Michael Moore: Can You Forgive Him?

posted by Damozel | Since Sicko hit the screens, Moore is fast becoming to health care debate what Gore has been to the discussion of climate change. In a post at Pandagon today, Amanda Marcotte argues that "hating on Michael Moore is a worn-out cliche"---for liberals, she means, since it's unlikely that conservatives are ever likely to see the point of him.   

I think Marcotte is right and that it's time for Democrats to cease praising Moore---if they praise him at all---only with faint damns or dismissing him altogether as too partisan to be credible..(Pandagon)  I think she's also right that a lot of people who secretly agree with him affect to scorn him so as not to be dismissed as similarly partisan.  .(Pandagon)   He deserves better, at least from people who share his views.

But cliche or not,  I know for a fact why a lot of Democrats I know have a long-standing grudge against Michale Moore.   When one of my friends recently remarked (grudgingly) that "Sicko is an important film," she added, "but I'll never forgive him for that open letter to Al Gore in 2000."  And I'd hazard a guess that even Dems who didn't read the 2000 letter or remember what it said still remember they don't like him.  And Fahrenheit 911 might have mollified them to some extent, but it also abraded some of those still unhealed wounds.

THE BASIS FOR THE LIBERAL GRUDGE AGAINST MOORE.  Presenting the facts in evidence:  Exhibit  A:  "An Open Letter to Al Gore," written by Moore on October 30, 2000, immediately before the  2000 presidential election.

Remember?  That was the election 6 1/2 years ago which some now say the Republicans stole and which bitter Dems with long memories say Nader spoiled.  Assuming arguendo that the aforesaid bitter Dems are right, Nader had some loud, energetic assistance, even up to one week before the fateful day:  Consider the following.  It is fraught with irony.

Look, Al, you have screwed up -- big time. By now, you should have sent that smirking idiot back to Texas.... You should have wiped the floor with him during the three debates. But you didn't.... There is something I think you don't understand. You don't realize that it's YOU and the Democrats that are responsible for the possibility of Bush winning next Tuesday....

Instead of...owning up to your mistakes, you and your people are blaming some rumpled senior citizen lawyer who is only following his conscience....Ralph Nader has devoted his entire life to making the rest of our lives better. Because of him we have the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA, OSHA, airbags and seatbelts, the Freedom of Information Act -- the list goes on and on. What have YOU done to save a few million lives?

...You and your "New Democrats" abandoned the poor, the working class, and the middle class....You and the Democrats have created the monster know as "W"...

I want Ralph Nader to get millions of votes on Tuesday. I have seen the response to Ralph at numerous huge rallies across the country. There is a progressive movement afoot in America and it needs to explode into a majority movement -- beginning now, not four years from now.... I will not feel one iota of guilt should you screw up and lose on Tuesday. The blame I do share is that I voted for you and Bill in 1992.... (MichaelMoore.com)(emphasis mine for the sake of the ironies)

The joke's on Moore and those so-called progressives who voted along with him.  Nader did attract a lot of votes, everything considered; it's quite possible that those votes prevented Gore from prevailing; and, if so---I can't say for certain it's the case, but if so--- we're still living with the outcome six and a half years later. 

The Moore letter was in response to a request from Gore's campaign for help in the eleventh hour of that fatal (for the free world, the victims of Katrina, and for thousands of dead American troops and Iraqui civilians) election.  PS.  Moore didn't..

[N]ow your people are calling ME, asking ME to do the job YOU'VE failed to do! Jeez, I've got enough on my plate these days...-- and now I'm supposed to save YOU? Unbelievable!  (MichaelMoore.com)

It's really no wonder that some Dems were a bit miffed (to put it mildly) with Moore.  But to be fair, those who were miffed, and who remain so, may not have noticed then or later that Moore was---as he so often is---right on the essentials but a bit too destructively extreme in his response to them. 

For example, his open letter to Gore Moore points out certain facts about Gore that I, a Gore-lover always, had simply decided to ignore.

Your support for NAFTA has cost hundreds of thousands of people -- your very supporters -- their jobs. In my hometown of Flint, 32,000 GM jobs have been lost since you and Clinton took office. That's 5,000 MORE GM jobs than were lost there during the ENTIRE 12 years of Reagan/Bush!...There were more layoffs in the U.S. last year than in any year in the past decade. There were more family bankruptcies filed last year than any year in our history. The average family carries more personal debt now than any time since the Great Depression.... Has it crossed your mind why the majority of the "swing states" where the election is too close to call are in the rust belt that begins in Missouri and extends to Pennsylvania?...

