I think we can all agree that Moore has told some whoppers in his day. He says whatever is expedient at the time, knowing that if you do remember later, you won’t care...and so many have proven him exactly right. Look through the comments to any story about him. The theme from his supporters is generally "Well, maybe he lies a little, but he gets poeple talking" or "It’s in service to a good cause!"

Is it?

I’ve been calling Mikey out since he put out a particular promise (via email and "Mike’s Message") just after the 2006 elections. He wrote, and I quote:

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

Time and time again, Democrat scandals go by and Mike says nothing. Now we’ve got some pretty clear soft money trickery and millions of taxpayer dollars getting funneled to campaign contributors. John Murtha, Jim Moran, Peter Visclosky, Silvestre Reyes and Alan Mollohan are all tied up with PMA Group to the tune of a hundred million dollars.

Mikey, are you going to do something about this? Are you going to keep your promise or not?

If Mike doesn’t keep his word about something so basic, how can you trust him to help you make decisions that have massive, long-term and potentially catastrophic effects on the nation and your personal health and welfare? Scandal is scandal, and a Democrat scandal should be just as abhorrent as a Republican one. Where’s Moore leading the charge against Hillary for her part in taking money (for years!) from criminals like Hsu? Where was Mikey on Louisiana’s William Jefferson? A search of Moore’s website shows that he’s never ever discussed PMA, and his only posts about Murtha were about Murtha supporting a pullout from Iraq. Nothing at all about Murtha’s storied and scandalous history or his current troubles. Moore’s only mentions of William Jefferson’s scandal were to reprint an AP article from before Jefferson’s re-election. Nothing about the $90,000 bribe in the freezer. His only posts on Norman Hsu are reprints of wire service articles. Not a single mention from Mike himself about Hillary’s close, long-term financial ties with the wanted criminal. Or any of her other fund-raising scandals for that matter.

Will Moore ever keep his word? How can you - and I mean you, personally, the human being who is reading this post - ever believe he’s telling you the truth?

If you feel like Moore is a voice to which you should listen, I urge you to watch the footage from Manufacturing Dissent available here at AOL, and buy the DVD when it is released. If TV has taught me one thing, it’s something I learned from watching Mulder & Scully: Trust no one. My version of that sentiment is trust no one, question everything and don’t make a decision until after you’ve researched it for yourself.

Well, the critics continue to pan “Captain Mike” as if it were the plague itself. Honestly, I’ve seen perhaps one or two reviews that were neutral at best from the professional critics’ circle. The newest review from Variety is particularly scathing:

One could easily carve an interesting hour-long docu out of “Captain Mike Across America,” Michael Moore’s ungainly account of his “Slacker Uprising” campaign to encourage young people to vote for John Kerry—and, more importantly, against George W. Bush—during the 2004 U.S. presidential election. In its current form, however, this repetitious and self-indulgent hodgepodge comes across as a nostalgia-drenched vanity project, with far too much footage of various celebs at assorted gatherings introing Moore as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Theatrical potential is slim, but grassroots circulation of DVDs might prove useful in get-out-the-vote drives for 2008.

Ouch. GreenCine Daily offers a plethora of snippets of reviews from a whole bunch of sources, saving me the trouble of quoting all of them. I highly encourage you to click the link and read through the absolutely searing reviews collected here, but here are a couple of new ones I found highly amusing:

“Why did Moore feel that this material needed to be so tediously regurgitated?” asks Ben Kenigsberg at Time Out Chicago. “Rather than inspiring his audience to action, Captain Mike does little other than call attention to the arrogance of the man who made it.”

“The single largest-scale vanity project since Caligula,” says the Reeler’s ST VanAirsdale.

Again… OUCH.

In contrast, bloggers have been incredibly quiet about “Captain Mike” and the critics response to it. Not many seem to want to discuss the film or its reception, and those that do are still split very much down the middle, with some continuing their defensive of Moore and others panning the project. The latest round seem to be trying to put a positive spin on things, either by focusing on the good parts of the film or by diverting the subject to Moore and politics.

The blog at Toronto Screen Shots is trying to be as positive about the film as possible:

Michael Moore’s latest film received a standing ovation at the Ryerson Theatre last Friday.

