The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Michael Moore’s Politics of Prejudice

Posted on | January 12, 2013 | 37 Comments

Tonight, surfing around the channels, I happened onto Current TV — the progressive network that environmentally concerned Al Gore just sold to the oil-rich sheikhs of Qatar — and the network was showing Michael Moore’s 2009 documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story.

Watching it, I noticed that Michael Moore wasn’t really trying to explain what caused the mortgage meltdown. No, he was telling his audience who (and what) to blame for the mortgage meltdown.

A preference for blame over understanding is a hallmark of prejudice. There’s not really that much difference in hating “the rich” and hating any other group of people.

Using loaded language about “greed” and labels like “Corporate America” isn’t any less prejudicial than talking about how Mexicans are sneaking over the border to take away American jobs. As a matter of fact, Democrats spent a lot of time the past year talking about “outsourcing” and “shipping jobs overseas,” which is really just another method of xenophobic blame-shifting: The Foreigners! Are Taking! Our Jobs!

Why don’t we recognize the language of the Left as expressions of prejudice? Why is demonization of “the rich” accepted as a substitute for actual understanding of how the economy works?

While we’re asking rhetorical questions, here’s another one: Why are liberals afraid to mention that Michael Moore’s movie sucks?

Capitalism: A Love Story stinks to high heaven. Never mind Moore’s deliberately dumbed-down approach to economics. It’s just a bad movie.

Moore is supposed to be one of the world’s finest documentary makers, but I’ve seen one-hour specials on CNBC that had better production values than Capitalism: A Love Story.

Subtlety? Nuance? No, Michael Moore imagines an audience full of idiots who need to be told what to think, and who must have every point made for them explicitly, then have that point pounded into their dull brains over and over and over again.

Such tired clichés of ignorant left-wing populism! Wall Street is likened to a casino and mortage lenders are compared to Mafia loansharks.

You won’t really learn anything from Capitalism: A Love Story, except that Michael Moore hates rich people and Republicans, but you knew that before the movie ever started, so it’s really just a colossal waste of time. And the same is true of the politics of prejudice of which Moore’s movie is such a typical example: Vote for people who appeal to your ignorant hatred — The Rich! Are Sending! Our Jobs! To China! — and you’ll find that their policies don’t really solve your problems.

What is it that Michael Moore wants? Well, he wants a lot of protests and strikes — the Workers (yea!) against the Rich (boo!) — without much thought as to how this will generate demand, or attract capital investment, or do anything else that will actually lead to . . . well, jobs.

In the end, Michael Moore’s solution boils down to (a) nostalgia for FDR, and (b) resentment about Katrina and New Orleans.

No — really. This is the peroration of his sermonette, and then he does an idiotic stunt, rolling out crime-scene tape around big Wall Street bank office buildings and shouting through a megaphone that he’s there to make a “citizen’s arrest.”

But the real crime is Michael Moore’s lousy movie.

He reportedly got a budget of $20 million from Harvey Weinstein’s production company and, evidently, spent the majority of it on jelly donuts. It sure as hell doesn’t look like a $20 million movie.

Having paid himself handsomely for delivering this craptastic ripoff of a movie — financed by capitalists — Moore wants you to know that “capitalism is evil” and must be eliminated.

A colossal waste of time, like I said.

Category: Economics, Movies

Comments

37 Responses to “Michael Moore’s Politics of Prejudice”

  1. Christy Waters
    January 12th, 2013 @ 11:32 pm

    Michael Moore is a typical left wing hypocrite who is overdue for an intellectual beatdown. BTW, I love how the words “craptastic”, “eliminated”, and “colossal waste” are used in the last two sentences, which describe what happened after Moore ate all those jelly donuts.

  2. Adjoran
    January 13th, 2013 @ 2:24 am

    If you have seen his first, “Roger and Me,” the documentary where he stalks Roger Smith, the then-Chairman of GM, confronting him in parking lots and lobbies over plant closings, you need see no other Michael Moore “films.” They are all just variations on a theme.

    The hilarious part is that the greatest failing of Smith (and later Rick Wagginer, whom Obama “fired” when he bailed out GM) was the effort to minimize the pain for the UAW workers in the Rust Belt states. They closed too few factories, not too many. They should have been running to the Sun Belt Right-to-Work states before Toyota and Honda and Nissan. The company might have restructured and prospered.

    But instead, Roger and Rick tried to save the union jobs and towns, and what did they get for their trouble? Hated, derided, mocked – and the company suffered for it.

    And all the while that fat slob Moore is blaming them for trying – and getting rich in the process. These are perverse times in which we live, my friends.

  3. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 13th, 2013 @ 3:55 am

    Do you think the Michael Moore movie marathon is just part of the deal to make Al Jazeera look better to the viewing public?

