The Michael Moore rant

A friend sent an email with the following message. It is followed by my response of 1 July:
hello friends,
I hope you all have supported Michael Moore's film opening weekend. Please send me any thoughts you might have on the film. I would like to work on a project a study based on the personal effects of the film. And I shall start with friends. Send comments, stories, poems any words that describes your thoughts on this monumental film.
--C

Knowing my audience, I'll begin the response with a seemingly appropriate equivocation:
1)I am neither a republican nor a democrat and have publicly (on my once un-listened to and un-listenable radio program) declared my inherent mistrust of anyone who has ever voted a straight ticket for any party in any election. Ever.
2)In no way do I harbor any affection for President W and have worn grooves into my rapidly balding scalp from scratching my head at many of this administration's decisions since January of 2001.
3)I am equally baffled by the invasion of Iraq. I may be one of only two people you've ever met that lost a friend in Gulf War One. I am the son of a Vietnam Veteran (who was married to a Vietnam War protester) and thus cannot keep my head from turning skeptically at any demand for the use of American Military power.
4)I used to be a huge Michael Moore fan. I own a copy of Roger and Me for Pete's sake. The bulk of Moore's pre-Oscar film and television work was not only funny, but I think truly spoke for people that normally don't get any voice in any format, much less in mass media. I'll never forget the bit on his television show, The Awful Truth, in which actors in puritan garb chase Kenneth Starr's car down his street begging him to let them run his witchhunt of President Clinton. It is still one of the funniest things I have ever seen (as a friend of mine often says, "It's funny 'cause it's true"). But round about Bowling for Columbine, he lost me. More about that in a second.
5)And finally, I am fully capable of appreciating good satire. As a college-educated WASP that enjoys any opportunity to poke fun at the powers that be, though I look an awful lot like those aforementioned powers (It is truly a milestone moment when you hit the age of thirty-five and it dawns on you "Holy shit, I'm The Man!") I am fully capable of grasping someone's sardonic musings, laughing and then offering that allknowing nod of the head. A comprehensive "hmmmm" burns in the back of my head when they hit on something thought-provoking. When I read, see or hear the highbrow variety (Swift's suggestion that the Irish solve their hunger problem by eating their own children) or the very lowbrow variety (Headline in The Onion—”Scientists Discover Gene Responsible For Eating Whole Goddamn Bag of Chips"), I dig. Quality satire can stir us, surprise us, shock us and make our sides hurt. In some remarkable moments, it can actually cause a paradigm shift not only with its readers but in a society at large.

Unfortunately, Fahrenheit 9/11 does none of these things.

There are two very distinct subterranean fallacies at the heart of Mr. Moore's failure of a film and I'll try to address them both with as much brevity as possible:

