Michael Moore. A Rebel and his Counter-Rebels

Index

1. Introduction

2. Michael Moore – a short biography

3. Michael Moore and his two most recent outputs
3.1. Dude, Where’s My Country?
3.1.1. Plot
3.1.2. Author’s intention and how it is expressed
3.2. Fahrenheit 9/11
3.2.1. Plot
3.2.2. Author’s intention and how it is expressed
3.2.3. Some supposed attempts of deception
3.2.4. Distribution problems

4. Actions of his opponents
4.1. Celsius 41.11
4.2. Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man
4.3. Internet offers

5. Personal statement

6. Bibliography

1. Introduction

When on November 2nd in the year 2004 the world’s single left super-power’s citizens went to choose between incumbent George W. Bush and his challenger John F. Kerry to become the nation’s next president, the whole planet glanced excitedly at their TV in order to be informed as soon as possible about whom of the two would be the one to lead the United States of America in the forthcoming four years. Too much had been happening between 2000 and 2004, during the first period of the Bush administration in power. Events like the terror attacks on September 11th 2001, the resultant Afghanistan war and so-called war on terror and of course – most importantly – the invasion of Iraq which began in march 2003 and was suspected not to be waged due to the existence of Saddam’s mysterious “weapons of mass destruction”, but much more likely because of the country’s extensive oil fields, had been changing the world’s political consciousness and especially the view towards a western civilization that did not seem to stand for peace-keeping or democracy any more, as it was seen almost a whole century ago, but as a Goliath that was trying to raise a hegemony just to be able to fulfill his wishes no matter which non-allied country or people with a different culture suffered from this.

Yet it was not only abroad that vast forms of protest began to form themselves, but also in the U.S. One of this movement’s most polarizing phenomenons is meanwhile world-widely known and had not least co-motivated these developments in Europe and particularly in Germany: leftist writer, director and polemic Michael Moore.

As a vehement critic of his government’s policy, this man specially published a book and a film in the wider pre-election phase only with the goal of removing Bush from his presidency. This agitator, these two outputs and how his opponents try to prevent him from spreading his message shall be dealt with on the following pages.

2. Michael Moore – a short biography

Born in^[1] 1954 in a suburb of Flint, Michigan, called Davison, Moore grew up under the impression of his father and grandfather both working at General Motors; his mother was a secretary. An early touch with politics was attained through his uncle, who was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and was part of the famous Sitdown strike held against General Motors by its workers. Since he was born into a catholic family, he attended a Diocesan seminary when he was 14, afterwards went on to Davison High School and graduated in 1972. In the same year he made his first kind of active political experience when he got elected for a seat on the Davison school board which aimed the eventually successful firing of the school’s principal and vice principal. “Also of note is that Michael Moore is an Eagle Scout, the highest rank in Boy Scouting. For his Eagle Project, he filmed a documentary pointing out various safety hazards and issues within his community.”^[2] At the age of 22 Michael Moore founded an alternative weekly magazine, the Flint Voice, which was renamed in Michigan Voice after a short while. In 1986 he moved to California to work as an editor at political magazine Mother Jones. At the same time the Michigan Voice closed down. After five months he was fired because of his disapproval of an article about the Sandinista government in Nicaragua which he thought to be “unfairly critical”^[3]. As a result of being fired Moore received $58,000 from an out-of-court settlement after having “sued for wrongful dismissal”^[4]. The money was used to produce his first mainstream trademark-Moore-style award-winning documentary, Roger And Me.

Michael Moore is married to 46-year old Kathleen Glynn. Their daughter Natalie was born in 1981.

Other known works by him are the films The Big One (1997) and the Oscar-winning anti-gun documentary Bowling For Columbine (2002) and his two predecessor-books Downsize This! (1996) and the famous number one best-seller Stupid White Men (2001). For television he created the two series TV Nation and The Awful Truth which both won an Emmy.

3. Michael Moore and his two most recent outputs

As said in the introduction, Moore published two works directly aiming to get Bush out of power in the 2004 presidential election: in October 2003 his book Dude, Where’s My Country? reached the bookstores and in 2004 his documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 had general release in the United States and Canada on June 25th, just four months and a week before the election.

3.1. Dude, Where’s My Country?

3.1.1. Plot

The book^[5] is structured in eleven main chapters, lead by an introduction and followed by a reference to notes and sources, acknowledgments and a short section about the author. It is continuously held in a satiric tone which starts even before the table of contents on the very first page with an ironic text headlined by “APPROVED”^[6] where Moore lets “Tom Ridge, Secretary of the Homeland [and] George W. Bush, Commander in Chief of the Fatherland”^[7] ensure that “[t]his book has been approved by the Department of Homeland Security. It contains no seditious acts or acts of treason. Each word has been examined and analyzed by a team of terrorism experts to insure that it gives neither aid nor comfort to The Enemy.”^[8] Hereby the author makes an allusion to the USA Patriot Act that has been passed by the Bush administration after the attacks of September 11th in order to complicate it for potential terrorists to enter the country or live there as so-called sleepers until committing an assault.

