Michael Moore - Multi-Media Polemicist

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Towards the end of 2002, Michael Moore hit the best-seller lists on both sides of the Atlantic with Stupid White Men - a book his American publishers were reluctant to release, fearing that its scathing attacks on President George W. Bush would cause angry reactions at a time of international tension.

At the same time, Moore had an international hit film on his hands
with Bowling For Columbine, a documentary about the astonishing levels of gun-related violence in the USA. It was Moore's second smash-hit documentary movie, following the film that made his name: 1989's Roger & Me.

Moore has also been a highly successful television performer and producer, with two hit series - TV Nation and The Awful Truth - to his credit. In every medium he's conquered, Moore's mission has been the same: to ask awkward questions about the state of America and the state of the world, while at the same time remaining highly entertaining. He has won a huge international following. In late 2002, BBCi users voted him Newsmaker of the Year.

Unsurprisingly, given the controversial nature of his work, Moore has also made some enemies. His detractors accuse him of being a privileged, hypocritical 'limousine liberal', and Moore doesn't deny that he's made a lot of money from his multi-media success. He also gets accused of being unpatriotic, since he criticises his homeland so strongly.

But to his many fans, Michael Moore is a hero: a witty, eloquent spokesman for the underdog, and a scourge of callous corporations and corrupt politicians.

The Man from the Motor Town

Michael Moore was born in Flint, Michigan, USA on 23 April, 1954. His political radicalism first came to public notice when, at the age of 18, he successfully stood for election to the Davison area board of education on a platform calling for drastic changes in local education policies.

The cornerstone of the local economy in Flint was the General Motors factory at which Buick cars were produced, and Michael Moore became a worker at the factory after leaving school. However, it took him less than a day to decide that the life of a car worker was not for him. Finding working conditions at the factory intolerable, he walked out of the job.

Instead, he pursued a career in journalism, founding a local alternative journal called The Flint Voice. Initially dealing with events in Moore's home town, it later grew into a state-wide operation and became The Michigan Voice.

In the mid-1980s, Moore was invited to move to San Francisco and become the editor of the liberal-left news magazine Mother Jones1. However, Moore's uncompromising style soon led to conflict with the magazine's owners, and he was fired after editing three issues.

So, in 1986, Moore found himself back in Flint and unemployed, just as a great many other residents of his home town also lost their jobs. General Motors suddenly closed the Buick factory, with devastating consequences for Flint.

It was this sad event that prompted Michael Moore to take up film-making.

The Films

Roger & Me (1989)

During the 1980s, the giant American car corporation General Motors kept steadily 'downsizing' their operations in Flint, Michigan. Eventually, the company ceased its operations in Flint altogether, throwing tens of thousands of local people out of work.

Michael Moore decided that GM's Chief Executive Officer, Roger Smith, should be made to explain why he'd done this to Flint. So Moore raised funds by, amongst other things, organising bingo games at his home, and then made his first feature film.

Roger & Me is a feature-length documentary telling the story of Moore's attempts to get an interview with Smith. The film also documents the desperate condition of Flint following GM's desertion, and the sometimes bizarre remedies tried by the local authorities. 20,000 people are seen standing in line at one location to collect rations of federal surplus cheese and butter. Thousands of people leave Flint, as local unemployment reaches 25 per cent and the rate of violent crime in Flint becomes worse than those in infamous crime black spots as Miami and Detroit.

The city council's attempts to improve matters include paying a TV evangelist named Robert Schuller $30,000 to come to Flint and hold a prayer meeting to call for divine intervention to save the city. But the prayers aren't answered. Before long, the city health department announces that there are now more rats than people in Flint, and offers a bounty for every dead rat brought in by a city resident.
Meanwhile, The Flint Chamber of Commerce erects billboards featuring 'morale-boosting' slogans including 'Visit Flint - And Leave the Real World Behind!'.

