stack. --Tim Appelo

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The latest appraisal of contemporary American society by a popular and iconoclastic commentator. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description

The government has been seized by a ne'er-do-well rich boy and his elderly henchmen . . .
Our great economic expansion is unraveling faster than a set of Firestones . . .
Our water is poisoned, the ozone's in shreds, and the SUVs are advancing like a plague of locusts . . .
Remember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus, pollution was disappearing, peace was breaking out in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century was strung with high-speed Internet cable and paved with 401K gold?

Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind Roger & Me and the bestseller Downsize This!, now returns to size up the new century -- and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men. Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, calling on African-Americans to place whites only signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, Stupid White Men is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity. Among his targets:

George W.: "President" of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief. A trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office. Send in the Marines! Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring me the head of Antonin Scalia!
Bill Clinton: One of the best Republican presidents we've ever had.
The Former Yugoslavia: Bring back Marshall Tito! Nobody in America liked him much when he was alive, but now he looks like Lady Bird Johnson.
The Idiot Nation: A friggin' stain on a blue dress. That's what captured our attention in the nineties -- along with slow-moving Broncos, six-year-old strangled beauty queens, and Hugh Grant's dating habits.
Corporate America: There is no recession, my friends: no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot -- and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie.
The polls indicate that 60 percent of Americans are "upset or angry" about this land in which we now live -- a land where crooked courts select the president and money rules the day. So if you're feeling the same way and you're wondering what's going to give out first -- the economy, Dick Cheney's pacemaker, or your new VW Beetle -- here's the book for you.

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1023 of 2006 people found the following review helpful:

Buy This Book!, February 24, 2002
Reviewer: Gilbert H Miller Jr from FL United States
Wow! Michael's done it again! This book hits the nail on the head or maybe prunes the Bush would be a better phrase.
As usual, Michael has done his homework, researched and re-researched to bring us reporting worth reading.
Whether you're right of, left of or dead center, this is a must-read book if you're at all concerned, truly concerned about our country and its future.
If you're a shallow flag-waving jingoist, this isn't for you but if you're a thinking, sensitive concerned American citizen (one who votes-or intends to)this is a must-read.
Keep it up Michael, we need guys like you!
Gib Miller
Florida
State of the Disenfranchised Voter

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1432 of 2371 people found the following review helpful:

Superb! Mike hits the bullseye once again., February 21, 2002
Reviewer: A reader from Cheyenne,WY
Just finished his new book and it was right on the mark. I have to hand it to Mike, he doesn't pull any punches. I'm a Republican who didn't vote for Bush and even I have to admit that Mr. Moore has guts to stand up to the PC crowd who try to shout down anyone who disagrees with the Bush/Cheney disastrous economic policies. Hooray for free speech!

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Charismatic Moore, December 30, 2003
Reviewer: greensery from Finland
Very witty, well written book which offers the most perfect, loveable sarcasm. Not the greatest book I've read, but it did make me even bigger fan of Michael Moore. The book is more clear than his last document- Bowling for Columbine-which still is very good also. Besides Moore's humour, his honesty is what makes this book good. Also I admire his ability to find the problems and tell about them so that a stupid fin like me understands.

Those who say that Moore doesn't present any solutions to the problems he writes about, are wrong. Really, you have to be blind to claim that.
And, if you're a conservative: don't review this book. Also, don't review other books and documents made my Michael. We both now you haven't seen/read them.

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1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

*Yawn*, December 30, 2003
Reviewer: Jerry Smith (see more about me) from Albany, GA United States
More propaghanda, nothing else. Reading this guy's dilusional ideas about our country is like choking down a 3 week old Dodger-dog. However it did come in handy when we got snowed in and ran out of toilet paper.

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Astonishingly Eye-Opening!, December 30, 2003
Reviewer: Tiffany Richter (see more about me) from Atlanta, Ga United States
I must admit that at first I was not particularly thrilled at the prospect of reading Stupid White Men when a friend leant the book to me. I was used to seeing Mr. Moore behaving as an 'angry white man' ranting about the injustices of big business & politicians is his films. Therefore, I found myself unprepared and pleasantly suprised by the intelligence and wit with which he wrote this book. This is a great read that exposes a lot of political agendas and comments on everything from the 2000 'election' to the state of our nation. This book shows another side of Michael Moore, beyond the irate man on tv & film you will get to know the intelligent witty man he really is & learn a lot along the way. I'm now planning on reading his next novel 'Dude, Where's My Country?' as well.

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Funny, witty and true!, December 29, 2003
Reviewer: gpat (see more about me) from Asuncion Paraguay
Even though I'm not an US citizen, I found this book very interesting and honest. Michael analysis is daring, and I understand that Michael is not friend of many. However, his honest and clear-cut criticism of "white men" attitude towards the world is great. The only thing I disagree with Michael is his support of abortion. I do not understand his criticism of death penalty while on the other side he supports the homicide of innocent children. This is not clear.....
However, the book's themes are excellent written. I admire Michael's courage to denounce Bush's corruption and blunders, as well as all the white man terrible damage to the human race.

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