Michael Moore

You know what? I used to really like Michael Moore. I was a fan. A big fan. I bought Stupid White Men to read on a long flight from the UK to Australia, and I was hooked. Say what you will, but he's an entertaining writer. He engages the reader and has that rare ability to make you laugh out loud.

The problem with Moore is that he's absolutely insane. He's lost his grip on reality. Back in the Roger and Me days he was one of the good guys, just a little pissed off that his home town had been trashed by the cruel, heartless side of capitalism. Fair enough. We all bear our little grudge to The Man.

After reading Stupid White Men I went to a great little bookshop in Melbourne called Antipode, where I bought Downsize This! and Adventures in a TV Nation (and also a book called The Mullet: Hairstyle of the Gods - nothing to do with Michael Moore, but it was by the counter and I get confused).

Anyway, all was well and good. Okay, the mullet photographs terrified me, but all with Moore was well and good. He was just another entertaining kook you could laugh along with. Oh, that crazy Dubya! He sure is a character, ain't he? Ha ha ha.

But Moore wasn't laughing. That's when it got scary. He stopped laughing, and foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. And he shouted. Oh, how he shouted. He shouted like a drunken Brian Blessed on helium.

So, I turned away from him. A previously funny, entertaining man had become an embarrasment for the left and an election tool for the right. 'Look at the raving left', they cry. 'Look at what they have become. These are Kerry's people.'

Not only did I turn away from Moore, but I turned from the left. These were not people I wanted to associate with, and it annoyed me that people like Moore were so high profile. It annoyed me that they allowed themselves to look so stupid. And still it worsens:

'The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy". They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.'

We can't win if people like Moore say stuff like this. Most of the time when I read about how us left-wingers are siding with terrorists when we oppose the war I can laugh it off as patently false, but this time I can't. Moore really does sound like he wants a lot more bloodshed just to see Bush fail. And that's stupid. That's cruel. That's damn close to evil.

You could say that nobody listens to Moore anymore, that he has long been relegated from amusing kook to annoying idiot, but this is an election year. Every word counts at election time, and we are judged by who we associate with.

So Michael... please, for the love of God, shut the hell up.

*Update* - Someone actually agrees with me. I can't remember last time that happened. Especially on the subject of mullets.