While all this is going on, Michael Moore keeps trying to meet Roger Smith. He visits General Motors' global headquarters in Detroit and is immediately escorted out of the building. He's also ejected from a GM board meeting, and embarks on a long search for Smith through various places popular with the rich and powerful. Then, just when his quest seems hopeless, Moore finally gets to meet Smith.

Despite its rock-bottom budget, Roger & Me became a surprise commercial success, and collected awards at numerous film festivals. Its success was fuelled by debates triggered by its content. Some of Moore's detractors have claimed that the sequencing of the film is misleading, in that the events in Flint did not occur in the order suggested by Roger & Me. But the film has been widely acclaimed for the way that it starkly exposes the human cost of cold business decisions, and its commercial success has been extraordinary. Made for $160,000, it grossed around $25 million in all formats, and became the most financially successful non-concert documentary in Hollywood history.

Michael Moore, filmmaker, had arrived.

Pets Or Meat: A Return To Flint (1992)

A 23-minute, made-for-TV epilogue to Roger & Me, documenting the fates of some of the characters seen in Moore's first film. The title refers to a woman who was seen in Roger & Me, as a rabbit breeder, offering them for sale either as companions or as meals. When making Pets Or Meat, Moore found that she had retired from the rabbit business and taken up breeding rats and mice to sell them as reptile food.

Moore also found that Roger Smith had retired as CEO of General Motors. However, Smith had no need to take up a new occupation, as he was living on a pension of $1 million per year.

Canadian Bacon (1995)

Canadian Bacon is a satirical comedy drama, written and directed by Moore. It concerns a US President (Alan Alda) who decides to boost his falling popularity by starting a war with Canada. Sheriff Bud B. Boomer (John Candy), based near the border at Niagara County, takes the President's anti-Canadian propaganda to heart and decides to lead his own invasion of Canada.

Although Canadian Bacon was critically acclaimed at the time of its release, it wasn't a major commercial success, and it has often been misunderstood. Moore's script satirises the stereotypical American view of Canadians. Some viewers found the exaggerated stereotypes in the film offensive, although others understood Moore's satirical intentions and found the film hilarious2. The plot device of a US-Canada war was subsequently adapted by Trey Parker and Matt Stone for their 1999 movie South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut.

Sadly, Canadian Bacon was the last film ever completed by Candy, the heavyweight star of hit comedies like Uncle Buck and Cool Runnings. He died of a heart attack before Canadian Bacon was released.

The Big One (1997)

The Big One is a documentary about the tour of America Moore took to promote his book Downsize This: Random Threats From An Unarmed American. Whilst on the road, Moore took the opportunity to investigate more corporate misdeeds, and the most famous sequence in the film is a revealing interview with Nike CEO Phil Knight.

In amongst the busy book signings and confrontations with corporate security guards is a sequence in which music fan Moore gets to jam with Rick Nielsen, guitarist with the band Cheap Trick.

The title comes from Moore's suggestion that 'The Big One' would make a good new name for the United States of America!

Bowling For Columbine (2002)

Bowling For Columbine begins with Michael Moore visiting a bank to open an account. He leaves the bank happily brandishing an unusual free gift: a rifle, one of the range of guns this bank offers as an inducement to new customers. From that beginning, Bowling For Columbine becomes steadily more shocking...

The inspiration for Bowling For Columbine was the Columbine massacre, the 1999 tragedy in which two youths took guns to Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado, USA and killed 15 people. Footage taken from the school's security cameras showing the killers in the school during the massacre is included in Bowling For Columbine, although none of the fatal shootings are shown. The film's title comes from the macabre fact that the two killers went bowling on the morning of the tragedy, before heading to the school to kill their classmates and themselves.

Moore uses the Columbine horror as a starting point for a broadly-based investigation into the American relationship with guns. Bowling For Columbine asks why there are so many more fatal shootings in the USA than in other nations. Moore points out that the startling statistics on gun-related killings can't simply be explained by the high rate of gun ownership in the USA, since Canada has a similarly high proportion of gun owners in its population but a much lower murder rate. He suggests that the shocking number of shootings in the USA may be caused by peculiarly American cultural factors, such as the bloodthirsty nature of American news coverage and the widening gap between rich and poor in America.