Republicans will see his latest work as a propaganda film and some Canadians will call it a complete pile of rubbish. Democrats will love the film and see it as the truth that has been suppressed by the media. This Canadian found it very entertaining…

Love him or hate him, his films are entertaining. The audience at Ryerson couldn’t get enough of his stories. The film will have a limited theatrical release in North America according to Harvey Weinstein who was in the audience. Following that will be a DVD release which will include a lot of extra footage and a show Moore did in London shortly after 9/11. My guess is that all of this will come out next year just before the election (depending on how the Democrats are doing in the polls).

Here’s Balanced Opinions’ positive spin on both Moore and “Captain Mike” - note how quickly the discussion of the film turns into a political debate about Moore’s electoral probability:

The folk who urge a write-in vote for Gore have already picked a Vice-Presidential candidate for him - someone who has equal standing as a tribune of the people. They’ve chosen Michael Moore as his running mate.

Well - this is particularly bad timing. Captain Mike Across America has just universally been hailed as crap - I think “self-praising” and “self-infatuated” were the nicest things the TIFF reviewers could say. In the process, he jumps all over students for not having turned out to vote Bush out in 2004. Well, the so-called youth vote, “slackers” as Moore calls them, never turns out. Following and voting elections interferes with drinking and what youth voters insist on calling fucking. (So do courses; that’s why you can study video games or blogging.) There’s the other safe Gore bloc shot - students. They’d never go for Moore now.

I think it’s safe to call this one now. As it currently stands after it TIFF debut, the critical reviews are positively SCATHING. Virtually one has anything even remotely nice to say about “Captain Mike”, and I can say I haven’t seen a movie panned this badly since “Snakes on a Plane”. Interestingly, Moore’s fans are NOT coming to his defense. Very few bloggers had much to say about “Captain Mike”, and those reviews/opinions were extraordinarily mixed. Only a few were truly positive and almost no one defended him outright. It seems that only the few very faithful die-hard Moore fans liked this film, leaving the rest of the viewing populace scratching their heads wondering what the hell this film was supposed to accomplish. I would call the critical review of “Captain Mike” as 95% very against the film and the blogger/fan reaction as about 50% against the film. If there are more fans out there who liked this film, they certainly aren’t talking about it.

I am astounded at the incredible negativity surrounding this project. Moore and Weinstein promised a limited US theatrical release which may prove problematic given the incredible backlash against the film. I can’t help but wonder how Moore is feeling about these reviews. Is he taking any of this criticism seriously? Will he re-edit the film if it does come out in the US? Will he be able to brush away such harsh reactions to his work or will his anger get the best of him?

I will of course continue to report and update you all on the progress of “Captain Mike” and any further plans or reactions that occur in the future. Stay tuned… ;)

A new fan review has just emerged on the web written by a Moore fan from the TIFF festival. The reviewer saw the second public screening of “Captain Mike Across America"… and his reaction was decidedly different from the above review:

I’m not saying anything against Moore’s tactics, but I’m here to review his movie and this movie is just-not-needed. This is Michael Moore’s little love letter to himself. He depicts himself as a hero, standing up on the stage and having us watch him rally these people. And Moore seems to get off having himself large on the screen-even though in his intro he told us how sorry he was for us to be looking at him on a giant screen as he isn’t easy on the eye. Moore seemed to only want to make this to show us how popular he is and how controversial and how he is leading a revolt.Maybe if somebody else made the movie about the tour instead of Moore forcing his vast inspiration on us, I may feel differently. But its still a pointless effort. I like Moore’s films, except “Fahrenheit 9/11, really”, but with “Captain Mike Across America” he is at the peak of his self-indulgent and narcissitic ways. Did he really need to make an entire film about the 2004 elections again? Was there any need for this at all? Maybe if he tookt he footage and cut a twenty minute short on a future DVD of “Fahrenheit 9/11"-which I have a feeling may come out either when “Sicko” comes out on DVD, or right before the 2008 elections.

