Moore Graduates
I just want to add a thought to all the reviews and comments on Captain Mike being posted below. First, I think this indicates that Michael Moore has graduated to a new tier of hypocritical liberal greed. There are lot of leftists out there - Mikey’s idol Noam Chomsky being a prime example - who make lots of money publishing “books” that consist almost entirely of speech transcripts and edited e-mail exchanges. Chomsky’s post-9/11 book, published a month after the towers fell and consisting almost entirely of edited e-mails, is a prime example. Peter Schweizer in Do as I Say (Not As I Do) (a fun if not exactly insightful book) called this “multilevel marketing for radicals”.
This is essentially what Michael Moore is now doing. He is making money documenting ... himself. He is repacking appearances as though it were original content. Anything to wring a few more dollars and a little more passion out of his supporters. Maybe he needs to add a new wing to his Torch Lake mansion.
(Yes, I know he leaked Sicko! over the internet so people could watch it for free as a sign of his non-greed. As James Berardinelli argued, this just proves that Mikey is a smart marketeer. The leak generated buzz and eventual riches.)
Moore’s Slacker Uprising Tour, whatever its faults, was part of a long American tradition. American satirists, from Twain to Mencken to O’Rourke, have often made a living going around just being themselves and repeating some of their more trenchant observations. Hell, I paid to hear O’Rourke in Austin a few years ago and he repeated a lot of stuff from his books. Of course, he also spent 90 minutes answering questions, signing books and entertaining the hell out the libertarian audience.
Even legitimate political figures do the tour thing. President Clinton makes millions on the speaking circuit. Ronald Reagan honed his speaking style by touring America on behalf of GE at a massive salary, giving an ever-refined version of “The Speech”, as D’Souza called it. And I’m sure more than a little money has been made, in recent years, by selling people videotapes or DVDs of appearances.
The problem here is that Moore is trying to pretend this is original content. If he sticks to the Chomsky tactic of selling the same thing over and over again to the poor masses he claims to love, he’ll do fine. But showing it to film critics at the fricking Toronto Film Festival as though it were a genuine documentary?
Um, no.
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Yes, showing it to film critics at the Toronto Film Festival was probably not the smartest move on Moore’s part. Apart from anything else it makes it appear he is taking his own notoriety a little more seriously than the rest of us.