Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man

by Hardy, David T.; Clarke, Jason

• ISBN13: 9780060763954
• ISBN10: 0060763957
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-06-09
• Publisher: Regan Books

Summary

Watching Michael Moore in action-passing off manipulating facts in Bowling for Columbine , spinning statistics in Stupid White Men and Dude, Where's My Country? , shamelessly grandstanding at the Academy Awards, and epitomizing the hypocrisy he's made a king's fortune railing against-has spurred authors David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke to take action into their own hands. In Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man , Hardy and Clarke dish it back hard to the fervent prophet of the far left, turning a careful eye on Moore's use of camera tricks and publicity ploys to present his own version of the truth. Postwar documentarians gave us the documentary, Rob Reiner gave us the mockumentary, and Moore initiated a third genre, the crockumentary. How, they ask, does Moore pull off a proletarian, "man-of-the-people" image so at odds with his lifestyle as a fabulously wealthy Manhattanite? And how large of an impact do his incendiary, ill-founded polemics have on the growing community that follows him with near-religious devotion? Loaded with well-researched, solidly reasoned arguments, and laced with irreverent wit, Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man fires back at one of the left's biggest targets-politically and literally.

Author Biography

After ten years of service as an attorney with the U.S. Department of the Interior in Washington, D.C., David T. Hardy returned to Tucson, Arizona, where he has handled everything from death penalty appeals to First Amendment cases. He is the creator of Mooreexposed.com. Jason Clarke has been at different times a telemarketer, proofreader, and an unemployed American. He is currently a website developer and writer living in New England. He founded Moorelies.com following the 2003 Academy Awards, and has since become one of the loudest voices answering Michael Moore's every public outburst.

Table of Contents

An Open Letter to Michael Moore	p. 5
The Prophet of the Left Is Never Right	p. 13
First Offense: Roger & Me	p. 17
"Michael Moore, Humbug,"	p. 29
Stupid White Men: The Gospel According to Michael	p. 37
"America's Left Surrenders Itself to the Giant Sulk,"	p. 59
Searching for Truth in Bowling for Columbine	p. 65
"The Awful Truth? It's a Crock"	p. 97
"Questioning the Documentary"	p. 103
Moore Money	p. 117
Michael Moore's Last Days in Office	p. 123
Dude, Where's Your Integrity?	p. 127
"Michael Moore's Truth Problem"	p. 143
And the Oscar for Acting Out Goes To ...	p. 151
Fahrenheit 666: Truth Goes to Hell in a Handbasket	p. 165
Moore and Terrorism	p. 181
Moore Stories	p. 189
Closing Thoughts	p. 199
Notes and Sources	p. 209
Acknowledgments	p. 243
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man

An Open Letter to Michael Moore

Dear Mike,

Here we are again, a year or so later.

What, you don't remember us? We understand how wemight've slipped your mind -- what with your hectic schedulecomposing wildly arrogant letters to presidents and otherpeople who actually do things for a living. Or touring Europeto preach resentment of the United States (before jettingback to enjoy the good life here). And, of course, there's thesignificant amount of time you must spend laughing all theway to the bank.

But we're your "wacko attackos," as you've so affectionatelydubbed us. We're among the many who've been keepingan eye on you -- and piping up -- over the years. And well, wethought you deserved a response to the many unanswered lettersyou've sent to the high and mighty ... so here goes.

It all started in March 2003 as we were sitting in ourrespective homes on opposite ends of the country. Whilewatching the Academy Awards, we saw you take the stage toaccept the Best Documentary Feature award for Bowling for Columbine. And like many of the millions of Americans whohad also tuned in, we were disgusted and appalled by yourshamelessly self-aggrandizing and ironic acceptance speech.

Everyone was waiting for you to thank your team and family,to share the limelight for a moment. But you didn't have itin you. "We live in fictitious times," you bellowed from thestage, knowing that it would make the moment, and indeed theentire ceremony, forever about Mike. Then you summarizedyour political views: "We live in the time where we have fictitiouselection results that elect a fictitious president. We live ina time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitiousreasons. Whether it is the fictition [sic] of duct tape or the fictitionof orange alerts, we are against this war, Mr. Bush!Shame on you, Mr. Bush! Shame on you!"