ONE—The Lie of "Michael Moore-as-Defender-of-Truth."
You may be surprised what my reasons are for the first lie. I will not go into tremendous detail about the factual errors in the film. Many people, much smarter than I have exploded the movies' errors ad nauseum. Never mind that (deserved) Bush-hater Richard Clarke told the 9/11 Commission under oath that he alone ordered permission for the flight of Saudi/Bin Laden cronies. And only after they had been vetted by the F.B.I. and only when other flights out of the country were permitted. Never mind that Unocal negotiations with the Taliban for an Afghan pipeline occurred under the noses of Bill Clinton/Warren Christopher, not on W's watch. Never mind.
Fine, if the facts don't matter to Moore, they don't matter to me. After all, this is supposed to be satire. I'm willing to admit that the devil is not in the details here, that he's right that the Carlyle Group/Bush connection has the aroma of a beached school of cod at low tide, that more than 800 American men and women (not to mention the countless Iraqi civilians) have died in a conflict that our stunningly incurious President can't seem to wrap his noggin around (or find a single mistake in the execution of).
Thus, my problem lies with Moore's use of his "satirical" sledgehammer. His interviewing methods are intended to be pyrotechnic, but instead they are dated (the novelty of 'chasing' your subjects wore off after the aforementioned Ken Starr pursuit, Mike) and most damagingly, serve to evoke only a visceral response from the viewer (what happened to that satirical "hmmmm" I spoke about?) thus reducing any credible sense of sincerity from the interviewer. A couple of quick examples of why I take issue with his continuing reliance on this technique:
Charlton Heston, for one. His assault on the NRA president and actor in Bowling for Columbine was indefensible. Sure, Heston held up a musket in front of his mob of toothless idiots that spend $35 dollars a year unwittingly supporting a powerful lobby that has little to no interest in preserving an amendment to the Constitution but instead fronts for weapons manufacturers and demanded that we pry it from his "cold, dead hands," but this was no excuse for Moore's pillorying an enfeebled old man in his own home. Before that point, I'd thought that Moore was addressing a vital question that no one was asking, that is, "Why does this country have just as many weapons as several others, but we shoot each other at an exponential rate in comparison?" Sadly, after the Heston segment, this question had bolted and any quest for truth had been trumped by the vision of Moses in the throes of senile dementia walking out on the asshole in his kitchen.
Then, in Fahrenheit, Moore takes an even more offensive tack—he plays the race card. With his position that the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are simply another tactic of American racist oppression, he's showed his trump badly. Yes, the majority of service personnel are from poor or African-American families or both (as they have been for more than two centuries, at least the poor part). However, this screed does nothing but dishonor their choice (whatever their race) to serve and thus gain connections, better their education and find opportunity in a nation that views these things as currency. In addition, America is sadly a nation that devalues public service and Moore does nothing but emphasize the point by rendering our soldiers as nothing more than Steppenfetchits too addled to actually comprehend what they've gotten into. Thank God all the little black folk in the Army have you to stick up for them, Michael. You, the man that recently told an audience that if more black people had been on the planes of September 11th, there would have been no way that the terrorists could have fulfilled their mission. Way to honor the people of color that were on board those planes (including the multiracial contingent that actually did prevent Flight 93 from killing more people), you insensitive, racist jackass. Sorry, but nothing angers me more than a rich, fat, white guy standing behind poor, hungry black people in an attempt to make villains of others.
In both these examples, Moore does not render those in opposition to his viewpoint vile by his pursuit of the truth, but instead renders his originally interesting (and infinitely American) viewpoint purile. In both these cases, Moore's "journalistic" machete harkens me back to the Roaring '90's. Those halcyon days of Rush "The O.C." Limbaugh's sensitive "Homeless Updates" and David Brock's ridiculous accusation that Hillary Rodham Clinton had Vince Foster murdered. Garbage, whether from the left or right, no matter how you package it, still stinks like fucking garbage (look! The Vice President's favorite word!). This is a good point to switch gears, because the reason why politicians and media, whatever aisle they sit on, insist on this rhetoric of unbridgeable political separation leads me to the second fallacy at the heart of Fahrenheit's failures.

TWO—The Incredible Lie of National Division
Here I prematurely apologize for lumping Mr. Moore in with the figures writhing in this orgy of political segregation at our point in history. This kind of gross generalization is just what I was criticizing him for just a paragraph ago. Nevertheless, I find him guilty of many of the same crimes as such luminaries as George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Dick Cheney, John "I lost an election to a dead guy" Ashcroft, John Kerry, Howard Dean, The Honorable Right Reverend Al Sharpton, Rush Limbaugh, Al Franken, Oprah Winfrey, Sean and Arthur Penn, Arnold Schwarzzeneger, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, William F. Buckley, Jr. and his favorite sparring partner, Gore Vidal, Rick Perry, Tom DeLay, Dan Rather, Bill Moyers, Ted "what the hell did you do to Jane?" Turner, Harvey Weinstein, Rudolph Giuliani, Fred "Agreeance" Durst, Barbara Streisand, Barbara Boxer, the late Barbara Olsen, Barbara Walters, Star Jones, Dennis Miller, "Esther" Madonna Ciccone (or is it Madonna Esther?), Norman Mailer, Dr. James Dobson, Tucker Carlson, Jeanane Garafalo, George F. Will, George Carlin, John Rocker, Laurie David, David Letterman, Trent Lott, Tom Ridge, Frank Rich, the Reverend Canon David H. "lock out the queers" Roseberry, Jim Hightower, Jeff Zucker, "B-1" Bob Dornan, Bruce Willis, Tina Brown, Pat Robertson, Lewis Lapham, Mel Gibson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, David Brooks, Morton Kondracke, Molly Ivins, Terry McAuliffe (okaaay Mike, we get it) and the terrifying screech of the Mary Matalin and her scary, weirdass husband.

