Barrett Kalellis
Monday, March 31, 2003

In one of the most loathsome examples of boorish public behavior, film director Michael Moore’s Oscar acceptance rant – perfectly captured by his unwashed, ungroomed appearance – went beyond all bounds of decency and civility, and spiraled downward into what can only be described as an infantile tantrum.

Mired in the lonely delusions of those reliving the great liberal loss of the year 2000, Moore castigated President Bush as a “fictitious” commander in chief, winning by “fictitious” election results, and sending the nation into war for “fictitious” reasons, as vouchsafed by such leaders as the pope, Bill Maher and the Dixie Chicks.

Just to get the Neanderthal porker off the stage, the orchestra had to play fortissimo to drown out his screeching, since he looked like he was building up a head of steam.

Upbraided shortly afterward backstage for this disgusting display, Moore self-righteously declared that he “didn’t give up his free speech rights when he entered the Kodak Theater.” His lèse-majesté, however, was more akin to someone being invited into a private home for a dignified evening, who immediately drops his drawers and begins to defecate on the carpet.

In fact, Moore’s entire career can be characterized thus. Here is a man who is so convinced of the rightness of his beliefs that he will actively find ways to embarrass or insult anyone who does not share his peculiar ideas, preferably by shoving a camera in their faces.

Moore has always sought a soapbox from which to preach his version of enlightened populism, which contains all the usual socialist enthusiasms: anti-corporation, anti-capitalism, radical environmentalism, anti-Republican, and so on.

In the mid-1980s, he was the editor of the Michigan Voice, a leftist tabloid that was circulated for free on college campuses. I recall having read several issues of this while in Ann Arbor and being struck by the shrill anger and virulence that characterized his editorials and screeds. It made me wonder at the time how any writer could find such a bottomless well of vitriol to splash around in issue after issue and still remain sane.

The publication flopped after a year or two and disappeared. Moore moved to California for a brief position as editor of Mother Jones magazine, until he locked horns with the publisher and was fired.

His next venture was more successful – trying his hand at film production, he created the clever satire “Roger and Me,” which became a runaway hit at the box office.

Moore’s films are not really documentaries, but rather propaganda. He has become the Leni Riefenstahl of the left. Though her “Triumph of the Will” and “Olympia” are masterful in their craft, Riefenstahl, unknowingly perhaps, put a happy face on Third Reich fascism.

But in their own way, Moore’s “Roger & Me,” “The Big One” and “Bowling for Columbine” are likewise all dishonest to the core.

Moore makes no attempt to present both sides of an issue, as an honest documentarian would, but skews his scripts to make his ideological foes simply the targets of scorn and derision in his films.

Thus, former GM CEO Roger Smith is made to look callous and unfeeling by Moore’s hectoring during his patented brand of party crashing at a GM Christmas party. Poor Charlton Heston is played for the fool in his own home, after Moore ambushes him in an unannounced interview with questions suggesting that, as president of the NRA, he was somehow responsible for all American children killed by guns.

TV producer Dick Clark fell victim to the same trick: Moore somehow holds him responsible for burdening a welfare mother with a low-wage job at one of his California restaurants.

But this is Moore’s straw man modus operandi: Misrepresent or downright falsify facts, then find doltish subjects, corporate bogeymen or unsuspecting celebrities to interrogate, then edit their unguarded, uninformed or witless comments – only to laugh at them and reinforce his own twisted view of events.

Moore’s critics have called him everything from “Chomsky for children” and “One-Trick Phony” to simply a jackass. Others note the hypocrisy of a radical socialist who claims to speak for the common man yet lives in a $1.9 million New York apartment and sends his daughter to a posh private school.

Whatever her political indiscretions, Leni Riefenstahl was a transcendent, visionary German filmmaker whose early 20th century work will stand the test of time for high technical and cinematic achievement.

By comparison, Michael Moore, though superficially clever, only reveals a body of work and public persona built upon a laundry list of lies, misrepresentations and sophomoric fantasies.

Barrett Kalellis is a columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications. You may reach Mr. Kalellis at kalellis@newsmax.com

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