  4. robertstacymccain
    January 13th, 2013 @ 9:49 am

    Seriously: I’ve seen lots of documentaries made on budgets of less than $1 million that look far better — just in term of basic cinematic quality — than this turkey that supposedly cost $20 million to make. At one point in the picture, Moore is interviewing a congresswoman and wants to get a reaction shot — him asking the question, her answering it. Normally, you would have a two-camera set-up for this, but as the viewer of “Capitalism: A Love Story” can’t help noticing, Moore is using only one camera. Why? Because he couldn’t afford to hire two cameramen on his budget of $20 million? Because he does’t understand how to shoot an interview? Or (as I suspect) because he’s just a lazy stupid slob who was trying to cut corners on production costs in order to maximize the amount of cash available for his own salary and expenses?
    Just put it this way: I don’t think Michael Moore was flying coach class, drivng rented Toyotas, staying in budget motels and eating from the dollar menu at Mickey D’s while traveling during the production of “Capitalism: A Love Story.”

  5. robertstacymccain
    January 13th, 2013 @ 9:54 am

    As I say, it’s obvious from the film that Moore doesn’t really understand the economic subjects he’s addressing — neither at a macro- or a micro- level — and doesn’t do anything to help his viewers undestand, either. It’s all about rancid hate-driven populism. Even when Moore is “right” (i.e., his opposition to the 2008 TARP bailout), he gets basic facts wrong and his treatment of the subject is more emotional than rational.

  6. Freddie Sykes
    January 13th, 2013 @ 10:24 am

    I have yet to see a Moore film but I a, guessing he uses the typical ploy of establishing that, if something he is against contributed to a complex negative outcome, it was the sole cause of that outcome.

    Of course greed helped bring about the mortgage debacle but bigger causes were Fannie and Freddie allowing the banks to issue risk free loans, the CRA pressuring banks to make unsound loans and the Fed not allowing interest rates to rise to market levels, The banks exhibited greed in two ways: their mortgage departments collecting fees for unsound loans knowing that they could unload them with little risk to themselves and their investment departments turning around and actually investing in the worthless paper backed by these loans.

  7. Matthew W
    January 13th, 2013 @ 10:48 am

    I both commend and pity you for having to watch a piece of crap socialist propaganda that’s intended to sway the moron vote.
    I am on Moore’s email update list and it’s all I can do to read the crap he puts out there once a month.

  8. AnonymousDrivel
    January 13th, 2013 @ 11:03 am

    “Subtlety? Nuance? No, Michael Moore imagines an audience full of idiots who need to be told what to think, and who must have every point made for them explicitly, then have that point pounded into their dull brains over and over and over again.”

    Maybe an audience for Moore’s work at this point IS full of idiots and he just knows his market. Think of the repetition and concurrent “blaming” like the applause sign in a live studio or the laugh track in a recorded show: the audience needs to be led because it’s a social group that gravitates toward such manipulation. His redundancy of theme in such a blunt, overt manner is (besides a propagandistic technique) the signal to nod your head among peers for “getting it”.

  9. McGehee
    January 13th, 2013 @ 11:33 am

    There is no fat joke but Michael Moore, and crockumentaries are his profit.

  10. rosalie
    January 13th, 2013 @ 12:52 pm

    I watched 2016, Obama’s America, and was very impressed. Now, there’s a documentary that deserves an award but won’t get it from the Hollywood crowd.

  11. postaldog
    January 13th, 2013 @ 3:27 pm

    Moore doesn’t worry about production values, or the fact his movies/documentaries are filled with easily debunked lies, blatant misinformation and obviously fabricated/falsified encounters. He’s creating these movies for the same idiots that voted Jon Stewart as their most trusted newsman and can’t tell the difference between a Saturday Night Live skit and a real person. It’s echo-chamber filmmaking and propaganda, plain and simple.

  12. Bob Belvedere
    January 13th, 2013 @ 5:34 pm

    All true. The man is a Nihilist.

  13. Bob Belvedere
    January 13th, 2013 @ 5:36 pm

    Let us hope, as a salve for his soul, Stacy was eating bacon whilst he watched.

  14. Bob Belvedere
    January 13th, 2013 @ 5:36 pm

    This.

  15. RichFader
    January 13th, 2013 @ 8:45 pm

    Mikey needs to figure out that the problem with eating the rich isn’t just that eventually you run out of rich, but that before that, he’s going to start looking like a Honeybaked Ham with glasses and a Tigers cap.

  16. Christy Waters
    January 13th, 2013 @ 8:56 pm

    Moore loves capitalism for himself, but not for anyone else. His “common man” act is exactly that, and the common man should tell him to go take a flying f*ck at a rolling jelly doughnut.

  17. Kohath
    January 13th, 2013 @ 11:45 pm

    Bigotry and prejudice are at the heart of the modern left. They hate the rich, they hate religious folks, they hate insurance companies, oil companies, Sarah Palin, mining, drug companies, and anyone who makes a profit outside of Hollywood. They’re haters, first, last, and always.

  18. Bill Gryan
    January 14th, 2013 @ 12:12 am

    Exactly. The guy is a better capitalist than I am, at least in terms of his ability to sell a product and amass millions. But we’re supposed to believe he hates capitalism?