The film contains several highly memorable interviews. Marilyn Manson, who was criticised after the Columbine massacre for allegedly being a bad influence on the killers, offers a strikingly eloquent self-defence and analysis of the tragedy.

Moore also interviews Charlton Heston, the veteran movie star and spokesman for the National Rifle Association, the American pressure group that lobbies against restrictions on gun ownership in the USA. When asked why there are so many shootings in America, Heston shockingly cites 'mixed ethnicity' as a prime cause of the problem.

Bowling For Columbine was a massive critical and commercial success, enjoying a long and successful run in American cinemas and entering the UK box office Top 10 - an almost unheard-of feat for a documentary. It was showered with awards, among them the Academy Award (or Oscar) for Best Documentary.

Moore hit the headlines after the Academy Awards ceremony in March 2003 when he used his Oscar acceptance speech to deliver a blistering attack on President George W. Bush. His statement was all the more controversial because it came during the war in Iraq. While other Oscar winners mentioned the conflict, none were as outspoken as Moore.

Unsurprisingly, the film and the Oscar acceptance speech made Moore some new enemies, and some of the claims Moore made in Bowling For Columbine were hotly disputed by his critics. Moore made a detailed response to the criticisms of Columbine in an article posted on his website.

The TV Series

TV Nation

In 1992, while struggling to raise money to finance the making of his movie Canadian Bacon, Moore was surprised to get a call from the NBC television network asking if he had any ideas for a TV series. He hadn't previously considered the idea, and when he met the network's executives he expected his idea for a humorous, polemical, anti-corporate magazine show to be rejected. To his amazement, the executives loved the idea, and TV Nation was born.

The pilot show set the tone for the series. It included an investigation into whether it was easier for a white felon or a distinguished black actor to get a taxi in New York. TV Nation hired Louie Bruno, a white man who'd done time in four different prisons, and Yaphet Kotto, a highly successful black actor, to test New York's taxi drivers.

As a native New Yorker, Kotto probably wouldn't have been at all surprised by the outcome. Although a few cabbies stopped for him, the majority sped past to pick up Bruno, waiting a little further down the road. When this happened, Bruno asked the driver to take him a short distance to where a TV Nation crew was waiting to ask the driver why Kotto had been ignored. The driver would usually either claim not to have seen the actor, or say that he thought Kotto looked threatening; but the same thing happened even when Kotto tried to hail a cab while holding a baby and a bunch of flowers.

The TV Nation pilot show also included an item in which Moore travelled to Moscow to try to buy the missile that had been aimed at Flint during the Cold War. He didn't succeed, but he did get to drink a toast3 to peace with Sergei Sergovich, former missile site manager for the Kremlin. The pilot show got tremendously positive responses from test audiences, but plans for a series were put on hold simply because NBC couldn't find a space in their schedules for the show.

The TV Nation story might have ended there but for the intervention of Michael Jackson - not the singer, but a namesake who was then head of BBC2. He heard about the show, requested a tape of the pilot episode from NBC, and loved what he saw enough to offer BBC financial backing for a series. NBC accepted the offer, and the pilot show was finally screened on July 19, 1994. It was followed by six more weekly episodes and a year-end special.

Highlights of the first series included an episode in which, to illustrate the power of lobbying groups in American politics, TV Nation hired its own lobbyist and got a motion passed in Congress officially declaring August 16, 1994 'TV Nation Day'.

Another episode featured what the show described as 'communism's farewell tour'. TV Nation hired a huge truck, painted it red, added massive hammer-and-sickle emblems, filled it with communist literature and paraphernalia, and had it driven across America. Stops on the 'tour' included one right outside the White House, where the truck's driver disembarked to find himself immediately surrounded by Secret Service agents. Asked what he was doing, the driver uttered the immortal reply: 'I'm just haulin' some communism, sir'. He was allowed to go on his way.