You can howl all you want about how "Bush will appoint Supreme Court justices like Scalia and Clarence Thomas." But we the people know who voted to PUT that right-wing nut Antonin Scalia on the court. It was YOU, Al Gore, the senator from Tennessee who stood up and voted "YEA!" the day Scalia was confirmed in the Senate! If we ever lose Roe v. Wade, YOU are the one with the blood on your hands, and those of us, including Ralph Nader, who fought the Scalia nomination, will never forget the jeopardy you and your fellow Democrats put women in with that vote....For the love of God, do NOT have the audacity to come at us now with your scare tactics about how women may lose the right to chose. You have no credibility.  (MichaelMoore.com).

Trenchant, but also true, at least as regards some of the ways in which Gore failed a large number of people who ought to have been his supporters, but couldn't bring themselves to be.     .

And I don't really believe for a minute that any eleventh hour action by Michael Moore would have changed the outcome of that election.  By that time, I think, the support for Nader among those who counted themselves among his base (who might have included some libertarians as well as progressives, I imagine) would have solidified.  A last minute plea on Gore's behalf would have been most unlikely to change the outcome, particularly with KH and JB on the case here in Florida.   

But of course there's also this, which predated the 2000 election by several months, during a period when perhaps common sense and a truer view of the sharp differences between Gore and Bush would have perhaps---remember, I'm looking at it from the point of view of people who are still bitter, which I hope I am not---just perhaps, have made a difference to the outcome.  Exhibit B: "Bush and Gore Make Me Wanna Ralph."  This long screed sets forth Moore's reasons why the non-voting and uncommitted majority of Americans should be voting for Nader.  I don't know whether it had this or any effect, truly; again, to be fair, and as Moore points out, Gore's own political choices were the reasons progressives wouldn't get behind him in 2000 (and the same thing is happening now in 2007 with Hillary Clinton).  After all, Moore's wasn't the only resounding voice raised against Al Gore back before 9-11 and Al Gores accession to sainthood in the wake of An Inconvenient Truth.

So anyway, it's important to keep these letters of Moore's letters in context, even while boggling over the heavy irony visible now in 20/20 hindsight.  The July letter starts off with a disclaimer:  If you've decided on a candidate, it says, stop reading; the letter is not for you.  (MichaelMoore.com)  Its purpose wasn't to sway Gore-supporters to vote for Nader.   There and elsewhere, Moore concedes that Gore is a nice man if he's the sort of nice man you like---a concession somewhat at odds with the title---but then sets out the reasons why people who aren't satisfied with Bush and Gore should follow him in voting for Nader.

So, to you brave voter-resisters, I say congratulations on your act of civic disobedience!  I joined you this primary season and refused to go along with this charade of  "choice."  Nearly 80% of those of us of voting age - over 160 million Americans - staged a sit-in on our living room couches during this year's primaries.  THAT is the great untold story of this election year....

Now that we have made our presence known (you all don't mind me speaking for us, do you?  Good.  In fact, I'll just assume the currently-vacant mantle of this majority party and serve as your leader until you say otherwise...), it is time to find a way that says, loudly and clearly, just how mad as hell we are and how we are not going to take it anymore.  We need to find a way where our vote screams "None of the Above!"...

So, for those of you who weren't going to vote anyway, well...what if you actually did?

"You wanna tell me there's a choice here between two guys who both support NAFTA, WTO, the death penalty, the Cuban embargo, increased Pentagon spending, sleazy HMOs, greedy hospital chains, 250 million guns in our homes, more bombing of Iraq, the rich getting richer and the rest of us declaring bankruptcy?"...

Not me....I'm voting for Ralph Nader....

I am not writing these words lightly.  I am hoping to sound a siren and rally the majority who, for good reason, have given up - but might just have it in them to find the will for one last fight against the bastards.

Can Ralph win?  Well, stranger things have happened in the past decade....

Ralph already has between 7% and 10% in the polls - before he's done any serious campaigning.  He's gone from 3% to 8% in my home state of Michigan.  These are amazing numbers and the pundits and lobbyists and Republicrats are running scared.  ...

