Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Proud to be an American

In an online petition thousands of US citizens have pressed the documentary filmmaker Michael Moore to run for President of their country! He certainly is a breath of fresh air, an active conscience of the American people, and to the delight of millions the bane in the life of President George Bush.

His satirical book ‘Stupid White Men’ had the misfortune of being due for publication on September 12th 2001, the day after the terrorist bombings on the World Trade Centre and Washington. The publishers, HarperCollins, left it lying in a warehouse, believing that its sustained attack on Bush would be perceived as being “insensitive”. In an open letter to Bush, Moore asks him whether he’s a functional illiterate, whether he’s a felon and whether he is getting the necessary help for his drug and alcohol problem! In one chapter, ‘A Very American Coup’, Moore points out that Bush actually lost the presidential election, got fewer votes (a half a million less) than Al Gore, and that in the controversial vote in Florida 173,000 voters (many of whom were black and likely Gore supporters) were removed from the register by dubious means.

The publishers asked Moore to change the title and re-write half of the book. He refused. Then, a librarian started a campaign on the internet, criticising the publishers and they were forced to give way. When released it went to Number 1 in about three days.

However, the book was not aired on any network television shows and over 90% of the newspapers refused to review it, including the ‘New York Times’ (on whose bestsellers’ list it remained for thirty-four weeks).

Last year, Moore released his film ‘Bowling for Columbine’ at the Cannes Festival. It has the familiar mix of his styles: confrontational, audacious and entertaining. It received a fifteen-minute standing ovation at Cannes and went on to scoop an Oscar for best documentary this year at the Academy Awards.

At Columbine High School in 1999 two pupils, armed with legally held firearms, killed twelve students and a teacher before killing themselves. Before going on their shooting spree, the two had gone bowling earlier in the day. The film is an indictment of the gun laws in the USA and the National Rifle Association in particular. Every day forty people – twelve of them children – die of gunshot wounds in the USA. But the film also examines America’s foreign policy and the issue of race.

In one brilliant piece of filming, Charlton Heston, president of the NRA, is ridiculed for speaking at a rally shortly after the shooting, during which he said: “To take my gun away from me, you’d have to prise it from out of my cold, dead hand.”

In the final scene, a stupid-looking Heston slowly and silently walks away from Moore during an interview, refusing to take responsibility for the negative side of gun use. Moore then leaves a photo against a pillar in Heston’s house of Kayla Rolland, a six-year-old girl shot dead by a six-year-old boy in their first grade classroom.

At the Academy awards ceremony, in his acceptance speech, Moore again lambasted George Bush. He said of his fellow documentary nominees, including his wife Kathleen Glynn: “We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time where we have fictitious elections results that elects a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons… We are against this war, Mr Bush. Shame on you, Mr Bush, shame on you…”

He got a standing ovation from the greater part of the audience, while others in the balcony booed. Box office returns on the film, already the highest-grossing documentary in history, were up by more than 100 percent on the Monday after Oscar night. ‘Stupid White Men’, already the largest non-fiction best seller of 2002, reclaimed the No. 1 slot.

Since then, Moore has stepped up his anti-war stance and regularly addresses George Bush on his website (www.michaelmoore.com/index.php). He needles the president over his draft dodging by referring to him as ‘Lieutenant’ (“the only true military rank you ever achieved… in the, um, Texas Air National Guard”). In May, Bush appeared like a five-star general on the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Gulf and with a ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner fluttering in the background, announced that the war was over. Since then American troops are being killed on an almost daily basis in Iraq.

Interviewed in ‘The Guardian’ last November Moore said of the USA: “We’re raised with the manifest destiny, the belief, that we have the right to resolve our conflicts through violence, and that we will shoot first and inspect for weapons later. That’s our mentality, that’s the way we’re going to live our lives, that’s how we’re going to rule the world. And it will be our ruin if it’s not addressed.”

Moore has spoken throughout the US, to audiences with an average of 2,000-3,000 per night. At one venue, 5,000 people had to be turned away.

That he is planning to speak in West Belfast is a major coup for Feile an Phobail. Moore, the school dropout, with his hallmark denim jeans and baseball hat and ponderous gait, is no stupid, white man, but makes many of his co-nationals proud to be American.

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