NP Michael Moore

[davemarc]

From: jbor <jbor at bigpond.com>

> http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/09/1089000339554.html?oneclick=true
>
> One doesn't need to be a Bush-supporter to recognise Moore for what he is,
a
> self-serving propagandist and hypocrite, and the article finds its marks
> very strongly in my opinion, which is why I posted the link to it.

I would allow that Moore is a propagandist. But how exactly is he a
hypocrite--any more than any human being is a hypocrite? Is the adjective
"self-serving" also meant to be critical? If so, how is Moore so
self-serving as to warrant that kind of description?

To be frank, I'm a little leery of that Sydney Morning Herald article by
Paul Sheehan. One dubious aspect is how Sheehan makes
a big deal about some sort of considerable "social distance" between Davison
and Flint, saying
that Moore gives the impression he comes from Flint but that he actually
comes from Davison. Yet it seems that every example he offers about this
purported difference between Davison and Flint refers to those locales in
the
present day. I think Moore was born in 1954, so the "evidence" that Sheehan
provides seems to be pretty irrelevant to whatever point Sheehan seems to be
making. It's sort of like describing beatnik Pynchon as an aging hippie.

For example, Sheehan writes: "Flint is working class, industrial,
down-at-heel, where the
majority of the population is black or Latino. It's where the factories are.

"Davison, where Moore grew up and attended Davison High School, is
comfortable middle class, suburban, and white. Overwhelmingly white. It's
where the managers and professionals live."

That's today, but Moore's father was reportedly a Flint factory worker when
Moore was growing up there. So what's Sheehan's
point? Does he even have one? Since much of Sheehan's description of today's
Flint seems to correspond exactly to
the portrait of modern-day Flint that Michael Moore has brought to world
attention, Sheehan may actually be inadvertently confirming Moore's
credibility on that point.

As I look over the article, other aspects of Sheehan's argumentation seem
peculiar and not at all even-handed. He seems to attack Moore's heavily
fact-checked work, in part, with multiple allusions to Moore's
well-documented boorishness, but he doesn't appear to hold the book "Michael
Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man" to the same standard: "The puerile
title suggests a right-wing rant that merely mirrors what it is attacking.
But while parts of the book are boorish, Hardy and Clarke have done a lot of
fact-checking and consolidated the best of the internet industry that has
grown up around Moore's excesses."

Sheehan sure has a lot of names for Moore: "Multimillionaire," "blue
collar," "spin doctor," "clown prince," "master of fiction," "Best-selling
author," "master propagandist," "the capitalist anti-capitalist," "secular
fundamentalist," "de facto leader of the American anti-war movement," "a
creature of his age, and a reflection of it," and "a media practitioner who
resorts, routinely and fastidiously, to distortion, omission and gutter
innuendo with a viciousness and ideological cartoonishness characteristic of
all fundamentalists."

I wonder if anyone familiar with Sheehan and his work would like to provide
any illuminating context for the benefit of the subscribers here. What
exactly makes his column--with its bias, vagaries, and name-calling--worth
our consideration?

On a possibly related topic: Has Fahrenheit 911 already opened in Australia?
As I understood the
distribution plan, it was supposed to play at the Melbourne International
Film Festival on July 15 and then open nationally on July 29. Is that still
correct?

d.

PS: The "recommended reading" at Michael Moore's website includes 1984.