Moore's co-presenters on the show included actress-comedienne Janeane Garofalo, film-maker/actor Rusty Cundieff and Louis Theroux, whose talent for interviewing unusual and extreme characters first came to the fore on TV Nation.

TV Nation switched US TV networks for its second seven-week series, which ran on the Fox network from July 28-September 8, 1995. The second series introduced a new star: Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken. Crackers was the show's very own superhero. He toured the USA investigating corporate wrongdoing, from a St Louis factory causing lead pollution to a Philadelphia bank making outrageous charges. The seven-foot chicken suit contained John Derevlany, one of the show's writers.

Other highlights of the second series included 'Payback Time' and 'Love Night'. In the 'Payback Time' segment, TV Nation repeatedly phoned the head of a leading American telemarketing company at home to 'tell him about their show'. TV Nation also took a dozen cars to the driveway leading to the home of the CEO of America's biggest car alarm company, and set their alarms off at 6am. The corporate chairman came on to the driveway in his pyjamas threatening legal action (which never materialised).

'Love Night' saw the TV Nation crew disrupting a Ku Klux Klan rally with the help of some very courageous cheerleaders and an equally intrepid mariachi band. They also sent a gay men's choir to sing love songs outside the home of Senator Jesse Helms, a politician infamous for his fierce denunciations of homosexuality. Sadly, Senator Helms wasn't at home when the choir called, but his wife came out of the house and thanked them for the music.

In between the stories in each show, the results of some unusual surveys of American public opinion specially commissioned by TV Nation would be announced. The polls results included the news that 39 per cent of Americans believed that guns were 'not as dangerous as they say'; that 29 per cent believed that Elvis Presley was right to shoot TV sets; and that
37 per cent agreed that while they would hate being British, they wouldn't mind having a British accent.

On September 9, 1995, the day after the last episode of TV Nation was broadcast in the USA, the show won one of the country's most prestigious broadcasting awards: the Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. Nevertheless, neither NBC nor Fox decided to commission another series. The main problem was a logistical one: TV Nation's in-depth investigations meant that each show took a month to create.

So TV Nation ended; but Moore would eventually return to television with an even harder-hitting show.

The Awful Truth

First broadcast in 1999 and 2000, The Awful Truth carried on from where TV Nation left off. It retained the magazine format of the earlier show, with a series of scathingly satirical items in each show. Even Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken made a comeback.

However, one key difference was that The Awful Truth went out on Channel 4 in the UK and Bravo in the USA. Both channels had a reputation for challenging the limits of acceptability in broadcasting, and Moore seized the opportunity to make his humour even darker and bolder. The Awful Truth didn't worry too much about being tasteful, but did take care to keep its humour pointed and powerful.

In one episode, Moore noted that George W. Bush and his brother Jeb, then the Governors of Texas and Florida respectively, both presided over states where an exceptionally high number of judicial executions were taking place. Moore suggested that perhaps the two brothers were having a private competition to see which of them could preside over the most legal killings, and reported on the 'contest' as if it were a sporting event. The Awful Truth even sent teams of cheerleaders to stand outside Texan and Floridan prisons when executions were taking place, cheering as George or Jeb notched up another 'score'.

Another item, broadcast near Christmas, began with Moore announcing that as it was the season of goodwill, he was going to make a friendly gesture towards the corporate world. He was sending a choir to sing Christmas carols at the headquarters of the giant tobacco company Philip Morris.

Naturally, there was a twist. The members of the 'choir' were all people who'd contracted throat cancer due to smoking and lost their larynxes. They 'sang' via electronic voice boxes.

Campaigning alongside Crackers was a 'Gay Team' who travelled across America to fight homophobia in a pink car dubbed 'The Sodommobile'. After one of their escapades, Moore correctly remarked: 'We'll never get back on NBC now'.

