Professional Left hypocrite Michael Moore agreed to sit down in a live “town hall” interview session last night, hosted by Piers Morgan.
Morgan is a lot of pejorative things and a bigger douchebag than most, but he’s a journalist trained in the British tradition and he doesn’t give a fuck what questions he asks. So he chose to confront Moore with a tweeted question about how Moore reconciles his own personal wealth as opposed to the infamous 1 per cent against whom he’s continuously railing.
Morgan pushed the question, and Moore got visibly uncomfortable. Watch the segment and judge for yourself.
From almost the moment that Morgan pushes the question, watch Moore begin to sweat and laugh nervously, actually saying that he makes a lot of money and that he’s working against his own interests. Then the rest of the time is spent with him squirming and trying to evade answering the question that Morgan really wants answered: Is Moore, himself, part of the 1 per cent who hold the majority of wealth in the United States?
Short answer? Yes, he is.
Even if we didn’t know what we know about Michael Moore’s lifestyle and his fame, we’d suss by his shifty and evasive meanderings that he was, actually, part of the problem, and – furthermore – that Morgan knew that. Of course, he knew it. He thought he’d chance seeing if Moore were honest enough to admit it.
And, therein, Moore proved that he’s worse than any of the worst, seasoned politicians in avoiding telling the truth.
He makes a lot of money, yes … but for the corporations which distribute and help produce his films. (Kind of goes against what Moore represents, yes?)
And, yes, Moore earns a lot of money from his films – which are documentaries, mind you, and documentaries never make oodles of money – but he’s blessed to be able to do so. (Kind of sounds a bit like the Dominionists and their view of being particularly chosen, right?)
And – gee, aw shucks, he’s so cringeingly humble – ya know, he’s only had a high school education … just a working class stiff.
Bullshit.
There’s something creepy about a middle-aged man who dresses in what some perceive to be the stereotypical working man’s garb (think John Goodman in Roseanne), who continuously reminds me of an overgrown and greedy little kid who’s always raiding the cookie jar when your back’s turned. Plus, Moore has the whiney and brattish behaviour to boot.
First, Moore presents himself as solidly working class, almost in caricature. Much in the same way the privately-educated, Ivy League Cornel West presumes to speak for the poor on his corporately-financed poverty tour, portraying the radical chic’s Professional Negro, Moore presumes to be the radical chic’s idea of what the working man should be.
Moore, the child of the working class, admits to being raised in Flint, Michigan, when he was actually raised in nearby, affluent Davison, in this house:-
And he attended Davison High School, in the same town:-
These aren’t the venues of white-socked factory workers and their modestly-dressed children. It’s the suburbia of station wagons and Izod Lacrosse shirts and Docksiders.
The New Yorker did a brilliant deconstruction of the Moore myth in an article from 2004, which shows that he wasn’t just a high school graduate who couldn’t afford college. He dropped out. In fact, he’s never really had any sort of conventional working class job, and he’s not afraid to lie and drop cohorts in the deep shit just to further his own interests.
He squirms and says he’s not a part of the 1 per cent. He travels in his own private Lear jet. He maintains an upper West Side condominium in New York City. His other home is a lakeside property in a gated community of 2000 in Michigan where everyone living there is white. His child attended only private schools – proper exclusive venues and not the parochial Catholic schools of Moore’s youth. He and his wife own shares in Eli Lilley (which explains why Moore kept a low public profile during the healthcare debate), Sunoco Oil (which explains why he wasn’t to be seen or heard during the Gulf Oil spill crisis), Boeing (which goes miles in explaining why he hasn’t shown up on the picket lines with the Boeing union workers in Washington state, protesting the loss of a contract to Right-to-Work South Carolina).
More to the point, Moore isn’t really a fan of unions or union labor, as he eschews hiring union labour for his productions. Like any other capitalist, he’d have to pay union overtime wages and provide health insurance.
And, getting back to his share interests, he’s also a shareholder in Halliburton. Think about that the next time Moore opens his cake hole to whine about the President and the Middle Eastern wars.
Moore only appears at what he perceives to be the “fashionable” protests. The cameras were rolling in Wisconsin. They didn’t roll in Washington state, but I imagine, with his conflict of interest there, he heaved a sigh of relief.
This time, it’d different. Occupy Wall Street coincided with the publication of Moore’s latest book of reminsicences, where he says he supported Nixon when he was actually too young to vote for him in 1968 and he ran into Bobby Kennedy in a toilet. He also stared down Nancy Reagan, if you can believe that.
You can believe this, however: No matter how much and how often Michael Moore protests that he’s not a part of the 1 per cent, he is. No matter how much he says he cares, believes in and acts for the middle class or the working class (depending what day it is), he doesn’t. Like all of the Professional Left, he believes in his own brand, his own ego and his own self-promotion. He’s currently seeking a new demographic of voter – the younger, the more naive, the first-timer, who’ll buy into his phoney huckster shuckster charm.
And finally, you can also believe this: Michael Moore was one of the biggest mouths rampant in 2000, telling people far and wide that Bush and Gore were one and the same. The candidate he endorsed and for whom he campaigned avidly was Ralph Nader.
How well did that work out?