After the film Moore did a Q&A for the packed audience. Oh I’m sorry, did I say Q&A? What I really should have said was people standing up and saying how much they admire Moore and how his films will change the world without asking anything question, while Moore looked bashful on the stage. No questions. . . no answers. . . nothing. Just a waste of my time. And when the cameraman and editor of the film came on stage, the moderator did ask (because its his job) what the originally intention for this film was. The editor said “When I shot this, we never thought we would make a movie, Michael just wanted to get the tour on film. And then we had this footage and we were wondering what we should do with it.” What I heard as “Fahrenheit 9/11 made over 100 million dollars at the box office, and we have this footage that could probably also make that much money.” “Captain Mike Across America” is really just a self-indulgent little film that is just not needed to see on the big screen. Maybe on TV. . . maybe. Even though the festival screening was like I was at a political rally-and I heard a few anti-American comments by some of the forever Canadian residents, which Moore never really seemed to deny-I sense that Moore fans will see that this is a pointless work. If he wanted to make another documentary so soon he should go in the field instead of releasing dead footage for something that is not needed to see. Come on, the elections are coming up in a year. Do we really need to go back in the past?

Again… WOW. Another scathing review of this movie, but this time by a fan rather than a critic. Will this love-it-or-hate-it trend continue? Stay tuned....

From The Torontoist:

Captain Mike Across America is an interesting proposition: Michael Moore documents his tour across America in the run-up to the 2004 Presidential elections; a tour that notably failed to turn the tide of the election against George Bush. As Moore is more skilled in creating passionate (if flawed) polemics than he is at documentary film-making, someone else should have taken the reins. In Moore’s hands, this is a weird, confusingly-edited rush between states with occasional musical interludes (it’s nice to hear the Finland’s national anthem) that leaves you wondering: “Where on earth is this going?” The answer, of course, is nowhere (Kerry was a lame duck) and Moore’s glib explanation is unintentionally dispiriting. 1/5

From Cinematical:

Michael Moore’s new documentary opens with a title card explaining that we’re in Tallahassee, Florida the night before the 2004 election and immediately I thought: Uh, yeah—I think I recall how this one turned out. Chronicling Moore’s 2004 Slacker Uprising Tour—a get-out-the-vote series of speaking engagements in 20 ‘Battleground’ States—Captain Mike Across America is easily Moore’s weakest film, a self-congratulatory mess that has nothing to say about the American political process and tells you everything you need to know about the numbing cult of personality that’s sprung up around Moore. It’s not so bad that there’s a cult of personality around Moore—as I’ve said of Moore before, some Americans are so desperate for someone to speak truth to power that they’ll settle for someone saying anything to it. What’s bad is that Moore seems to be buying into his own myth, now, and here that seems both narcissistic and futile.

Moore wants to keep old grudges alive—anger about the ‘Swift Boat’ ads that ran against Kerry, anger about the decision to go to war in Iraq, anger about the 2000 election Supreme Court decision that ended Al Gore’s presidential ambitions. It’s like watching a demented cheerleader scream their lungs out over a game that was lost years ago—and was rigged in the first place. And yes, I just compared the American electoral process to a rigged game…

The Weinstein Company is distributing Captain Mike Across America, and while I rarely talk about business and distribution decisions in reviews, I do have to say this: Whatever they paid, they got taken. The film feels more like a home movie, shot on DV by Moore’s crew during the tour and incorporating newsclips obviously ripped from Tivo (they have that low-rez blur to them). And the tour itself earned speaker’s fees for Moore; his controversial appearance at Utah Valley State College alone netted him $50,000, and it was one of 62 stops. (Some of which, I’m sure, were pro bono, but still.) Captain Mike Across America couldn’t have cost very much to make—a pocket-lining vanity project on par with Bill Clinton’s gigantic, say-nothing autobiography or John McCain’s ghostwritten profiles in courage.

And it’s worth even less to watch. Moore used to be engaging because he spoke up in the face of power and he actually had something to say. But with Captain Mike Across America, he’s saying nothing, or at least nothing we haven’t heard from him before: I am angry. You should vote. I dislike George Bush. I am angry. Recently—with Bowling for Columbine, Sicko and even to a certain degree Fahrenheit 9/11-- Moore’s been making engaging, informative, opinionated and intriguing films from a passionate point of view; Captain Mike Across America is an information-free, narcissistic and self-congratulatory high-pitched whine from a sore loser.