If you are in the Non-Voting majority and want to let 'em all have it, if you want to get our country back in our hands...well, if even half of you show up and vote November 7 then you won't be held responsible for Bush winning the White House.

In fact, you won't be held responsible for putting Gore in the White House, either....

PS. Come to think of it, Democrats should be on their knees thanking Ralph for running. Rather than taking votes from Gore, Ralph's going to be the one responsible for turning the House back over to the Democrats....

The Democrats are only six seats short of regaining control of the House.  Ralph Nader will be the reason the Democrats get the House back for the first time since Newt's Contract on America in 1994....

PPS.  If you're still worried this letter might convince a weak-kneed Gore voter to flip over to Nader - and thus lead to President George W. stacking the Supreme Court to make abortion illegal, well, it's all a bunch of hooey. Please read my latest grassroots.com column entitled, "I Ain't Fallin for That One Again.".... (emphasis mine once again and for the same reason; link in original) (MichaelMoore.com) 

But before you laugh too brayingly or subside back into deep bitterness,  I'd like to point out that  Moore made some points amid all the tub-thumping that a lot of  Democrats I know who still are angry with him probably agree with now, even if they didn't then.

...Corporate America has merged and morphed itself to such an extent that just a handful of companies now call all the shots.  They own Congress.  They own us.... In order to keep our jobs we have had to give up decent health care, the 8-hour day (and time with our kids), the security that we'll even have a job next year, and any unwillingness we may have to compete with a 14-year old Indonesian girl who gets a dollar a day.

And how frightening (and great) is it that the last place we can freely try to inform and communicate with each other is on this very Web?   Six companies run by six men control the majority of the news we now get from newspapers, television, radio and the Internet.  One out of every two books is bought at a bookstore owned by one of only two companies. Is it safe in a "free society" to have the sources of our information and mass communication in the hands of just a few wealthy men who have a VESTED interest in keeping us as stupid as possible - or at least in keeping us thinking like them so that we vote for THEIR candidates?

I fear the cement on this new oligarchy of power is quickly drying, and when it is finished hardening, we are finished.  The democracy, the one that's supposed to be of, by, and for the people, will cease to exist.

So:  Moore, often prescient with respect to issues of concern to liberals, merely went off on what we'll call an unfortunate tangent at a critical juncture in American history, but he wasn't the only one who did.  I love Gore as noted, but not blindly, and the truth is that he didn't do a good job of selling himself to progressives, who learned too late and through harsh experience that an unsatisfactory (for progressives), Democrat is always way better for them than his or her Republican counterpart.  (Let's hope they remember this in 2007, now that Nader is contemplating yet another run; after all, in 2004, Jeff Cohen of Common Dreams   felt it necessary to remind them that a vote for Nader would hurt Kerry and not Bush).

MOORE AS POLEMICIST. Some liberals don't care for Moore's way of getting his points across.  I certainly find that the bombastic style of the two "open letters" still sets my teeth on edge.  And he seems from time to time to place his guesses about facts (or their meaning) on precisely the same level as the facts that he can document, a point I'll come back to. 

He's been accused of distorting  the truth.  The fleeing-Saudis vignette in Fahrenheit 911 made a lot of people, especially the Saudi government, furious.   In 2004, a member of the Saudi Royal family, Prince Turki al-Faisal, "the Saudi Arabian ambassador to London and a half-brother of Crown Prince Abdullah,"  gave an interview to The Telegraph in which he "lambasted" Moore for "twisting the truth."  (The Telegraph)

Because Moore had not thoroughly researched the allegations levelled against Saudi Arabia, Prince Turki said that Fahrenheit 9/11 is 'grossly unfair' to the Saudis.

In his film, Moore claims that the Bush administration helped a number of Saudi princes and members of the bin Laden family to flee the United States immediately after the attacks at a time when American air space had been closed to all commercial air traffic. Moore implies that the Saudis were smuggled out of the country to cover up their involvement in the terror attacks.

Prince Turki said these claims have now been completely refuted in the report compiled by the US commission of inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, which was published at the end of last month....

Prince Turki said there was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the decision to fly home a number of prominent Saudis in the days following the attacks.

'They were allowed to leave because everyone recognised that anyone with the name bin Laden might have a hard time with the American public after the terror attacks,' he said.