The Awful Truth entered a ficus plant as a candidate for a seat in the US Congress, arguing that the plant was more environmentally friendly and less corruptible than most human politicians. The show also sent a pimp to Congress to 'organise' some Congressmen, on the basis that the politicians were apparently as available for hire as the pimp's usual charges, but might 'sell themselves' more efficiently given real professional guidance.

One item on The Awful Truth probably saved a life. It focused on Chris Donahue, an American diabetic who had been told by doctors that he needed a pancreas transplant to save his life. Unfortunately, his health insurance company refused to pay for the operation.

The Awful Truth took Donahue to Florida's Palm Beach Post newspaper to write his own obituary. Moore then invited the insurance company to help their customer choose a coffin, and staged a funeral 'rehearsal' outside their offices. The pressure worked within a week. The company reversed their earlier decision and accepted the claim, paying for Donahue's operation. They also announced that they'd revised their policies on all claims for pancreas transplants.

One unusual feature of The Awful Truth was 'The British Minute'. Because of differences between the amount of advertising inserted into the show by Channel 4 in Britain and Bravo in America, Moore was obliged to provide an extra 60 seconds of content exclusively for UK transmission. Moore would announce the onset of 'The British Minute' during each show, and usually filled it by chatting directly to camera.

The Books

Downsize This! Random Threats From An Unarmed American (1996)

A highly entertaining, often bleakly funny collection of essays about the state of the American nation in the mid-1990s. Its contents include cut-out-and-swap 'Corporate Crook' trading cards, made to resemble the similar cards honouring sports heroes' achievements, but instead listing details of corporate CEOs' records in terms of American workers' jobs destroyed and vast personal salaries claimed.

There's also an illuminating chapter detailing the range of jobs carried out by the inmates of America's prisons in the mid-1990s. These included telemarketing, answering passengers' enquiries and booking flights for a major airline, and making circuit boards for leading computer manufacturers.

Some sections of Downsize This! may make uncomfortable reading even for those who broadly agree with Moore's liberal, anti-corporate agenda. One chapter is devoted to demanding greatly increased reparations from Germany for Holocaust survivors, another bitterly berates American trade unions for their alleged complicity with job-cutting employers, while a third sardonically proposes a
'Rodney King Commemorative Riot' - but with the disaffected citizens of Los Angeles this time attacking rich areas of LA instead of the poorer districts that were devastated during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Moore even thoughtfully provides a sketch map to help prospective participants find their way to Beverley Hills.

Despite its frequently edgy content, Downsize This! is a very funny book in which Moore often makes serious points via mischievous, mordant humour. One particularly entertaining chapter has Moore jokingly suggesting that the anti-abortion 'Right to Life' movement should campaign against male masturbation, since life could arguably be said to begin with the production of sperm rather than with conception. The books tells the story of how Moore had one of his staff call the National Right to Life Committee, a leading American anti-abortion pressure group, to put forward this argument. The NRLC's spokesman Christian Polking treated the call seriously and sympathetically.

Adventures In A TV Nation (1998)

Co-written by Moore and TV Nation producer Kathleen Glynn, Adventures In A TV Nation is a highly entertaining account of the making of the controversial but successful TV show. It's illustrated with copious photos from the making of the show, the song lyrics to the TV Nation anthems 'We Are All Corporations' and 'The Johns Of Justice', a TV Nation episode guide, and even the preliminary drawings that led to the creation of Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken.

One chapter gives details of the five items shot for TV Nation that network executives refused to broadcast in the USA (although all of these items were boldly aired in Britain by the BBC).

These included a segment in which a reporter was sent to a succession of shops to ask for small sized condoms. Bizarrely, NBC executives apparently felt that the item would particularly offend advertisers in the southern states of the USA. An unnamed NBC exectitive is quoted as telling Moore and Glynn: 'You cannot conjure up the image of a small penis on network television for a full seven minutes and expect people in the South to watch it.'