Again… WOW. I can hardly believe my eyes at some of these reviews. It seems I’m not the only person who’s wondering why Moore has released this film and what he’s hoping to gain out of it. Again, I do believe it’s too early to call this one, but it seems that “Captain Mike Across America” is destined to be Moore’s first huge flop. This, of course, begs another question from me. If this film does truly turn out to be the cinematic flop it seems to be, how will Moore handle such a harsh rejection of his work?

From Time Out Chicago Magazine:

Yesterday afternoon, I opted for the Moore, which, as you’d surmise if you read a synopsis, is not actually a film. Rather, it’s just reassembled footage from his 2004 Slacker Uprising tour, during which he toured colleges in swing states with celebrities (Eddie Vedder! Um, Roseanne Barr!) and tried to get out the vote for Kerry.

And we all know how that turned out. Captain Mike Across America doesn’t have anything new to say about the 2004 election; it doesn’t even have any new footage. It’s almost entirely videotaped speeches and interviews with students—some of them already featured in docs about Moore, like Manufacturing Dissent and This Divided State. Why did Moore feel that this material needed to be so tediously regurgitated? So he can show off the moment when one student gave him his uncle’s Purple Heart? (”He’d have wanted you to have it.”) Rather than inspiring his audience to action, Captain Mike does little other than call attention to the arrogance of the man who made it.

From Salon.com:

One of the weirdest records of the ‘70s was “Having Fun With Elvis On Stage,” which consisted wholly of spliced-together patter from the King’s live shows, a full two sides of Elvis repeatedly muttering “Thank you very much!” and asking for a drink of water. “Captain Mike Across America” is Michael Moore’s “Having Fun With Elvis On Stage.” I’m not sure exactly why this movie exists, although in a twisted way, maybe it’s somewhat admirable: It seems that Moore has finally made a 102-minute commercial for himself, which possibly has been his dream all along.

I saw “Captain Mike Across America” at a press screening here on Thursday night, at the end of the first day of the Toronto International Film Festival. The screening was held in a theater with a capacity of about 580. I arrived very early, fearing the thing might be crowded—but I’d be surprised if there were 100 people there, maybe even as few as 50. Is Moore losing some of his magic with the festival-going press, which he could always count on for a reasonable amount of support, or at least some copy? I could almost hear tumbleweeds blowing through that theater; that could be partly because the screening began at 10:15 p.m., by which time any moviegoer’s energy level might be a little low. Or could it be that Moore’s dud logic and relentless self-congratulation are finally starting to grind down even those who essentially agree with his politics.

From Slashfilm:

This story is intercut with news footage, and performances from special guest musicians and comedians. This is where the film often goes off track, trying to be something it clearly isn’t. It’s great to show the many special guests who appeared on the tour to support the cause, but to stop the story for a musical number is to sabotage plot and story for the sake of spectacle (and mostly b-rate spectacle at that). Special guests include Eddy Vedder, Steve Earl, REM, Joan Baez, Viggo Mortensen and Rosanne Barr. Some of them are entertaining, most are not. And I could have done without one sequence where Moore is dancing off stage.

From Rotten Tomatoes:

In the months leading up to the 2004 presidential election, Michael Moore embarked on a 60-college tour with speeches and musical guests (I hope someone YouTubes Eddie Vedder’s gorgeously tender cover of Cat Stevens) to motivate the dormitory dwellers into the voting booths. Yet despite all the time Moore spends onscreen, Captain Mike Across America comes off as oddly impersonal documentary. Moments of drama are all too brief (like Republicans suing him for allegedly bribing students with instant ramen and underwear) and the film is dispassionately shot from the audience’s perspective. Considering how much manpower it must’ve taken to organize the tour and how it ultimately failed to turn the presidential tide, it’s a disappointment there’s no real behind-the-scenes or candid response footage from Moore. We’ve gotten used to him as an approachable humanist after Sicko, but here he insists on remaining a distant icon.

