Here I Come To Save The Day!
Posted on 07/30/2004 8:50:47 PM PDT by quidnunc
Dude, Where's My Country
by Michael Moore
Warner Books, 249 pp, $25.00
Is Michael Moore a courageous political documentarist who unmasks the chicanery all around us — or just a charlatan in a clown suit? Is he an entertainment genius or a dangerous ideologue? The answer, of course, is all of the above. The problem is that you never know which of the four is doing the talking in Moore's movies and books. The end result is that the writer-filmmaker spreads a fog of misbegotten notions about America, politics, business, and international affairs among his youthful, left-leaning following at home and, indeed, around the world. Uninformed readers and viewers tend to believe everything he says.
In his latest book, Dude, Where's My Country?, for example, Moore peddles the absurd notion that terrorists are not really out to get us — they're practically figments of our imaginations. Except, he adds, the terrorists who are right here at home, in our corporate and political midst. They are the "leaders seeking to terrorize us" and the "corporate mujahadeen" that run America, he writes. Furthermore, globalization — tee shirts from China? data processing from India? — is the main cause of terrorism.
These are just a few of the wacky ideas that spring from the fevered mind of Moore. Mixed with truisms, half-truths, and occasional truths, Moore's fulminations are a frothy brew of alarmist conspiracy theories and anti-American rhetoric. They are part of a new entertainment form pioneered by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, refined by such imitators as Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, then carried to comedic proportions by left-leaning Al Franken.
But what makes Moore different, and worth seriously critiquing, is his global reach. With his multimedia machine of books, movies, international speech-making, and the occasional television show, Moore is a worldwide force with outsized influence among the young, the naive, and the distant — especially among our friends in Europe. Moore's previous book, Stupid White Men, sold 3 million copies, almost one million of them in Germany alone. The predisposition abroad to loathe President Bush translates into uncritically loving Michael Moore. But Moore's effect is like that of Oliver Stone with his 1991 movie, JFK; while the political cognoscenti immediately denounced the movie's (clever) twisting of history, the historically untutored — lots of people born after November 22, 1963 — loved and believed the movie's conspiratorial take that Lyndon B. Johnson wanted to have John F. Kennedy killed.
Likewise, large swaths of the American and European intelligentsia seem to believe Moore's claims, in Dude for example, that the Dark Side is taking over with a form of insidious domestic terrorism and a culture of fear. Moore's answer is to create a culture of conspiracy theories in which the real terrorists are not outside forces like al Qaeda but the boardroom denizens who rule America. The war on terror should, in Moore's view, not focus on the external enemy but, rather, "be a war on our own darkest impulses."
And there you have the essential Moore — a worldview of America as a failed project and an abiding danger to the planet. No wonder they so love Moore abroad: His is a 1960s vision, hardened in the pre-NAFTA plant closings of the 1980s, of a nation hijacked by the suits, the very guys who for decades gave Moore's father a good job at General Motors. It's from this posture that all the Moorean invective flows.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at ndol.org ...
It may not be much, but it's something.
Haven't heard much from the Democrat Leadership Council lately. They still around?
Well, the article was doing fine until it got to here.
Michael Moore uses the tools of propaganda that were perfected by the Soviets decades ago. Rush has never had to resort to propaganda. My thought is that truth is the finest weapon (too bad the Republicans are afraid to use it properly).
Why don't they just come out with a statement of disavowment and just be done with the fat tub of lard? They're just beating around the bush with the Micheal Moore issue in hopes of wooing voters back into their corner.
I don't believe these jackasses for a moment. Their rank and file pour into the theaters to support Moore. Their rank and file agree with everything the man charges. He got a private box at the dang convention. Yeah, they sure have this guy's number. NOT! They love this guy.
Me neither. Many of them in the DLC probably went to the DC screening of Micheal Moore's flick.
The Democrats placed him next to Carter in the Presidential suite at their convention... I don't think they're going to disavow 2Cheeseburgers anytime soon.
I don't think they're going to disavow him either. This statement only suggests they're trying to appear as though they are trying to rid themselves of the riff-raff, when they aren't, while trying to court swing voters in the process. The DLC is the same group of con-artists that was headed by the Clinton's at one time.
The Democrat shell game.
And Grope a Hamster too ;)
Of course - this is who they are. You are known by the friends you have. Lying is not a problem for the dems, so Moore fits right in with them.
They don't care about the truth - the ends justifies the means as long as they can get power.
LOL! That too! ;D
He'll be all over Florida this November.
Surely you jest. He will never be all over Florida.
Meanwhile, the ghost of Rutherford B. Hayes -- who, in retrospect, may well have stolen the White House -- cackles like a hyena.*
*It's just a metaphor. L.N. Smithee does not believe in ghosts. Not even Casper.
Let's just say I've never been surprised at what tricks the left will pull next.
Clown suit...DEFINATE clown suit!
Progressives are given this advice, "it's time for trade advocates to begin a genuine dialogue with Americans concerned about economic globalization's impact on the environment and living standards at home and abroad. The common goal must be to establish that expanded trade cannot only co-exist with workers' rights and environmental standards, but can actually help promote them."
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