No, they are also disagreeable to the majority of mainstream Americans. And Moore is most certainly whiny and pompous. You’ve obviously missed the interviews with him that I’ve seen.
Cite? The guy sells an awful lot of books, and his movies are unbelievably popular, for documentaries.
Cite again? Saying, “He’s whiny, I’ve seen it,” isn’t particularly persuasive, nor is it a rebuttal to Evil Captor’s claims that “[h]is opinions are merely disagreeable to conservatives,” as you’re quite conservative yourself, and might be one of those conservatives he is claiming “are desperate to find some sort of moral equivalence between Moore and … Rush Limbaugh.”
First off, since Evil Captor makes no cite of the interviews which he claims proves Moore is NOT whiny and pompous I am under no compunction to pull up the ones I have seen that I think prove he is. However, I wonder if either of you have heard what he said during an appearance in England, where he insisted that the reason the 9-11 hijackers succeeded is that the victims were mostly white, and thus "scaredy-cats, and if more of the passengers had been black they wouldn’t have been scared of the hijackers’ “little knives.”
Second, the fact that his books sell well don’t mean that the people buying them always AGREE with him. They may’ve simply been sucked in by the Moore Media Machine and want to find out what all the fuss is about. Getting back to Limbaugh (who I can’t stand, BTW), his books sell well too, but I don’t think most people agree with him.
And last, yes, I am conservative in some areas, but I base my opinion on conversations with those who more liberal on social issues than I who still find Moore offensive.
I haven’t seen that article. Got a link to it?
I DID have a link to the original article, but it’s expired. It was in The Independent in London and there were also references to the same article in the London Times and the UK Guardian, but those are in their pay-only archives now. A quick google produced these references however:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,74883,00.html
http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2003/10/19/story425969693.asp
Thanks for the links, Rik, although you could have saved yourself some coding. Half of them are merely restatements of the Yasmin Alibhai-Brown column, who was the only person in any of those links who saw Moore first-hand. And she only mentions Moore briefly, before using his comments as a launching pad for her column on London gang-violence. From her description, it sounds bad, but I’d still like to see the comments in context. Before 9/11, Dave Chapelle had a similar bit in his stand up routine about how black people never get taken hostage. Maybe Alibhai-Brown just doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. In my experience, most op-ed comlumnists don’t.
The bit about him throwing a tantrum about how much he’s getting paid certainly makes him sound like a jerk, but I noted that the primary source for it was the International Movie Database. I wasn’t aware that the IMDB engaged in journalism: I thought it was basically just a clearing house for movie trivia. And considering how often it gets even that wrong, I’m somewhat less than convinced.
Then by your definition I don’t have a sense of humor either, because I find nothing funny about what was said. A joke about hijacking before 9/11 could be funny. A post-9/11 joke about hijacking that mentions the 9/11 hijackings and mocks the victims is NOT funny and the person who tells it is a boorish, self-involved idiot.
You’re missing the point. None of your links tell us what Moore actually said. One of them, the Alibhai-Brown column, has her interpretation of what he said, but does not include the actual quote that she is reacting to. That Moore’s comments were “mocking” the victims may be entirely her invention, much like SenorBeef took Moore’s joke about subverting the NRA and interpreted it literally as a scheme to destroy the organization. Of the other three links you provided, two quote the same passage from Alibhai-Brown’s column, and the third doesn’t mention the incident at all. None of them tell us what Moore’s precise words were. Can you find a first-hand account of exactly what Moore said about the hijackers, preferably with context?
The article WAS a first-hand account. That you disbelieve it doesn’t change it to a second-hand account.
And YOU are missing the point. Of COURSE Moore was telling a joke. The POINT was that the joke was in poor taste and telling it at the time he did and in the manner he did was offensive, whether or not you’re a conservative.
Sure, it was a first-hand account. But it was not a first-hand account of “exactly what Moore said about the hijackers.” I don’t know if the joke was in poor taste or not, because I only have Alibhai-Brown’s word that it was in poor taste, and I don’t know what she considers to be “good” taste. I don’t know what the joke was, specifically, I don’t know what the manner he told it in was, and I don’t know the context in which it was told. All I know is he told a joke that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown didn’t like. To which I can only respond, “So what?”
Love him or loathe him, the world would be a MUCH poorer place without people like Michael Moore.
His most redeeming feature, to my eyes, is that he realises that change takes a LONG time but that doesn’t stop you trying to speed it up.
Instead of dissecting his books/films looking for ‘distortion and innaccuracy’ people could
a) read up on the topic from a wide variety of sources and MAKE UP THEIR OWN MIND
b) get off their behind and make a film of their own to illustrate their point-of-view
The revolution will not be televised - nor will it come around if we all just sit nit-picking each other’s attempts to educate people…
JP
p.s. Rikwriter - why was a joke about hijacking acceptable/funny before it happened to a handful of Americans in America specifically?
What about the 10s of thousands of people (including many Americans and all those other people they share the world with when they feel like it) who’ve been hijacked before that - or don’t they matter for some reason?
Almost any joke will be offensive to someone, somewhere at some time - 9/11 just carries more ‘grief tourists’ IMO…
JP
You’ve convinced me…it would have been boorish and tasteless before 9/11 too. So it would seem Moore is an Asshole for all seasons.
Look - I’m not an idiot. I understand that he didn’t literally intend to get the NRA 5 million more members and vote him as president. But I think my point that his joining the NRA wasn’t under circumstances favorable to the NRA’s mission seems to hold - has anyone else offered a viable explanation for why he joined?
So my original point, that it’s disingenuous to say “I’m not anti-gun, I’m in the NRA!” seems to still be valid. I’m not so stupid as to take the comments literally, but he does seem to have motives for joining the NRA other than to bolster that organization.
I thought I did. He thinks it’s strayed from its original intent and he wants to bring it back to that. A viewing of Bowling for Columbine makes it clear even beyond this that he doesn’t think guns themselves are the problem so he doesn’t even need to pull that out as an excuse.
I don’t know how they do things in your country, but I’ve never heard of anyone robbing a bank with a blender.
As to Moore himself: he’s making legitimate points in an extreme manner so that people will maybe hear him and pay attention. In attempting to overcome a nation of lethargic apathists, he sometimes goes to far. Winnowing his work for truth is important.
Oh, yeah, I forgot about all those times people gave the bank $10,000 to open an account, got an unwieldy, large rifle, and then robbed them with it.
Obviously giving out a rifle at a bank in this manner has no relation to bank robberies, but if it makes you feel clever…
Well, you don’t rob the SAME BANK that gave you the gun! That would be uncouth.
Well the basic joke of the Dave Chappelle routine is that black people don’t get taken hostage because white people won’t negotiate for them. As a general mocking of societal racism, that is much funnier than saying that the hostages in a particular hijacking were cowards because they were white.
I’m not joining the debate, this is just what came to my mind:
There are stretches of road in America which have signs that say, “Bump ahead.” And, indeed, within a minute you find a sign that says, “Bump” with an arrow pointing down at the road. Once I actually felt the vehicle pitch mildly as it passed the spot, but on the whole I’m glad those signs were there because otherwise I never would’ve known what kind of danger was lurking.
For some reason, this is the same nation that has banks handing out the weapons that are probably most often used in bank hold-ups?
It seems like a total incongruity in terms of how badly Americans need to be treated like maniacs. Hence, I enjoyed the scene.