And the longest review I’ve found so far, from Twitch:

Ostensibly chronicling his failed Slacker Uprising Tour - the traveling get-out-the-vote roadshow he embarked upon prior to the 2004 presidential elections with the express intent of bringing down President Bush, Captain Mike Across America is actually about nothing more than servicing Moore’s own enormous ego.  A ninety seven minute continuous wank job the film is a smug and self congratulating attempt at self-canonization.  It is intellectually hollow, shallow as a puddle, and has nothing to say about anything of any lasting importance to anyone other than Moore himself…

Now, successful or not, the tour could have - and SHOULD have, dammit - provided an excellent launch pad to enter discussion on any number of important issues.  A study at social resistance?  Could have done that.  A primer on grass roots activism?  Could have done that.  A dissection of a badly flawed electoral system?  Could have done that.  An ass kicking diatribe against rampant voter apathy?  Could have done that.  Moore does none of these things.  Absolutely none of them.  Shockingly for a film supposedly chronicling a series of political rallies, Moore can’t even find the time to present the on-stage content of those rallies as anything beyond a handful of brief sound bites.  What he does find time for though, and lots of it, is shot after shot after shot of himself entering packed out arenas to thunderous applause, fans requesting hugs as though he were the lost fifth Beatle, a man giving him a relative’s world war two Bronze Star, and every word of praise that the rock stars and celebrities who joined him on tour had to send his way - Joan Baez gives a particularly lengthy ode to Michael - while cutting out just about anything of substance any of them may have said from the stage.  By my count the film opens with a solid twenty minutes - nearly a quarter of the total run time! - of this sort of hollow self promotion before making even a half hearted attempt at even raising any sort of larger issue.

You’ll have to pardon me if I don’t talk about any issues raised by the film, it’s just that there aren’t any.  Moore says nothing in this film beyond the fact that there is a large faction of people out there who like him rather a lot and that he agrees with them wholeheartedly.  Mike?  You’re better than this.  And you’d better remember it before all of those adoring people forget why they cared about anything you had to say in the first place.

I must admit I’m rather speechless. I have never seen such uniformly harsh reviews of Moore’s work, particular from those who begin their reviews by stressing they are indeed Moore fans. Of course we’ll have to wait for further reviews to make a more accurate judgment call, but I think it may be safe to assume at this stage that “Captain Mike Across America” is a flop. All of this, of course, make me beg the questions once again… why on earth did Moore release this film? What did he hope to gain from it? Time will only tell.

An Open Letter to CNN from Michael Moore

7/14/07

Dear CNN,

Well, the week is over—and still no apology, no retraction, no correction of your glaring mistakes.

I bet you thought my dust-up with Wolf Blitzer was just a cool ratings coup, that you really wouldn’t have to correct the false statements you made about “Sicko.” I bet you thought I was just going to go quietly away.

Think again. I’m about to become your worst nightmare. ‘Cause I ain’t ever going away. Not until you set the record straight, and apologize to your viewers. “The Most Trusted Name in News?” I think it’s safe to say you can retire that slogan.

You have an occasional segment called “Keeping Them Honest.” But who keeps you honest? After what the public saw with your report on “Sicko,” and how many inaccuracies that report contained, how can anyone believe anything you say on your network? In the old days, before the Internet, you could get away with it. Your victims had no way to set the record straight, to show the viewers how you had misrepresented the truth. But now, we can post the truth—and back it up with evidence and facts—on the web, for all to see. And boy, judging from the mail both you and I have been receiving, the evidence I have posted on my site about your “Sicko” piece has led millions now to question your honesty.

I won’t waste your time rehashing your errors. You know what they are. What I want to do is help you come clean. Admit you were wrong. What is the shame in that? We all make mistakes. I know it’s hard to admit it when you’ve screwed up, but it’s also liberating and cathartic. It not only makes you a better person, it helps prevent you from screwing up again. Imagine how many people will be drawn to a network that says, “We made a mistake. We’re human. We’re sorry. We will make mistakes in the future—but we will always correct them so that you know you can trust us.” Now, how hard would that really be?

As you know, I hold no personal animosity against you or any of your staff. You and your parent company have been very good to me over the years. You distributed my first film, “Roger & Me” and you published “Dude, Where’s My Country?” Larry King has had me on twice in the last two weeks. I couldn’t ask for better treatment.