Far from assisting al-Qa'eda, Prince Turki said that the Saudis thought they were the most likely target of a devastating terrorist attack by bin Laden's organisation, and the country had been placed on its highest state of alert since the summer of 2001.

(The Telegraph; emphasis mine;  links in original)

I don't remember what I thought while actually watching the film, but I took away the impression that Moore was making rather a different point:  the connection between American interests in Saudi Arabia and the organization's hatred of Americans....though maybe that was some other progressive's explanation; I'm really not sure.

The Telegraph interview goes on to say:

In a section headed 'Flights of Saudi Nationals Leaving the United States', the report found 'no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001'. The report also concludes that it found no evidence of political interference by the White House, and states that those Saudis who did leave the US on charter flights in the days following the attacks had been thoroughly vetted by FBI agents....(The Telegraph)

Clearly, there have been differences of opinion about whether any planes were allowed to leave before national airspace was reopened.  (The Washington Post) "The U.S. government had allowed, before commercial airspace was reopened, at least one domestic flight for Saudis who had feared for their safety, [Senator Frank]  Lautenberg's [D-NJ] staff said." (The Washington Post)  And now the whole fleeing-Saudis issue is suddenly receiving attention again (e.g., The Raw Story; WorldNet.Daily;  TruthOut).  I have no idea whether these new allegations are true or untrue---I find them difficult to believe perhaps because I don't wish to believe them-- but that the issue is still coming up indicates that Moore's research was better than we guessed or that he's a better guesser than anyone imagined. 

YES, IT IS TIME TO STOP HATING ON MICHAEL MOORE. Speaking for myself, I certainly feel no bitterness toward Moore or Gore or any person in my own party or on my own side of the political spectrum for the outcome of the 2000 election.  Also I'm not good at "hating on" anyone, even---yes; I admit it---W. 

And I think Marcotte and Ezra Klein are completely correct in their assessment of Moore's importance to public debate.  I also think that they are right in their assessment of his work, which is far more shaded and nuanced and much deeper than Moore himself.  I also realize that this sounds like Mark Twain's quip, "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." But really, it's unfortunate that Moore has such a tendency to insert himself and his opinions into the facts he presents.  To borrow from Dorothy Parker, he's his own King Charles' head, always popping up between the facts with his inferences, implications, intuitions, and lucky guesses.

He makes documentaries in the same style in which political bloggers, even prominent ones, blog:  you can't always separate the facts from the polemic and that's sort of the point:  to persuade as well as to inform.  His documentaries aren't the old school sort of documentary that pretends to objectivity; he makes no pretense at all.  Which, when you think about it, is less much dangerous and more honest.  At least he raises the questions.

And maybe we should give him props for putting his views out there so that the information he has, such as it is, becomes a part of the public debate.  I've never bought the notion that he's the black-and-white thinker he's so often accused of being.  As  Marcotte says:

[T]he idea that Moore doesn'€™t paint in gray is more a product of conservative-fueled revisionism than of remembering Moore’s movies accurately, because Bowling for Columbine was a rather complex look at the place of violence in the American character. It’s remembered as an anti-gun control screed, but seriously, watch it again. It’s anything but—if you’ll remember, he even noted that Canada has lax gun control like the U.S., but nowhere near the violence. The movie ended up gently condemning the liberal affection for gun control a a solution to our violence problems. And in a short period of time, he managed to point to a large number of factors that feed our violence-driven culture....

I got the impression watching the movie that Moore probably did set out to make a movie promoting gun control and then ended up, in the course of his research, realizing that gun control was a band-aid solution to a much deeper problem. While he still gave gun nuts hell—which they totally deserve for their resistance to even common sense measures that fall far short of interfering with legitimate gun trade—he also skewered the black-and-white thinking that posits that gun control is the solution to the problem. (Pandagon)

Exactly.  And Bowling for Columbine strikes me as particularly prescient when I consider the Virginia Tech massacre and the "dialogue," if you want to call it that, which ensued.

