All of Moore's works reveal a singular reality in America: nothingness. After the temporary controversy surrounding the release of all of his films, everyone, including Moore himself, seems to forget about the issues he touches on -- and things that should change stay the same.
It’s kind of ironic that Michael Moore would make a documentary film -- Sicko -- about the beleaguered and appallingly costly healthcare system in America because he’s one Frankfurter away from the intensive care unit. In case you haven’t noticed, he’s a fat-ass.
Cue laugh track.
It’s funny that Michael Moore would make a film about the gun culture -- Bowling for Columbine -- in America because in case you haven’t noticed, he was a member of the National Rifle Association. He’s also a giant tub of lard.
Ha, Ha, Ha!
Fahrenheit 911? Oh yeah that movie was okay but the friction between his porky legs and the fire it’s gonna cause, that’s some “Fahrenheit” for you.
Somebody stop me I'm on a roll......
Indeed, it's so much easier to ridicule Moore, dismissing him as a fat gadfly, than it is to confront the issues that he explores in his films. Yes, Michael Moore is overweight, perhaps morbidly so and indeed this “fat piece of cow dung” as he has been described, has for the last decade or so also been the recipient of ad hominem attacks that do not advance the dialogue he's trying to draw out but make the impact of his films all the more benign.
The hate mail comes to him from right-wingers, flag-waving idiots sheltered by the warm rays of stupidity and of course the tight-jawed heads of corporations. The most common retort to Moore’s work, which sheds light where it needs to be shed is, “well uh that’s why you’re fat!”
Sure we rank around 35 in the world in healthcare and even lower in education and have squandered 3,000 lives in a war of choice. “But he’s fat!”
That’s all most critics can seem to muster and then there are the other skeptics in the media who are closer on the evolutionary depth chart to actual humans and decry Moore’s approach as “not objective,” “manipulating the unfortunate,” or a “left wing side show.”
What doesn't help the greater cause is Moore’s publicity antics, like getting denied access to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange where he wanted to rip healthcare concerns a new one and get more publicity for Sicko. Then come the box office receipts and just like that, nothing else happens.
Except this:
Michael Moore’s pockets and actual body gets fatter, politicians and personalities he targets remain insulated and the John Q. and Mary H. Publics that Moore profiles go on living check to check. And this is the real shame -- complacency, kind of like Michael Moore sitting on a couch after the Lions game on Thanksgiving evening.
Skewed agenda, biased whimsy and crafty editing aside, in Sicko, Moore makes some valid and enlightening points about the military industrial complex and the cycle of debt that keeps people working at shitty jobs just to keep shittier health benefits. He also cleverly conveys how a rich fat cat such as himself could get the best of healthcare because he is well, rich. This above all, is part of his larger point.
However, what I wonder every time I leave the theater – having seen one of Moore’s films – with a mix of outrage and tickled funny bones, is what’s this all really mean? I mean, why should I continue to be frustrated about what’s happening to a country that I love dearly, knowing that no one gives two copulations about anything except the new Baconator burger at Wendy’s, Patron Tequila and Marlboro 100s?
Those are three things that will make you really need affordable and comprehensive healthcare but they are more exciting to most Americans than talking about healthcare. This is because our politicians, with the help of our floundering, foundering and faltering media, have made healthcare, gun control, corporate malfeasance and diplomacy seem so boring that even Moore’s movies won’t change the status quo. For instance, Fahrenheit should have been John Kerry’s get-in-to-the-Whitehouse-free card, but nope.
Thus Moore himself can be praised at Cannes, rewarded with Oscars by the Academy and ultimately dismissed as a "fat loudmouth" by his most obstinate antagonists and ultimately the general public until he comes out with another scathing critique or our society and the cycle starts all over again.
The true tragedy here is the issues that Moore’s films highlight and the wave of inaction that follows. Granted, I’m not a huge fan of some of Moore’s outlandish stunts such as him making it seem like he sailed to Cuba; or wielding a megaphone asking the guard tower why 9/11 rescue workers couldn’t get the same healthcare as Al Qaeda; or him camping outside of corporate headquarters or his ugly sports hats; or his XXXXXXL jeans; or his faux blue collar sensibilities. But given the direction of the “news” business, Moore seems to be the only one talking about important topics and holding a mirror to the powers that be.
What sucks is that progressives see these films and continue to preach to the choir. Politicians laugh and admit behind close doors that “yeah this is F&%%$$d up but I got contributions to collect.” And people such as myself are entertained but also reminded of what Fredrick Douglass said about literacy and learning:
“It allows me to see my wretched condition, without the remedy... Self-consciousness, the trait that most distinguishes humans from animals, produces such despair that I have often wished myself a beast, or a bird--anything, rather than a slave.”
In other words, ignorance is bliss. And with so many people standing the iPhone lines after coming out of Moore’s film, folks remained blissful. Okay, so this is a stretch but it illustrates the frustration behind becoming enlightened and knowing that you still have to keep up on your own life and your bills or you’ll be just like those other poor saps on Moore’s films. And no, I don’t want to be a bird or a beast. Suffice it to say, that though we are not slaves in this country in the literal sense, the circle of revolving debt, tight labor and consumerism is extremely close to slavery in a metaphorical sense considering that hundreds of millions are one pink slip away from breaking their leg and having to move in with family because they can’t afford to pay their bills. This is called indentured servitude, which was a pre-cursor to slavery. See how this connects?
So why do we even need or even care about Michael Moore anyway? I’ll tell you why. Sadly, the impartiality, context and analysis that we’re supposed to be getting from so called journalists on complex subjects such as co-pays, deductibles, pre-existing medical conditions and the like, is noticeably lacking and in many cases non-existent.
In the end, Moore can always fall back on the fact that the responsibility of a filmmaker is not to be objective or even to report events, but to create something exciting, provocative and entertaining that stays in a person’s mind and possibly their hearts.
Yet the only thing that stays with us are the conditions that Moore shows us and then he retreats to wherever he retreats to, only to pop up and tell another story, to little or no long-term substantive effect.
No one in the media wants to admit that they might have been influenced by Michael Moore and those in power know all too well about the short attention span of the public, so no one does anything. And that, not Michael Moore, is the real “Big Fat Problem” in this country.