That’s why I was so stunned when you let a doctor who knows a lot about brain surgery—but apparently very little about public policy—do a “fact check” story, not on the medical issues in “Sicko,” but rather on the economic and political information in the film. Is this why there has been a delay in your apology, because you are trying to get a DOCTOR to say he was wrong? Please tell him not to worry, no one is filing a malpractice claim against him. Dr. Gupta does excellent and compassionate stories on CNN about people’s health and how we can take better care of ourselves. But when it came time to discuss universal health care, he rushed together a bunch of sloppy—and old—research. When his producer called us about his report the day before it aired, we sent to her, in an email, all the evidence so that he wouldn’t make any mistakes on air. He chose to ignore ALL the evidence, and ran with all his falsehoods—even though he had been given the facts a full day before! How could that happen? And now, for 5 days, I have posted on my website, for all to see, every mistake and error he made.

You, on the other hand, in the face of this overwhelming evidence and a huge public backlash, have chosen to remain silent, probably praying and hoping this will all go away.

Well it isn’t. We are now going to start looking into the veracity of other reports you have aired on other topics. Nothing you say now can be believed. In 2002, the New York Times busted you for bringing celebrities on your shows and not telling your viewers they were paid spokespeople for the pharmaceutical companies. You promised never to do it again. But there you were, in 2005, talking to Joe Theismann, on air, as he pushed some drug company-sponsored website on prostate health. You said nothing about about his affiliation with GlaxoSmithKline.

Clearly, no one is keeping you honest, so I guess I’m going to have to do that job, too. $1.5 billion is spent each year by the drug companies on ads on CNN and the other four networks. I’m sure that has nothing to do with any of this. After all, if someone gave me $1.5 billion, I have to admit, I might say a kind word or two about them. Who wouldn’t?!

I expect CNN to put this matter to rest. Say you’re sorry and correct your story—like any good journalist would.

Then we can get back to more important things. Like a REAL discussion about our broken health care system. Everything else is a distraction from what really matters.

Yours,
Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. If you also want to apologize for not doing your job at the start of the Iraq War, I’m sure most Americans would be very happy to accept your apology. You and the other networks were willing partners with Bush, flying flags all over the TV screens and never asking the hard questions that you should have asked. You might have prevented a war. You might have saved the lives of those 3,610 soldiers who are no longer with us. Instead, you blew air kisses at a commander in chief who clearly was making it all up. Millions of us knew that—why didn’t you? I think you did. And, in my opinion, that makes you responsible for this war. Instead of doing the job the founding fathers wanted you to do—keeping those in power honest (that’s why they made it the FIRST amendment)—you and much of the media went on the attack against the few public figures like myself who dared to question the nightmare we were about to enter. You’ve never thanked me or the Dixie Chicks or Al Gore for doing your job for you. That’s OK. Just tell the truth from this point on.

Moore makes many a derogatory insinuation abut Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who works for CNN.  For details about Dr. Gupta, who went to Iraq as a journalist and ended up using his skills as a neurosurgeon to save lives on the battlefield, you can read this story.  Conversely, during the Iraq War Michael Moore was safely ensconced in his Manhattan penthouse.  Gupta was up to his elbows in the blood of dying soldiers, while Moore sat at home, watched TV, and sucked chocolate icing off his fingers.

You know all that footage from Iraq that Mikey used in Fahrenheit 9/11?  He paid other cameramen to go get it for him, because he didn’t have the balls to get his fat ass over there and put himself in harm’s way.

When you listen to the contempt evident in Moore’s voice, keep this in mind when he speaks with such righteous indignation regarding the war in Iraq.  Gupta was there.  He saw it and smelled it and witnessed it firsthand.  Mikey watched it on TV in his living room.

Update 2 from Lee: Here’s a transcript of Wolf Blitzer interviewing Colin Powell on the eve of the war in 2003.  Say what you what about what subsequently happened in Iraq, but the idea that the media just sat there with its thumb up its ass before the war is just ridiculous.  If Colin Powell, the Secretary of State and a true American hero, can be kept in the dark/be misinformed about the truth in Iraq, it is the height of dishonesty for someone like Moore to insinuate what he does in this interview, that the media were complicit.  You can reasonab