Matt Labash is one of my favorite scribblers at probably my favorite magazine. If you go to the Weekly Standard's online Daily Standard site today, you get your choice of three Labash "kneecap job[s]" (his words) on Michael Moore. One from 1998 (Michael Moore, One-Trick Phony), one from 2002 (Jackass, The Documentary) and a new one (Un-Moored from Reality.) Read them all!
While most Moore critics stop at ridiculing him, since he is, both figuratively and literally, a fat target, I talked to his co-workers, acquaintances, and former employees, nearly all of whom made my editorial pronouncements look like a good-natured game of Slapjack. They called him "paranoid," "mercurial," "demanding," and a "fork-tongued manipulator." Though Moore's entire shtick is predicated on fighting the jackboot of corporate oppression, they detailed everything from his temper tantrums to his threatening to fire an assistant who sent a yellow cab instead of a limo to fetch him at the airport. They compared working conditions under Moore to "a sweatshop," "indentured servitude," and "a concentration camp." One of his former producers said it was like "working for Idi Amin--without the laughs." Another staffer simply said, "My parents want him dead."
I don't want him dead, but I do want him discredited. He should be a Ann Coulterish figure (he should HAVE her figure!) on the left. Ms. Coulter is considered beyond the pale and her facts are greeted skeptically. The mainstream media will not say the truth: that Moore lies.
For what it is worth, I tend toward the left (really!) and I think Moore lies. Putting him in a basket with Ann Coulter seems right on to me. I sometimes wonder if these folk really even beleive their schlock themselves or have just figured out that it sells. Michael Moore is a capatilist pig! Now that should be an insult to him.
Posted by: Silence Dogood at June 30, 2004 02:00 PMDon't be so hard on Ann guys.
If you had to be locked in a room with her or Michael Moore, who would you choose?
With Ann, there'd be no fear of being eaten.
Alex,
I like Ann Coulter. I've bought most of her books and would pick her over Michael Moore in anything but a pie-eating contest.
I do think that she has crossed the line of respectable punditry on occasion and is held at arms-length even by those wild lefties at National Review.
My suggestion is that Mr. Moore certainly deserves AT LEAST this amount of distain and skepticism. Yet he is accepted by mainstream Democrats.
I'll place my order early. If you're locking me in a room with one of them, I'll take Ms. Coulter.