Crusading author and film-maker Michael Moore is giving a talk in Dublin today, but former fan Derek Scally has a few words for him
Dear Michael, you don't know me, but I used to admire you. A year ago, like millions of others, I went to see Bowling for Columbine and was impressed by the simplicity and force of the film. But then I tried to read Stupid White Men and ended up flinging it, half-read, across the room. The book made me angry, not because of the facts about George W. Bush, most of which I knew already, but because of you.
Believe me, Michael, I share many of your views, as do most people who've probably read Stupid White Men. But that's what you seem to forget. Your books aren't so much preaching as screeching to the converted. As one of your readers, I felt like I was still being harassed by a pushy second-hand car salesman long after I had already agreed, despite some doubts, to buy the car he's selling.
You deserved your Bowling for Columbine Oscar for tackling head-on the powerful National Rifle Association (NRA) and former NRA president Charlton Heston. Your strength lies in collecting information, on gun deaths for instance, that is readily available but meaningless in isolation, but which forms a chilling picture when collated and put in context.
Your weakness is what you do with the information, in particular your habit of turning every issue, from the war on Iraq to the election of George W. Bush, into a telling anecdote. Not everything in the world is so simple that it can be explained by a telling anecdote.
Your factoid-based simplicity is frustrating because I'm capable of understanding more complex arguments, as I know are most of your readers. Your scatter-gun approach sprays us with all sorts of statistics and facts which sound almost too convincing, then you leave little time for anyone to ask questions or query the facts. Your reliance on facts in Bowling for Columbine hasn't stopped Republicans lying on television that you simply made things up. That's what they do and they get away with it time after time. The Republicans, with their breathtaking bravado and brass necks, are winning every battle, from the battle over Iraq to the most recent battle over the Ronald Reagan mini-series, getting it shunted from network television to cable. While Democrats and Liberals wave facts around or whine about factual inaccuracies or misleading passages in the latest speech by George W. Bush, the Republicans, mission accomplished, have already moved onto their next outrageous coup.
The Michael Moore myth, perhaps overplayed by the media, tells of how one ordinary guy took on the establishment. But the factoid-spitting Michael Moore monster is now overshadowing the issues with his oversize personality and spittle-flecked outrage. Outrage only goes so far, Michael. It's time to change the record.
The most annoying thing for me about your campaign, Michael, is your frequent, abrupt gear changes from caustic and sometimes very funny humour to a scary wide-eyed optimism that everything will be fine if your fellow Americans would just arise from their recliners. It's less gung-ho "help-me-change-the-world" and more "let's put on a show" of the Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland movies.
Mickey Moore: "Hey folks, let's put on a regime-change show in Washington!" Judy: "But, Mickey, we don't know anything about taking on the Republicans and saving the American democratic system from certain doom." Mickey Moore: "Why sure we do. All we little folks need to do is all sign a petition. Swell, just swell."
Your Mickey and Judy approach might work in the heartland of America, but from the other side of the Atlantic it seems either very naive or very simplistic. Calling on Oprah to run for president in your new book Dude, Where's My Country? is cute, but I prefer the approach of the billionaire George Soros who has so far donated $15 million to get Bush out of the Oval Office next year. You won't rid the White House of George Bush and his friends with cute ideas, but with brass neck and hard cash. Don't get me wrong, Michael, I don't begrudge you your hard-earned success. I am cheered to see your books selling so well and I hope as many people as possible show up for your talk in Dublin today. Someone has to get the word out that there is another America besides that of Bush and Rumsfeld - well done.
You have said many important things and still have a lot to say. But now that you have built up a loyal audience, stop patronising them with simplistic arguments. Either raise the intelligence level of your debate or else go down and dirty with the Republicans.
Your rise to fame coincided with the release of The Matrix and its sequels, the story of the "One", sent to save the world from menacing machines. The Michael Moore cult suggests we should accept you as our "One", to save America and the world from the greedy, grasping Republican Party. But if you are the "One", Michael, then stop the world, I want to get off.
Yours respectfully,
Derek
Derek Scally reports for The Irish Times from Berlin.
Michael Moore is giving a talk at the National Basketball Arena, Tallaght, Dublin today at 3 pm.