  19. edge_of_the_sandbox
    January 14th, 2013 @ 12:21 am

    Michael Moore is absolutely devoid of logic. None of his films make any sense or put a coherent argument. He pushes an agenda and hopes to be funny.

  20. Bill Gryan
    January 14th, 2013 @ 12:26 am

    “…and anyone who makes a profit…” Don’t forget that the leftist, himself, is allowed to make profits, and deserves no scorn. The average leftist earns an income far greater than the average Joe. But he’s entitled to it, you see. Four legs good, two legs better.

  21. Az_A
    January 14th, 2013 @ 1:02 am

    Moore really is a fool, but I’d feel a lot better about that if I didn’t know so many people who hang on every word he says.

  22. VictorErimita
    January 14th, 2013 @ 1:18 am

    Exactly. He need not imagine his audience is full of idiots. They are his fans.

  23. Dr. Mauser
    January 14th, 2013 @ 1:35 am

    The only difference between Michael Moore and a colostomy bag is capacity.

  24. Lee Reynolds
    January 14th, 2013 @ 2:32 am

    He’s a Marxist. He may also be a nihilist, but first and foremost he is a devotee of Marxism.

  25. John Reece
    January 14th, 2013 @ 2:58 am

    Whenever some progresso starts bashing Bush for the 2008 meltdown I like to snark that the reckless subprime lending free-for-all that brought down the economy was a mess Bush inherited from Clinton administration, along with messes named Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Gets ’em every time.

  26. teapartydoc
    January 14th, 2013 @ 6:29 am

    All those candy bars don’t leave much room for reflection.

  27. Evil Otto
    January 14th, 2013 @ 7:17 am

    I’ve got to disagree, Lee. He’s not really a Marxist, he’s a con man. He makes millions selling a product to gullible lefties, agitprop films intended to confirm everything they already know. While on some level he probably believes some of his crap, he’s not so deep as to have a real understanding of any issue, and that includes Marxism. He does know how to play to his audience, though.

    I think Bob’s right… he’s a nihilist, but no more so than other members of the modern left. They don’t believe in anything anymore, just hate for whatever groups or individuals their leaders point to.

  28. finished
    January 14th, 2013 @ 7:58 am

    Well put. That’s the spirit. It is not as if the Bush administration, that so deranged the leftist, sprang from nowhere. It’s smart to turn the tables on those who take refuge in blaming the previous administration.

  29. Aaron1960
    January 14th, 2013 @ 8:18 am

    This is about the best the left has and Republicans are losing to these idiots? Stupid party…indeed!

  30. finished
    January 14th, 2013 @ 8:27 am

    Hayek’s startlingly au courant “The Road to Serfdom,” though written in the early years of the 1940’s in Europe, holds forth an idea that I think is an important concept. Hayek’s idea on hatred of capitalism and of the rich has an unpleasant ring of truth to it.

    In the chapter entitled “Why the worst get on top,” he begins thus: ““It seems to be almost a law of human nature that it is easier for people to agree on a negative program – on the hatred of an enemy, on the envy of those better off – than on any positive task.” He completes the thought thus: “The fact that German anti-semitism and anticapitalism spring from the same root is of great importance for the understanding of what happened here, but this is rarely grasped by foreign observers.”

    Whatever his flaws, Moore is a force to be reckoned with. We, too, by demonizing and belittling Moore, trivialize our opposition to him and his ideas. Just one more thought on the formidable Moore, isn’t he about due to make another documentary. Think about what he’d do it on this time.

  31. Bob Belvedere
    January 14th, 2013 @ 8:57 am

    He can afford to now.

    I take satisfaction in knowing that, if the Revolution succeeds, he’ll be one of the first the Left puts up against the wall.

  32. Bob Belvedere
    January 14th, 2013 @ 9:04 am

    Why do you hate Honeybaked Hams!

  33. timmaguire
    January 14th, 2013 @ 9:23 am

    Michael Moore, like Al Gore, got very rich by lying to people who want to be lied to.

  34. sevenoak
    January 14th, 2013 @ 9:55 am

    If you consult your Obama to English 2013 ed. dictionary you will find that “rich” translates to “white devils”

  35. The difference | Junior Ganymede
    January 14th, 2013 @ 11:50 am

    […] Either way, the jobs are going to foreigners.    […]

  36. Erik S
    January 14th, 2013 @ 11:59 am

    Even the FRENCH had misgivings about “Capitalism”, and that, my friends, says a lot.

    In the meantime, people who guffaw when conservatives call Moore (or Obama) a socialist should know that the author of “Capitalism” stated, in so many words, that he was a Marxist.

    http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2007/09/dude-i-am-on-marxs-tomb.html

  37. Janice Littlepage
    January 14th, 2013 @ 5:19 pm

    Well, if Michael Moore hates the rich (and so are we to hate the rich), does that mean he hates himself? And are we to hate him? Just sayin…