More seriously, both NBC and Fox apparently felt that any discussion of condoms was unacceptable in a show transmitted in 'family' viewing hours. Moore and Glynn argued that it would have educational value and might even save lives, but the network bosses were unmoved.

The TV Nation producers were also ordered by NBC to change the outcome of an item called 'The Health Care Olympics', which compared the health care systems of the USA, Canada and Cuba by following the fate of three patients with leg injuries as they sought treatment in the three nations. American TV sports presenters Bob Costas and Ahmad Rashad were brought in to commentate on the 'event' and assess the performance of the three 'teams' in terms of ease of access to care, quality of care delivered and the cost to the patient.

By all three criteria (especially cost) the US team performed worst. The Cuban team actually performed best overall, but TV Nation's producers were told that showing the communists winning on prime-time TV was politically unacceptable. Since the main point of the item was to highlight the deficiencies of American health care, Moore and Glynn compromised and grudgingly agreed to have the Canadians declared the 'winners' on the show.

In Adventures In A TV Nation, Moore and Glynn observe: 'It makes you wonder what else is "changed" on TV if something this insignificant cannot even make it on the air in its original form.' But the book makes it clear that the TV Nation team got plenty of other contentious material on the air uncensored, and had a lot of fun doing so.

Stupid White Men... and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! (2002)

Michael Moore had a lot of trouble getting Stupid White Men published. His American publishers, Harper Collins, initially demanded that Moore tone down the book. They particularly objected to its scathing criticisms of President Bush, arguing that such fierce attacks on the President were inappropriate in the political climate prevailing after September 11, 2001.

Moore refused to back down, and the publication of Stupid White Men was delayed for months. But when it finally reached the shops in the spring of 2002, the book that so worried its publishers became a publishing phenomenon.

Stupid White Men shot straight to the top of the New York Times' list of bestselling books. It was still on the chart a year later, and during that year it returned to the top of the best-sellers list on four separate occasions.

The book also sold strongly in the UK as an expensive imported hardback, and when a British paperback edition appeared in the summer of 2002 it became an instant smash hit. Stupid White Men topped the UK best-sellers list, and stayed high in the British book
in the months that followed. By April 2004 it had clocked up UK sales in excess of a million copies - an amazing popular success for a book primarily concerned with the politics of another country.

By then, Stupid White Men had been translated into 24 languages, and more than three million copies had been sold worldwide. The book topped the best-seller lists in Canada, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the Republic of Ireland as well as in the United States and the UK.

The book bitterly attacks the Bush administration right from its start. Chapter One, 'A Very American Coup', examines the machinations surrounding the hugely controversial 2000 US Presidential election. The second chapter is an open letter to President Bush4. It begins warmly, with the words 'You and I - we're like family', and the revelation that Bush's cousin Kevin Rafferty worked as a cameraman on his film
Roger & Me.

It then goes on to lambast Bush's record in office, and to ask Bush whether or not he's a functional illiterate, an alcoholic or a felon - questions which Moore backs up with some interesting observations about the President's past.

Subsequent chapters deliver damning verdicts on other aspects of contemporary American life. Moore explains what he feels is wrong with his homeland's education system, foreign policy, business ethics, race relations and penal policy, among other things. He is consistently scathing about the Bush administration, but a chapter entitled 'Democrats D.O.A.' delivers a similarly damning verdict on the US Democratic Party.

Though Moore's message may seem unpalatable to some, Stupid White Men is highly readable. Moore often makes his polemical points with bitter humour and anecdotes that highlight the human cost of the political policies he criticises. At the same time, Moore shows his seriousness by carefully listing his sources at the back of the book. The huge success of Stupid White Men suggests that many readers find this formula both entertaining and persuasive.

In February 2003, Stupid White Men was awarded the Best Book prize at the British Book Awards. It was the first year in which members of the UK public were allowed to take part in the process of choosing the winning book. In earlier years, the winners had been picked by a panel of people from the book industry, but Stupid White Men benefited from strong public support in a telephone poll.