The reaction to your calculated "outburst" -- just one episodein a long line from your factory of carefully plottedspontaneity -- was immediate and irate, beginning with theaudience you addressed. You were roundly and quicklyshooed from the stage. This must have been an especiallydifficult pill for you to swallow, given that you were surrounded,in large part, by your ideological peers. But you hadmade a foolish, grandiose mistake: You imagined that a fewpolite handshakes and back pats from L.A. liberals gave youcarte blanche to make a spectacle of yourself as a grandstanding,blathering, leftist idiot. Understand, Mike: Itwasn't that the audience thought your views were wrong. Howmany Bush supporters and war hawks were there in that Hollywoodaudience, anyway? It isn't about politics. It's aboutbeing a pompous ass.

Outside the Kodak Theater, across the rest of the country,the thundering dismissal of your screed was amplified manytimes over in offices, at family dinner tables, and around bars.

Enter our web sites -- Moorelies.com and Mooreexposed.com.Just two small examples of the many Internet sites where youcan find highly critical analyses of your award-winning "documentary," Bowling for Columbine.

Thanks to the Internet, the steady stream of insight intothe true nature of your work began to pass effortlessly betweenthe mainstream and the underground, between mediabig shots and regular folks who were sick and tired of standingby while your legend grew unchecked. Seemingly overnight,conventional wisdom about you came under question for thefirst time. No longer the media darling of your Roger & Medays, now much of the coverage about you became more accurate -- and thus more angry.

You weren't about to take a hint though.

Instead, your reaction was to dismiss us all -- and withmalice. You labeled an entire movement looking critically atyour work as "wacko attackos," and rather than address ourcharges, you dismissed us out of hand as "henchmen" of thepresident or tools of the right wing.

We can get over the almost hilarious paranoia reflected byyour response. See, Mike, after the years together, we're awareof the well-worn pattern: People organize and present factsthat expose the fallacies of your work, and you reply by characterizingthem as "henchmen" and "wackos," whether in interviews,speeches, or on your web site.

The pattern since last year's Oscars is only a heightenedversion of your longtime modus operandi. You've been loudlycondemning a long line of your critics for quite some timenow, in exactly the same way, since your Mother Jones daysin the mid-1980s. You're the King of Deflection andalways have been, no matter how long the chorus of criticismslast.

And while your true nature has been revealed severaltimes over your career, like a Democrat caught in a sex scandal,you continue to come back into vogue, stronger thanever. By now, of course, you've got millions on hand (in bothcash and acolytes) to keep you afloat.

With your debut film, 1989's Roger & Me -- a comedic lookat the downfall of your hometown -- you were savaged by twoof film's most respected critics, Harlan Jacobson and PaulineKael, but it was too late. By the time your misleading editingof the movie was exposed, you were already too deeply insulatedby a wave of positive press to suffer any real damage.That didn't curb your reaction (or should we say reflex?) andyou were soon shrilly accusing your critics of being part of aGeneral Motors (GM) conspiracy against you.

In 1992, you survived the critical drubbing of your followupmovie, Pets or Meat -- which was dismissed as a short andunoriginal rehash of Roger & Me -- and you even managed torefrain from lashing out at anybody for it. We'll chalk up thesilence on your part to a sophomore slump.

It wasn't long before you got your wind back. Your propensityfor altering reality served you well in your break into TV.Of course, you had to go to work for NBC, and then FoxBroadcasting -- two of the world's largest corporate mediaconglomerates -- but you seemed oddly unperturbed by thehypocrisy. Had you forgotten so quickly that rallying againstthe scourge of corporations is what made you famous?

Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man. Copyright © by David Hardy. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from Michael Moore Is a Big Fat Stupid White Man by David T. Hardy, Jason Clarke
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