Saturday, October 22, 2005
I'm reading Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man by David Hardy and Jason Clarke. It's one of a number of Conservative rebuttals/attacks of/on Moore. It's quite good in that it sets out to point out occasions where it believes Moore has either stretched the truth or snapped it completely. Where it suffers is that it's authors are as far over to the right as Moore is to the left. It's incredibly partisan. Part of the chapter on Moore's first big feature, Roger and Me, is a paean to capitalism. As the title might suggest, Hardy and Clarke are writing this to be in many ways a mirror image of Moore. While Moore may not have much liking for Conservatives, Hardy and Clarke clearly don't like liberals and Democrats. Moore sometimes finds flimsy reasons to dislike people he writes about? Fine, Hardy and Clarke will find unnamed sources from Moore's first jobs in media to talk about how he wasn't a team player. At one point they even have a go at him using CAPITAL LETTERS for emphasis, as though this is Michael Moore Eats, Shoots and Leaves.
Everything they say could well be true, even in the British media there have been those willing to question and find inaccuracies in Moore's reporting, and those that have pointed out that when publicly called on his accuracy Moore tends to get shirty very quickly. But copying Moore's style in order to attack him isn't very clever. In the end this book comes out as only for those who dislike Moore already to read, whereas it might have been a bit more useful to try for more accessibility, to aim for those outside that niche audience. It would have been nice if they could have written this without weighting every sentence with a belief that those on the left are stupid and deluded.
I'm also glad to report that, as one of the authors is behind the Moorewatch site, that I've reached page 48 and, other than the title, neither of the writers have felt it necessary to make a completely unnecessary reference to Moore's size.
Everything they say could well be true, even in the British media there have been those willing to question and find inaccuracies in Moore's reporting, and those that have pointed out that when publicly called on his accuracy Moore tends to get shirty very quickly. But copying Moore's style in order to attack him isn't very clever. In the end this book comes out as only for those who dislike Moore already to read, whereas it might have been a bit more useful to try for more accessibility, to aim for those outside that niche audience. It would have been nice if they could have written this without weighting every sentence with a belief that those on the left are stupid and deluded.
I'm also glad to report that, as one of the authors is behind the Moorewatch site, that I've reached page 48 and, other than the title, neither of the writers have felt it necessary to make a completely unnecessary reference to Moore's size.