Dude, Where's My Country? (2003)

After the runaway success of Stupid White Men, Moore followed up quickly with another book in the same vein. Dude, Where’s My Country? is a slimmer volume than its predecessor5 but it packs plenty of venom into its pages. Like its predecessor, the book tears into George W. Bush’s administration right from the start: the opening chapter asks a series of awkward questions about alleged business links between Bush’s family and that of Osama Bin Laden.

Dude... goes on to attack Bush’s justifications for the war in Iraq, and questions the whole concept of the ‘war on terror’, pointedly asking: ‘How exactly do you conduct a war on a noun?’ Moore warns of ever-increasing corporate control of all aspects of American society, and asks how a nation in which a majority of citizens support liberal positions in opinion polls has become so dominated by the right.

As usual with Moore, deadly serious subject matter is mixed with sharp satirical humour. In a chapter entitled ‘Jesus W. Christ’, Moore takes on the persona of a disgruntled God angry at Bush’s habit of claiming divine support for all his actions: ‘He was not supposed to be president. I... answered all your prayers and that guy Gore got the most votes. Like you, I did not count on the interference of any other supreme beings or supreme courts.’

Moore's 'God' goes on to reject some Americans' belief that their nation has a special relationship with Him, and denounces the phrase 'God Bless America': 'Do you think I keep making so many Chinese and Russians because I don't like them? ...What makes you think you get to be blessed and nobody else does? You don't hear anyone in Djibouti saying "God Bless Djibouti". I have never heard anyone utter the words "God Bless Botswana". They know better.'

In a chapter headed ‘How To Talk To Your Conservative Brother-In-Law’, Moore describes a section of the American electorate who he terms ‘RINOs’: Republicans In Name Only. According to Moore, there are millions who support many liberal positions on social issues yet vote Republican because they believe that a Republican government will benefit them financially. Moore suggests that liberals must first respect and understand them. He says: ‘What you will encounter in the conservative mind is fear. Fear of crime. Fear of enemies. Fear of change. Fear of people not exactly like them. And of course, fear of losing any money on anything.’

Moore points out that there are many of these fears that any reasonable-minded American could sympathise with: for instance, no-one wants to be a victim of crime. Moore then risks alienating some of his own supporters by listing areas in which he feels the American Left has been misguided, and should admit to making mistakes. He argues that ‘...vegetarianism is unhealthy...', that too many on the Left '...think the religious are superstitious 15th Century ignoramuses’ and that Nixon was more liberal than the last five presidents we’ve had.’

Moore suggests trying to win over conservatives by explaining how some things that liberals believe in can make or save money for them. For instance, giving employees health insurance and sick leave makes business sense because healthy workers are more productive, and those who are economically forced to work while ill may infect co-workers or make expensive mistakes. Taking better care of the environment would have economic benefits because the cost of treating American citizens whose health has been affected by air pollution has been estimated by the US government as between $40 billion and $50 billion, and productivity is lost because of sickness caused by pollution. Meanwhile, the cost to American taxpayers of cleaning up contaminated industrial sites is estimated at about $700 million per year. Cut pollution, argues Moore, and those related costs could also be cut.

Moore offers his thoughts on the 'War On Terror' in a chapter whose title gets straight to the point: 'How To Stop Terror? Stop Being Terrorists!' He admits that the US's first priority must be to capture Osama Bin Laden - who, he speculates, is probably ...back home in Saudi Arabia being protected by those who have been funding him...'

However, says Moore, a radical revision of American foreign policy should follow Bin Laden's capture. Moore urges that the United States should stop doing some of the things that he believes do most to cause resentment against America, such as supporting foreign dictators and helping to overthrow elected governments. He cites Chile, Indonesia and Guatemala as countries whose citizens have been forced '...to live under a US-sponsored dictatorship...'.

