Capitalism: A Love Story is the new rant-u-mentary from the big man from Flint, Michigan. As mentioned in my last Capitalism post, I’m not sure if Michael Moore is a vigilante for the American people or just a huge self-righteous d~bag.
Although I personally may not have of yet come to a final decision, Stephen Whitty from The Star Ledger certainly has. In my mind, Moore’s newest attempt to enlighten the masses, he once again demonstrates that his knowledge of film making doesn’t translate to human relations or, for that matter, economics.
Here are a few excerpts from his article, “Michael Moore’s slanted cinema” from Sept. 25th.
“You know,” a film critic at another screening confided recently, “I just don’t know how to write about Michael Moore movies anymore.”
I knew what he meant. Because the problem is, Michael Moore doesn’t make movies as much as political speeches. And anything you say about them as films is going to bring down criticism from either the left or the right.
The other reviewer and I had similar reactions from some readers, although they came from opposite sides.
He had liked Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” – and been deluged by missives from arch-conservatives who tarred him as some kind of commie. I had written a mixed but more critical review – and gotten a few incendiary emails from radicals who thought I was so naïve, hell, I probably still believed that Osama bin Laden was behind 9/11!
Yup. That’s me, tool of the fascist establishment.
{snip}
Moore may not care about getting good reviews (“Good riddance” was his response to reports of many American dailies facing extinction – hardly the compassionate response you’d expect from someone who worries, so publicly, about the loss of American jobs). We are, he sneers, the elite; his films are a call to the masses.
But not only are they poorly reported films, they’re a lousy way to build a mass movement.
Go to an average American and ask him calmly if he thinks people should ever be bankrupted by medical bills, or that a CEO should get a fat bonus for laying off workers, and you’re likely to hear a few resounding words about fairness and greed and what this country is supposed to stand for.
But go to them, as Moore suggests here, and flatly say that capitalism is “evil” and must be abolished? Suggest that there’s something idiotic about phrases like “the profit motive” or “the free-enterprise system”? Then all you’re likely to hear is – at best – strong advice that you book yourself a one-way flight to Cuba.
Didn’t the left learn anything from the `60s? You don’t build a movement by alienating the vast middle of the country, and insulting their values. You build it by including them, and showing them that you share their values – unlike the powerful people who only pretend to, and are actually running things for their own benefit.
But instead Moore keeps up the shouts and the ridicule and his dearly held belief that he’s the only one with a dearly held belief. And the noise goes on. And the fights continue.
And the real debate goes absolutely nowhere.
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