It's also true that Moore is mistakenly portrayed as a black-and-white thinker; or, I should say, that his documentaries reflect such thinking.  In his review of Sicko, Ezra Klein (in a passage also quoted by Marcotte) says:

[T]he Michael Moore oeuvre...has always been more complex and incisive than either critics or supporters gave him credit for. Moore has routinely explored the dark edges of the country that don't fit with his, or our, conception of what America is. Roger and Me, his breakthrough film on the decline of American manufacturing and the abandonment of Rust Belt economies, asked how we could allow a once-proud city like Flint, Michigan, to collapse in on itself, and how we could permit those most culpable to blithely ignore its demise. Bowling for Columbine was about our casual acceptance of violence and fear as permanent residents in our towns and neighborhoods.  And Fahrenheit 9/11 was about our peculiar willingness to tacitly accept our leaders' relentless dishonesty.(The American Prospect) 

Of Sicko, he writes:

Every story, every tale, every vignette asks the same question: "Who are we?" Who are we that our fellow citizens have to decide which fingers they'll pay to get reattached? Who are we that our hospitals push the ill and indigent into cabs, and drop them off, disoriented and clad in a paper-thin gown, on skid row? Who are we that we let insurers deny coverage to our neighbors because they are too tall, or have too many seasonal allergies? Who are we that we don't guarantee paid sick leave, or vacations, or child care, leaving that all instead to the whims of employers? And most of all, who are we to have let national pride blind us to these better alternatives, and let moneyed interests and powerful lobbies construct a country that best serves their needs rather than ours?

It is possible, of course, that Americans will see this movie and disagree with its implications.... But Moore clearly doesn't believe that. This is not a movie of arguments, but of examples -- of practices Moore thinks more humane, and more in accordance with his countrymen's preferences. In that way, his critique of America is, itself, dependent on a glittering view of the country. In the end, he is an idealist, and a patriot -- confident that if he can just remind us of the forgotten America, it will be forgotten no more. (The American Prospect) 

Again:  exactly.  Moore isn't  a black-and-white thinker, a cynic, a naysayer, a nattering nabob of negativism---in short, he's not at all like the cliche version of a dedicated progressive---he is, in fact, a cock-eyed optimist who still believes that progress is still possible.  He's someone still capable of enthusiasm (which is how he goes awry when he does go awry).  Even his support for Nader, however misguided it might look after six and a half years of Bush, was all about his enthusiasm and his belief that Americans want something better for themselves and for other Americans than we've had:

The majority of Americans want REAL health insurance, a living wage, a chance to be represented by a union, less money wasted on the Pentagon, and no one wants to wear clothes made by a 12-year old in an Asian "free trade" sweatshop. If the media and you hadn't just woken up to the Nader campaign, if you had welcomed him into the debates, we all would have been discussing THESE issues months ago -- and you would have quickly learned how Americans feel about them. (MichaelMoore.com)

Not having Moore's enthusiasm or optimism, I can't say I agree that this really reflected the majority view in 2000, but perhaps it might become their view if people like Moore point out the alternatives.  At any rate, it seems to me that liberals ought to honor him for the risks he takes so the rest of us won't have to and for asking the questions that people who have already given up on the notion of progress won't.  Running down Michael Moore isn't just a cliche; it's--perhaps---just a little ungrateful.

What do you think?  Can you forgive him?  Or have you already?  Or are you---no offense---a Republican?  Or from PETA?*

SOURCES

LINKED, CITED, OR QUOTED

CURRENT

• Amanda Marcotte,Hating on Michael Moore is a worn-out cliche  (Pandagon)
• Ezra Klein, Why Michael Moore is Good for Your Health (The American Prospect)
• Bin Laden May Have Arranged Family's US Exit (The Raw Story)
• Did Osama Charter Flight Out of U.S. After 911?  (WorldNet.Daily)
• FBI's 9/11 Saudi Flight Documents Released (TruthOut)
  
• Nader Ponders Another Run (The Drudge Report)
• PETA blasts Michael Moore for eating meat (MSNBC)

BACK STORY

• CNN, Massacre at Virginia Tech (2007)
• Jeff Cohen, A Progressive Response to the Nader Campaign (Common Dreams) (May 2004)
• Saudi royal family lambasts Michael Moore for twisting the truth in his 9/11 film (The Telegraph) (January 2004)
• Plane Carried 13 Bin Ladens (The Washington Post) (July 2004)
• Moore, An Open Letter from Moore to Gore (MichaelMoore.com) (October 2000)
  Moore, Bush and Gore Make Me Wanna Ralph (MichaelMoore.com) (July 2000)