If you've actually been patient enough to read this far, permit a brief foray into the Socratic to get us closer to the end of this rant a little quicker:
You might ask: Mike, what could these forty-five people (among many, many others), seemingly separated by miles of political differences, have done? And what is Mr. Moore's complicity?
—Simply put, honorable citizen, they have lied to you time and time again.

What have they lied about?
—They have told you that you and your other fellow citizens are locked in mortal combat against each other. That this nation is "polarized." That you and your neighbor have no choice but to join a team and line up for the ongoing culture war. That the philosophy of "With us or agin' us" is the only way to protect our children, pets and aged loved ones; to save this nation; to honor the principles on which it was founded; to finally stamp out our history of racism, sexism, laziness, culture of victimization, violence, moral degredation or poverty and wipe out gingivitis once and for all. Through the overwhelming flood of information found in our society, they are drafting (not asking you to volunteer) you to join their armies of Christian/gaylesbian/republican/democratic/homeless/overtaxed/blue/ red/catholic/protestant/prochoice/prolife/yokobrokeuptheband/wingswasbetteranyway warriors arrayed against the great peril massed on the rhetorical border.

But isn't this country divided?
—No, it's not. People in this country have divergent opinions about many things: Abortion; whoever is in the White House; whether OJ did it; the war; the Patriot Act and whether we really need another goddamn Ben Stiller movie this summer just to name a few. However, the space where these contrasts overlap is considerably greater than any possible antagonistic oppositions.

On what do you base this theory?
—The fact that the numbers don't bear out a tremendous chasm for Americans at large. According to The New York Times, most Americans agree, for example, that abortion should be legal, but that they wish that people would have fewer of them. According to yesterday's Gallup poll, a significant majority of Americans think that health care is the primary concern facing this aging nation (and I happen to think they're right), not the War on Terror, not Janet Jackson's nipple, not gay marriage.

What about gay marriage?
-What about it? Most Americans (nearly seven out of ten) agree that longtime partners should have a legal right to their spouses' benefits like those of breeder couples. This is an argument about semantics ("marriage" v. "union," etc.), not of principle. According to USA Today and the New York Times, most Americans do not want to pull the word "marriage" away from gay couples to segregate them. Instead, in this world of the Politics of Emotion, want something to call their own. History says that the most effective tool of segregation is not language or even violence. It is economic oppression. Most Americans get the fact that their gay neighbors and coworkers have a right to be economically empowered in a free market society. Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats want you to think that there is a great moral threat to whatever side of this issue you find yourself on. Why? Because pollsters cynically told them to tell you that.

Doesn't the narrowness of the 2000 Presidential election prove that we're locked in a polarized struggle for our Nation's future?
-That would be a very appropriate question if more than 51.3 percent of eligible voters had bothered to show up at the polls. Could it be possible that all of this talk of antagonistic viewpoints has removed most voters from the national discourse, thus disengaging them from any concept of duty to a country that they think has nothing to do with what they believe (i.e., a differentiated but moderate mean)?

Why would government officials want to lie to the American people this way?
-Because it is in their best interest financially and rhetorically. The cynicism of the Lee Atwater-Roger Ailes-Terry McAuliffe-Dick Morris's in the post-Watergate/post-Vietnam world has gleaned from their polling data that when potential contributors are told that it is time to "circle the wagons" from the threat to "our way of life," they write bigger checks. The apparatus of money is the machine of national politics and baby, does it talk.
However, economics isn't the sole drive for this wave of disinformation. Those with extreme viewpoints (whatever you think an extreme viewpoint) not only contribute more, but turn out to canvass for their candidate in greater numbers and put bumper stickers on their cars. Why? Because they have to mobilize to counter a threat to their extreme American value.
Finally, this fallacy of dogmatic segregation is currently something of a rhetorical "get out of jail free card" for national politicians. If they can keep the National Discourse focused on issues like gay marriage, partial-birth abortion and Oval Office blow jobs they hope they'll never have to make hard, campaign-war-chest-and-reelection-threatening decisions about health care, social security, the minimum wage, globalization, unfair taxation, etc. They're an industry folks, and they don't want to piss off the customers. They've got a business to run, to perpetuate.
All I'm asking is, "Is doing the 'right thing' the center pivot of our government? Or is it greed and political advancement, jealousy and praise. Is it an indifference to the wants of ordinary Americans and instead a focus on party and team to the expense of any "other" we want to create behind the motive and principle of those that govern?" Well, I would have asked that if John Adams hadn't already done it in 1805. I just gussied up the language. Clearly, this is nothing new.