The first chapter is called “7 Questions for George of Arabia”^[9] and consequently consists of seven questions (rather claims) concerning the relationship between the Bushes and the bin Laden family, their connection to the Saudi royal family, a presumption of Saudi Arabia being in charge of September 11th instead of bin Laden and the Taliban, the statement that members of the bin Laden family were flown out of the U.S. shortly after the attacks without having been investigated by the FBI, a question why the Second Amendment is also valid for potential evildoers, the question whether George W. Bush knew that when he was “(…) governor of Texas, the Taliban travelled to Texas to meet with your oil and gas company friends”^[10] and finally what the look on the president’s face was when he heard of the terror assaults while reading to an elementary class in Sarasota, Florida.

“Home of the Whopper” is chapter two’s ajar-at-a big fast food company-title in which ten different menu names stand for ten lies told by Bush and his crew in the fore field of the Iraq war, e.g., “ #3 Whopper with Bacon: ‘Iraq has ties to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda!’”^[11] Or “#10 Triple Whopper, Biggie Size: ‘We didn’t lie. And we’re not lying now to cover up the lies we told you before.’”^[12] Each of these lies is contradicted by Moore with reference to independent media sources or historical background knowledge.

In the third chapter “Oil’s Well That Ends Well”^[13] the author narrates a fictional dream in which he has had a conversation with his great-grand-daughter, Anne Coulter Moore, in the year 2054. The little girl asks him about how our civilization functioned and her great-grandfather tells her how much easier it was then to make a living because there was still enough oil and a working environment around. But since no one cared about the oil an the environment, between 2005 and 2015 living conditions got worse and even more wars about natural resources were fought so that a big dying among humankind took place and only few managed to survive. Although it is all written in a funny style with some jokes here and there a flashback is created that shall be an impulse to think about current habits.

The next chapter is: “The United States of BOO!”^[14] It deals with the safety hysteria developed by the government: “According to the Bush administration, and the stories they have planted in the media, the terrorists are everywhere. Each day seems to bring a new warning. A new alert! A new threat!”^[15] Furthermore, Moore encounters a few incidents which were only possible because of this policy, for example when “(…) an alert Oklahoma pump attendant called authorities when a group pulled in with two vans and an equipment truck. Within minutes, police and FBI had surrounded, with guns drawn, the rock band Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Released after hours of questioning, singer Efrim Menuck told Seattle Weekly, ‘We’re just lucky we’re nice white kids from Canada.’”^[16]

Chapter 5 is named, “How to Stop Terrorism? Stop Being Terrorists!”^[17] Here Michael Moore tells the reader to listen to his 18-points-program for homeland security instead of Bush’s one, containing sarcastic advice like, “4. When attempting to prop up a Latin American dictator, try to do it without killing too many nuns or archbishops”^[18], “5. When attempting to assassinate the president of Cuba, make sure you get the right kind of exploding cigars”^[19] or “17. Start bombing the hell out of people with WHITE skin”^[20] etc.

In “Jesus W. Christ”^[21], the sixth chapter, the author pretends to be God and makes fun of Bush’s displayed Christianity by quoting some of his sentences concerning faith. He gives orders by summing up a few Ten-Commandment-like phrases, “6. (…) My little-known Eleventh Commandment? Keep your religious convictions to your own damn selves.”^[22]

Within chapter seven, “Horatio Alger Must Die”^[23], Moore criticises the mentality of U.S. CEOs, whom he depicts as greedy “corporate mujahedeen”^[24]. He suggests them to exploit the country and its citizens and read out one day

“(…) the Declaration of the Corporate States of America.

‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women and their underaged children are created equally to serve the Corporation, to provide its labor without question, to accept whatever remuneration without complaint, and to consume its products without thought. In turn, the Corporation will provide for the common good, secure the defense of the nation, and receive the bulk of the taxes taken from the people…’”^[25]

[...]

^[1] cp. Wikipedia: MM

^[2] Wikipedia: MM

^[3] Wikipedia: MM

^[4] Wikipedia: MM

^[5] cp. DwimC 2003

^[6] DwimC 2003, very first page

^[7] DwimC 2003, very first page

^[8] DwimC 2003, very first page

^[9] DwimC 2003, p. 1

^[10] DwimC 2003, p. 26

^[11] DwimC 2003, p. 53

^[12] DwimC 2003, p. 81

^[13] DwimC 2003, p. 85

^[14] DwimC 2003, p. 95

^[15] DwimC 2003, p. 98

^[16] DwimC 2003, p. 99

^[17] DwimC 2003, p. 119

^[18] DwimC 2003, p. 120

^[19] DwimC 2003, p. 121

^[20] DwimC 2003, p. 126

^[21] DwimC 2003, p. 129

^[22] DwimC 2003, p. 134

^[23] DwimC 2003, p. 137

^[24] DwimC 2003, p. 137

^[25] DwimC 2003, p. 138