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Dumb and Dumber
Oct. 24th, 2017 08:40 pmBook Review: Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore
This has been on my to-read pile for several years. Funny (not funny) how George W Bush seems a towering intellect of the Republican Party these days. Seeing An Inconvenient Sequel recently prompted me to compare the campaigning of Al Gore and Michael Moore, so it seemed a good time to read this book.
The book was pretty much as I expected - funny in parts, painful in others. Moore can be very funny at times, but his anger, while justified, often falls the wrong side of effective. It has to be remembered this was written in 2001 (and before September 11 - though clearly with one or two editorial insertions afterwards in this edition at least). Moore just can't accept that Bush became President. There are at least two arguments you can make on this. One would be that imperfections in the electoral college system make it unfair, and therefore needs reform or replacement - but this is not one that Moore chooses to make, because for all its faults it gives legitimacy to the Bush presidency. Instead, he takes the altogether more controversial line that electoral and judicial abuses in Florida illegally disenfranchised significant numbers of Democratic voters - thus the Bush presidency is not legitimate. Moore may be right. If he is right, how and why did the Republicans get away with it? The problem with his argument, as I see it, is that it's an accusation of such an enormous crime it just seems incredible; so, therefore, it's far easier to believe it can't possibly have happened. And, of course, the verdict of the Supreme Court and the lack of proper investigation just pour oil onto the fires of conspiracy theory.
Perhaps the rest of the book functions as an extended essay on how the 2000 Presidential election result was allowed to stand, as it's Moore's cataloge of flaws in various aspects of American life - race, environment, guns, education. He's also pretty scathing of the Democrats, with reasoned argument, but pragmatically equivocal on the subject of voting Green. The nuanced position may be understood by readers of the book, but realistically it's a tome for the echo chamber.
This has been on my to-read pile for several years. Funny (not funny) how George W Bush seems a towering intellect of the Republican Party these days. Seeing An Inconvenient Sequel recently prompted me to compare the campaigning of Al Gore and Michael Moore, so it seemed a good time to read this book.
The book was pretty much as I expected - funny in parts, painful in others. Moore can be very funny at times, but his anger, while justified, often falls the wrong side of effective. It has to be remembered this was written in 2001 (and before September 11 - though clearly with one or two editorial insertions afterwards in this edition at least). Moore just can't accept that Bush became President. There are at least two arguments you can make on this. One would be that imperfections in the electoral college system make it unfair, and therefore needs reform or replacement - but this is not one that Moore chooses to make, because for all its faults it gives legitimacy to the Bush presidency. Instead, he takes the altogether more controversial line that electoral and judicial abuses in Florida illegally disenfranchised significant numbers of Democratic voters - thus the Bush presidency is not legitimate. Moore may be right. If he is right, how and why did the Republicans get away with it? The problem with his argument, as I see it, is that it's an accusation of such an enormous crime it just seems incredible; so, therefore, it's far easier to believe it can't possibly have happened. And, of course, the verdict of the Supreme Court and the lack of proper investigation just pour oil onto the fires of conspiracy theory.
Perhaps the rest of the book functions as an extended essay on how the 2000 Presidential election result was allowed to stand, as it's Moore's cataloge of flaws in various aspects of American life - race, environment, guns, education. He's also pretty scathing of the Democrats, with reasoned argument, but pragmatically equivocal on the subject of voting Green. The nuanced position may be understood by readers of the book, but realistically it's a tome for the echo chamber.