July 30, 2004
Beating a Dead . . .
From the Democratic Leadership Council:
Is Michael Moore a courageous political documentarist who unmasks the chicanery all around us -- or just a charlatan in a clown suit? Is he an entertainment genius or a dangerous ideologue? The answer, of course, is all of the above. The problem is that you never know which of the four is doing the talking in Moore's movies and books. The end result is that the writer-filmmaker spreads a fog of misbegotten notions about America, politics, business, and international affairs among his youthful, left-leaning following at home and, indeed, around the world. Uninformed readers and viewers tend to believe everything he says.Who Can Really Say doesn't know what to say. Am I beating a dead
In his latest book, Dude, Where's My Country?, for example, Moore peddles the absurd notion that terrorists are not really out to get us -- they're practically figments of our imaginations. Except, he adds, the terrorists who are right here at home, in our corporate and political midst. They are the "leaders seeking to terrorize us" and the "corporate mujahadeen" that run America, he writes. Furthermore, globalization -- tee shirts from China? data processing from India? -- is the main cause of terrorism.
These are just a few of the wacky ideas that spring from the fevered mind of Moore. Mixed with truisms, half-truths, and occasional truths, Moore's fulminations are a frothy brew of alarmist conspiracy theories and anti-American rhetoric. They are part of a new entertainment form pioneered by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, refined by such imitators as Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, then carried to comedic proportions by left-leaning Al Franken.
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