Brutal review of Michael Moore from the left

Stupid White Men ... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! by Michael Moore (ReganBooks, 304 pp., $24.95)

Something about the subjects of wealth and power seems to bring out the worst in people. The more populistic he becomes, the more ominous Kevin Phillips sounds; and it is a shame to see him fall into the company of people like Ross Perot, Patrick Cadell, and Ralph Nader. But for Michael Moore there is not much room to fall. Films such as Roger and Me and books such as Downsize This! marked him as egocentric and frivolous from the start. Still, he has tried his best to stoop even lower with Stupid White Men. A more irresponsible book on a more important topic would be impossible to write.

Phillips only raises the prospect of an unelected leadership, but for Moore, the coup, as he calls it, has already taken place. Al Gore, he says, is the actual president of the United States, because "he received 539,898 more votes than George W. Bush." (At least John Ashcroft knows what is in the Constitution that he routinely ignores; Moore seems not to know that the document calls for a victory in the electoral college.) But instead of Gore, the coup brought to power the "Bush junta," which is composed mainly of millionaires. One of them is Dick Cheney. "When nominated for the vice presidency," Moore writes, "Cheney hemmed and hawed about divesting himself of his Halliburton stock. I guess he knew that the good times were coming." It is beneath Moore, of course, to point out that Cheney did in fact divest himself of the stock--or that Halliburton, which was selling for roughly $40 per share in the fall of 2000, is now worth less than $20. (If Cheney knew anything, evidently, it was that the bad times were coming.)

Moore, to put it mildly, does not write to inform. Attitude is all. But if you are writing a book critical of a president who has a problem with the truth, it does not require all that much intelligence to figure out the importance of being truthful yourself. Moore could care less. He describes how he decided one day to watch The McLaughlin Group, where he found the conservative pundit Fred Barnes complaining that kids no longer knew about the Iliad and the Odyssey. So Moore decided to call Barnes and to ask him whether he knew what they were. "Well, they're ... uh ... you know ... uh ... OK, fine, you got me," he quotes Barnes as responding. "I don't know what they're about. Happy now?"

I don't know Barnes, but the story struck me as implausible, and so I e-mailed him about it. "It never happened," he wrote back. "One, I've never talked to Michael Moore. Two, I have read the Iliad and the Odyssey. I didn't read them until I got to college, but I did read them. So I know exactly what they're about. Besides that, I've seen movie versions of them." Choose who you wish to believe, but I am disinclined to believe someone who tells me, as Moore does, that 200,000 Americans may be suffering from mad cow disease, that the United States practices apartheid, that first-year airline pilots for commuter airlines live below the poverty level, and that the Confederacy won the Civil War.

Thirty or so years ago--Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a good benchmark--conservatives concluded that they were unrepresented in liberal America. They decided to organize themselves politically to reverse the course of their country. Whether one agrees with them or not, one cannot fault them for lacking determination and seriousness of purpose. They did the research, mobilized the voters, tracked the votes of the politicians, and raised the money necessary to achieve their objective. They never did overturn that Supreme Court decision, although they are responsible for weakening it. But owing to their efforts the whole complexion of America shifted rightward, and now we have a president who pays careful attention to everything they have to say.

The contrast with Michael Moore could not be greater. Instead of analyzing an issue, he personalizes his opponents, even charging Prescott Bush with ties to the Nazis (which he admits that he cannot prove) or asking his grandson the president whether he is an alcoholic and how this may be affecting his job performance. Rather than searching for a credible cause, Moore resorts to some of the most outlandish appeals to gender and racial identity politics that I have ever seen, as in this: "Women? They deserve none of the blame. They continued to bring life into this world; we continued to destroy it whenever we could." If this book is what passes for a political manifesto, then Tom Paine is truly dead. Moore peppers his book with factoids, weird memos, open letters, bizarre lists, LOTS OF SENTENCES IN CAPITAL LETTERS, and name-dropping accounts of how he happens to know some members of the Bush family personally. It is meant to be satire, I suppose; but the only person skewered is Moore, who proves himself to be the only stupid white man around. Anyone bent on redistributing income in favor of the rich could not get a luckier break than having a critic like Michael Moore.

One would think that a person who believes that George W. Bush stole the presidency from its rightful occupant Al Gore would at least prefer to see Al Gore in the office. But Moore is too "radical" for that, of course; he informs his readers that he did not vote for Gore, and he regularly engages in Nader-like rhetoric about how both parties are indistinguishable when it comes to issues such as arsenic in the drinking water. He even seems to relish the idea of a second term for Bush, for he concludes his book with a message to the Democrats: "So yes, WE denied you the White House. WE tossed you out of Washington. And WE will do it again." (As if to show that he cannot be consistent even on this obnoxious point, however, Moore tells us how he tried to persuade Floridians from voting for Nader so as to help defeat Bush.) Moore is astoundingly out of touch with the reality that he claims to care so much about. He is Chomsky for children. He does real damage to the cause that he thinks he is advancing. As is also true of Ralph Nader, the American right is much in his debt.

Moore is astoundingly out of touch with the reality that he claims to care so much about. He is Chomsky for children.

ZING!

When I first saw the title of his book, I misread the title as Stupid White Man and just assumed that it was his autobiography. :=)

Moore is not only a worse writer than the average tabloid journalist, he is a walking offense to the memory of those who died in the 9/11 tragedy. I'll never forget stumbling across some blithering fool saying that his first and only reaction to 9/11 should be a critical examination of where the US went wrong (talk about blaming the victim!) but now I hear that this idiot has a book out?

Gitmo would be too good for this scum.

It's good that even some leftists can see him for the mindless idiot that he is.

This is really good, but this guy Alan Wolfe sounds more like one of us? Has Mr. Wolfe seen the light....or is he still liberal?

MOORE DRIVEL
Michael Moore is a big fat radical.
His documentaries are laughable.
Now, he is set to begin,
a new one: “Stupid White Men.”
Is this one autobiographical??

You know what's really hyterical? Moore was on Donahue the other night. Do you know what MSNBC's promo was saying: The man whose new book has conservatives on the ropes... All, I could think was ...what book? Michael Moore wrote a book? Got conservatives on the ropes? What a howler. America's News Channel rides again. Sheesh.

Last night on Donawho? Phil was almost orgasming over Moore.

Go Ralph! Go Phil! Go Mikey! Keep up the yammering, it only helps our cause.

I'll never forget stumbling across some blithering fool saying that his first and only reaction to 9/11 should be a critical examination of where the US went wrong (talk about blaming the victim!) but now I hear that this idiot has a book out?

Didn't he express astonishment that the terrorists would pick NY, since there were so many registered Democrats there? What a boob.

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