"Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man"
David T Hardy & Jason Clarke

pcblues.com - Book Reviews

15.3.06
(Updated 30.4.06)

I was besotted with Michael Moore. I thought he gave me insight and power with "The Awful Truth", "Bowling for Columbine", and "Fahrenheit 911". I thought he gave me the truth. I should know by now, having learnt the lesson that there are people who would rather control me than tell me the truth (witness three and a half years in a Christian Cult.) But there you go.

I picked up this book and thought I should give an alternative view of MM a reading. The authors stepped me through MM's DVDs to see his manipulation frame by frame. Talk about feeling stupid.

If you want to make the world a better place by lying to everyone, then so be it. If you steal people's trust so that you can run personal vendettas - well, it's pretty much the same thing. Unless you believe the only way to make the world a better place is to lie to the people who care, then get fucked - or maybe become a politician. But I suppose that's what MM is now. I can't tell. Planning the deluding of your biggest fans well ahead of time (for example, when making a movie) is probably OK. Who can tell in these days of moral relativism? The end justifies the means? Maybe, but MM has still lost my trust.

No-one is perfect. But it is possible to not pre-meditatively mislead people. Who makes you think you are so sure of the answer to the world's problems that you can bypass decency and fairness to make a shortcut to nirvana for everyone? In case I haven't said it yet - fuck you Michael Moore, and thanks for the hope I put in you, short-lived as it was.

It gets 4 memorability points out of 5, and 1 motivating point out of 5 (mainly because it made me stop watching MM)

Update 30.4.06
Michael Moore used every tool at his disposal to raise awareness about issues he thought were important. I saw a hilarious clip by The Chasers who try to break MM's record for the number of ejections from large business headquarters. The problem with online content, though, is that it can easily drop off the edge of the world, and I can't find a link to it any more.

Does cynicism and skepticism lead to disengagement from choosing the type of world we wish to live in, and then acting on that decision?

Also, Machiavelli made an interesting point about wise men inventing religion to give their laws more power over people, because the principles behind them made them worthy of uptake by the poeple. This is called pulling the wool over someone's eyes for their own good.