Posted on 05/27/2004 7:40:37 AM PDT by TradicalRC
'I just think I'm a better person,' he says, his head bowed in theatrically solemn contemplation, 'because I'm always struggling to be a better person. I'm a highly flawed individual, as we all are, and because I was raised by Jesuits, I'm constantly, "What is it about me and what I can do to be better?"'
It is doubtless to this mission that he refers in Stupid White Men, when he writes: 'If you're white, and you really want to help change things, why not start with yourself?'
With this thought in mind, I ask him why he decided to send his daughter to a private school in Manhattan. 'Oh,' he says brightly, 'I went to private school. Just a genetic decision. My wife and I, we both went to Catholic schools, we're not public-school [which in the US means state school] people.
So it's not important.
'No, I think it's important and the first five years she went to public school, then we moved to New York and we went to see the local public school and we walked through a metal detector and we said, "We're not putting our child through a metal detector." We'll continue our fight to see to it that our society is such that you don't have to have a metal detector at the entrance to schools. But our daughter is not the one to be sacrificed to make things better. And so she went to a school two blocks away. She just went to the nearest other school.'
He makes it sound as if the other school was just a random choice, but private schools on the Upper West Side are all restrictively expensive, and mostly white, just as the state schools are disproportionately black.
'Is that a bad thing?' he asks rhetorically of his decision, 'I don't know. Every parent wants to do what's best for their child. Whatever I can afford, I'm going to get my kid the best education I can get.'
I suggest that, while that may be a natural instinct, it's hard to see why it's any different from the Republican philosophy of each man for himself and his family.
'I'm not a liberal. When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing. If,' he emphasises, 'you're from the working class. What's bad about it is if you get to do that and then shut the door behind you so nobody else can do that.'
Of course, it's nobody's business but Moore's where he sends his child, except he makes it his business to detail the hereditary privilege of his subjects and tends to make his political arguments personal. In Fahrenheit 9/11 one of his stunts is to attempt to get Congressmen to sign their children up for the war in Iraq.
This is merely an excerpt of a longer article. I clicked that but it didn't show.
I've always felt he must have been looking in a mirror when he came up with the title to that book ("Stupid White Men").
Moore gives new meaning to the word "Hippo-crite."
No, you're a communist.
ROFL.....bet there's LOTS of liberals who'll be surprised by that....except that they all say they're NOT liberals....NO, they are not....THEY ARE HYPOCRITES and today's NIMBY types.
Moore dropped out of university and, after stints as a hippie DJ, and a period running a crisis centre for teenagers, he set-up an alternative newspaper, the Flint Voice. He edited it with such verve, exposing corrupt officials and racist businesses, that in 1986 the San Francisco-based magazine Mother Jones asked him to become its editor. But just a few months after taking up the position, he was fired. According to the owner of the magazine, the staff said that he was impossible to work with. As far as Moore was concerned, he lost his job because he was set against a piece that was critical of the Sandinistas' record on human rights.
Either way, he won $58,000 damages in a suit for wrongful dismissal, sold his house and put all the money into making Roger and Me . The documentary was a notable critical, if not spectacular commercial, success. Thereafter Moore moved to New York and television, making zany political series such as TV Nation and The Awful Truth, which were full of Moore's trademark stunts designed to mock greed and ignorance and humbug.
Behind the scenes, however, a different picture was forming. Moore's employers were confronted with ever more regal demands. He insisted that Channel 4 house him at the Ritz when he worked in England on The Awful Truth, a fact he now portrays as the revenge of the working class against corporate might. Meanwhile employees grumbled. 'He's a jerk and a hypocrite and didn't treat us right and he was false in all of his dealings,' said one former worker. His former manager, Douglas Urbanski, has said that Moore 'was the most difficult man I've ever met... he's money-obsessed'.
Michael Moore reminds me of the character in the movie, 'Full Metal Jacket', Leonard the recruit. Leonard is a failure at practically every task set for him by the drill sergeant, and would not normally have completed the basic training. But somehow, Leonard pulls it together, and while he is not the outstanding star as the platoon approaches its graduation date, he manages to absorb the necessary instruction, and is no longer the complete pariah he began as.
But Leonard is a flawed Marine. He snaps, and executes his drill sergeant, then turns the rifle on himself and blows his brains out.
Only, Michael does not have that much intestinal fortitude.
Moore seems to be a character that belongs in Atlas Shrugged as yet one more cardboard villain - the man has simply NO redeeming qualities!
When you come from the working class and you do well enough whereby you can provide a little bit better for your family, get a decent roof over their head and send them to a good school, that's considered a good thing.
Exactly where does Mr. Moore think the middle class and rich people come from? With a few rare exceptions, we all come from "working class" parents or grandparents who busted their butts and moved up, just like he supposedly did. Apparently he doesn't realize this, and thinks that we are somehow different than him. (Or perhaps he needs to believe this in order to justify his actions to himself?)
If,' he emphasises, 'you're from the working class. What's bad about it is if you get to do that and then shut the door behind you so nobody else can do that.
Nobody, anywhere, is trying to shut the door to prevent others from doing that -- with the possible exception of some liberal elitists who are jealous of their power. So who the hell is Moore talking about here?
This reminds me of a fellow I met at church, who works in the public healthcare sector. He held conservative views but he made a point of telling us that he arrived at his conservative views "in a different way". When asked to elaborate, he said, essentially, that he'd be perfectly happy if he could give free food, clothing, shelter, and medical care to everyone, but that unfortunately -- he had learned the hard way -- that just doesn't work in the real world. (Welcome to Economics 101.)
So I asked him, "How does your view differ from any other conservatives?", and he proudly proclaimed that, although he'd give it all for free if he could, conservatives were different -- they actually DON'T want poor people to have those things. Needless to say, I was incensed at this slander, but I controlled myself and coolly told him that I'd known hundreds of conservatives in my life time and NOT ONE of them had the mean spirited attitude that he attributes to them. But he didn't believe me, or didn't want to believe me.
His problem (and perhaps Moore's) is that empirical reality has forced him to adopt conservative views about certain things, but he bitterly resists identifting as a conservative because he lives under the delusion that conservatives who do exactly as he does, are driven by different, darker motives than his own. How do you get through to such a person?
If he's always striving to be a better person, why doesn't he try to get below 500 pounds? I'm still hoping he chokes on a hamburger.
I could construct a better person from hot glue, duct tape and cans of lard.
From the article: "In the year of an election that could well prove close, it's the kind of film that could make a historic difference."
This one sentence absolutely sends cold chills up my spine!
You have just described in one small anecdote the difference between neo-conservatives and real conservatives. This man is a neocon through and through.
This man reproduced? Ohmygod....
Your screen name reminds me of a line from the Johnny Cash song, "When the Man Comes Around": "...And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree..."
It's a good song.
Your screen name reminds me of a line from the Johnny Cash song, "When the Man Comes Around": "...And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree..."
It's a good song.
Is there an echo in here? Sorry folks, I have no idea why that double posted.
After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: ``We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?''... This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
These quotes are from President Bush's 2001 Inaugural Address, and are the inspiration for my screen name.
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