Moore also calls for America to provide much more aid to impoverished nations. He points out that an estimated 1.3 billion people are without safe drinking water, and asks: 'What if we vowed to provide clean drinking water for everyone on Earth within the next five years? And then we did it? How would we be thought of then? Who would want to kill us?'

He concludes by asking: '...What if we were known as the country that sought first to help people instead of first seeking to exploit them for their labour or their natural resources? What if we were known as the country that shared its incredible wealth - shared it even to the point where it might mean that we go without some of the luxuries we're accustomed to? How would the poor and desperate around the globe feel about us then? Wouldn't this reduce our chances of being victims of terrorist attacks? Wouldn't it be a better world to live in all round? Isn't it the right thing to do?'

Dude, Where's My Country? ends, naturally enough, with a call to its readers to do everything possible to ensure the removal of President Bush from office. Moore even names his ideal replacement: American TV personality Oprah Winfrey. Sadly for Moore, unlike some other showbiz figures, Ms Winfrey remains stubbornly reluctant to enter politics.

Published in October 2003, Dude, Where's My Country? topped the best-seller lists in both the United States and the UK. It was still on the New York Times' best-seller chart in April 2004.

Michael Moore Miscellany

In late 2002 Moore launched another new career. He became a stand-up comedian, with a series of performances at the Roundhouse theatre in north London that he described as 'one-and-a-half man shows' - the 'half a man' being George W. Bush. Moore's subject matter ranged from football to the Middle East conflict, and his style was typically confrontational. He caused some controversy with his observations about the behaviour of the passengers on the doomed aeroplanes involved in the events of September 11, 2001, but the shows received generally enthusiastic reviews.

Moore has made rock videos for two of America's leading political rock bands of recent years, Rage Against The Machine and System Of A Down.

The Moore-directed video for Rage Against The Machine's song 'Sleep Now In The Fire' depicted the band playing opposite the New York Stock Exchange. The lively crowd attracted by the video shoot on January 26, 2000 made Stock Exchange staff so nervous that the doors to the Exchange were locked in the middle of a working day. Police were called to stop the video shoot, and Moore was detained.

However, contrary to some reports, he was not formally arrested. Reporting the incident on his official website, Moore referred to '...the police detaining yours truly for an hour until I persuaded them to keep my 100 per cent no-arrest record intact.'

In April 2003, it was reported that Moore was working on a new documentary film with a working title of Fahrenheit 911. The title is an allusion to Fahrenheit 451, the classic Ray Bradbury sci-fi novel about repressive governments, as well as to the attacks on America on 11 September 2001. Moore explained that the film would investigate the alleged links between President George W. Bush's family and that of Osama Bin Laden, and show how the Bush administration had used the events of 11 September, 2001 to promote its own agenda.

The tagline for Fahrenheit 911 was reported to be 'The temperature when freedom burns'.

More Moore on BBCi

Here's a BBC Films 'Web Access' interview with Michael Moore, in which he answers questions submitted by BBCi users.

A BBC Four article on Michael Moore.

A collective entry on Michael Moore.

An in-depth 2002 BBC News profile of Michael Moore.

A BBC Films review of Bowling For Columbine.

A collective review of Dude, Where's My Country?.

1The magazine was named in honour of Mary Harris 'Mother' Jones, the pioneering American trade union organiser.2Far from being anti-Canadian, Moore is in fact a great admirer of the Canadian way of doing things, as many of his other works make clear. In Bowling For Columbine, he stresses the much lower rate of gun crime in Canada compared to the USA, and suggests that the higher levels of welfare provision in Canada may be a reason for this. 3Vodka, naturally.4Throughout Stupid White Men, Moore puts the word 'President' in quotes - a reflection of his belief that George W. Bush was never legitimately elected.5Its author was looking slimmer, too. At one point in Dude..., Moore boasts of having lost 50 pounds, but admits that he still needs to lose ...the other 50'.

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Infinite Improbability Drive

Infinite Improbability Drive

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