Michael Moore - Yeah, I Went There

Michael Moore - Yeah, I Went There

When I was younger I used to read a lot of Moore's books. I enjoyed them. They didn't have as much silliness as his shows and films. But if we're going to talk about anything Michael Moore, let's just get it out of the way already, Yes. he's fat. Are you right wingers happy now?

I can't say I hate Michael Moore. Because I don't. He has some really good ideas regarding what needs to be made into a documentary but his goofy grandstanding and prop comedy is dumb as hell. I remember watching TV Nation and loving it, but the only issue was his handling of some of the material. Clucky the chicken? Stop with that shit. No wonder they don't take you seriously and think your warnings are crazy talk.



I remember watching Roger and Me in my high school econ class years ago and being really depressed for a week or so. Then the next week we discussed it in class again and the only thing the rest of the class remembered was the rabbit lady and I was even more depressed.

In his latest film Capitalism: A Love Story, he takes on corporate America. Which you would expect would draw a lot of attention. He was doing Sicko a while back and look at where we are with our univeral health care discussion. But unlike other Michael Moore films, that attract a lot of negative attention when it comes to his stunts, this one, oddly enough, got a different reaction..

This from the interview caught my attention:

It happened while he and his crew were shooting the climax of the movie, where Michael decides to mark Wall Street as a crime scene, putting up yellow police tape around some of the financial district's towers of power.

While unfurling the tape in front of a "too big to fail" bank, he became aware of a group of New York's finest approaching him. Moore has a long history of dealing with policemen and security guards trying to shut him down, but in this case he knew he was, however temporarily, defacing private property. And his shooting schedule didn't leave room for a detour to the local jail. So, as the lead officer came closer, Moore tried to deflect him, saying: "Just doing a little comedy here, officer. I'll be gone in a minute, and will clean up before I go." The officer looked at him for a moment, then leaned in: "Take all the time you need." He nodded to the bank and said, "These guys wiped out a lot of our Police Pension Funds." The officer turned and slowly headed back to his squad car. Moore wanted to put the moment in his film, but realized it could cost the cop his job, and decided to leave it out. "When they've lost the police," he told me, "you know they're in trouble."

I suppose this really jumped out at me because in the past, it's been really easy to ignore Michael Moore as a fanatic liberal who had no impact outside of circles his ideas already float in. But now I'm a bit surprised because if these cops wont even exercise their just authority to silence him, then how will our union hold together?

I mean, is this what the NYPD is doing instead of busting blacks and Mexicans for decriminalized amounts of pot? Come on NYPD, get off your ass already. I recall in history that pretty much every successful revolution in history has featured at least some form of revolt by the army or its junior officers... Can this be the writing on the wall? Not that there's going to be a revolution in the US anytime soon...



The greater lesson here is you shouldn't fuck the police? Which is troubling because I have been writing a "Fuck the police" blog post for months now and never got around to finish it. I suppose that at the end of the day, most cops are victims. Just like everyone else in the bottom 99%. It's just that cops have the power to make you a victim. I find the irony here a bit too much to handle. Kinda sucks when you're the one taking it, doesn't it?

I mean, he doesn't like what the banks have done because he was personally affected. What a fantastic guy. It's the American way. Only give a shit when it starts effecting you. World War II, 9/11. We turn our eyes away when it's not involving us and don't give a shit about the cause unless it's us being affected.



What's funny is that all the people who are pissed off that banks are failing and companies that are so huge their failure would mean economic disaster, these people are madder than hell about the bailouts because that's socialism. But then you start talking about shoring up regulatory agencies to prevent these same companies from acting in such a way so they won't need a bailout and all of a sudden it's "we don't need big gubbinment getting in the way of the free market."

Then you watch the footage from the tea party march on Washington and suddenly it's not funny at all. If you'd written a screenplay about all that's gone down in the last eighteen months or so and shopped it around to the major studios in 1992, nobody would have considered it a plausible enough scenario to be worth optioning unless it was written as a spoof or black comedy. Now it's a documentary.



I don't get the hate for Michael Moore fromthe left. The fact that he's fat and often smug has nothing to do with the content of his messages which are mostly entirely appropriate and correct. Yeah, sometimes he panders to the easy sell, but let's look over to the republicans who have been playing dirty pool for some time now. Ann Coulter wouldn't be any less an aborrent monster if she was softspoken and articulate.

What I'm trying to say here is that the right wing is pretty fucking unreasonable. Yes, I know, it's a lot of original insight. I didn't say I was breaking new ground here. I'm just stating my opinion. Which is that I'm looking forward to seeing this film. I'm sure I'll agree with a lot of the opinions expressed by this fatman that both the right and the left seem to have a strange relationship with, but then again, both the right and the left have been doing some pretty strange things lately.