I notice that you've left the media out of the discussion. They would be telling us the truth if your ridiculous theory had any merit.
-If that were true, then a Frontline special about the cost of prescription drugs would have garnered at least ten percent of the share that Dan Rather's panting 60 Minutes interview with President Clinton did. (I'm surprised that no one has asked Bill if she swallowed yet). This apochryphal culture war wouldn't make a single newscast if it didn't sell. Viacom, Disney, TimeWarner, KnightRidder, GE, et. al don't do anything without looking first at the bottom line. Sadly, their news departments aren't free of this fact.

Uh, something seems to be missing from your rant.
—Really. What?

Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 9/11.
—Too true. I'll draw the picture quickly.
1) Mr. Moore wants to make money, and a lot of it. There is nothing wrong with that, but any sanctimony about his mission should go out the window from the get go (as it should for Sean Hannity's next book). Need proof? Before his triumph at Cannes, Moore keened from the bell tower that Disney/Buena Vista was censoring him by not distributing the film. According to the Wall Street Journal, they were never planning on distributing it. Despite the facts, Moore played the Mel Gibson/Passion card straight out of the chute (read: "Bad secular/Bushie forces have aligned against me to prevent my telling of my pure religious/anti-war story!") and it worked like gangbusters. I see little separation between Moore and the Vatican II/almost Holocaust-denying Gibson.
2) Michael Moore may very well believe that the Bush Administration is an undeniable collection of unspeakable evildoers. It would be Unamerican of me to question his motives. However, his inability to approach the egregious (and deadly) errors of this group of nitwits currently gathering in the Situation Room (admittedly some of them by teleconference from their protected bunker) with nothing more than a series of exploitative teenage pranks fixes all the good intentions of the world onto that proverbial road to Hell.
3) Finally, I also think that Mr. Moore truly believes that he is a champion for ordinary, hard-working, impoverished Americans that can't be heard over the Ultraright din. He couldn't be farther from the truth.
In a matter of weeks, Moore has become the poster boy for the very false (and dangerous) notion that we are a nation of citizens at war with each other. It is a poison about which I can no longer be silent, a product of focus groups, polls, huge campaign coffers and cynicism.

Critic Homi Bhabha points out that in the literature of white oppression (that is, all "western" literature) must define the exotic, threatening 'other' not simply as a means of oppressing them, but for another, more psychotic reason—to define themselves. This madness is slowly creeping into our national dialogue, unfettered.
At last, opinion polls say that most Americans agree that the invasion of Iraq was an exercise in very bad judgment. Citizens that agree or disagree with this action must enter this dialogue with a vigor that would rival the speeches of Johnny Cochran. But we can no longer be fueled by the Manichean lies of those that are profiting from such plebian cynicism. To continue to believe these lies would be crime against humanity.
I'm in this with you, I swear, and I believe with every fiber of my being that you're here beside me, too. I may not agree with you, but I'll be damned if I'll let the roar swallow up your voice. Let us right whatever wrongs we see: not as celluloid-swallowing sheep, but as Americans. Multi-colored, -worshiping, -gendered, empowered Americans. We are the people that swarmed the blood banks on September 11th and said "Let's roll." We are the people that lined up to see Gibson's Passion and waved to the protesters nearby (who I hope waved back). We are the product of a time when someone really believed that some truths are inalienable. May all the fine people of the earth have such problems as these someday.

In closing, I hope that you will see Michael Moore's movie and save me a box of Whoppers.
Think this is a contradiction? Then you weren't paying attention at all and I fear we're already lost.

Blessings to you and yours and thank you for your patience,
M.L. Stephens