Michael Moore’s “Capitalism: A Love Story” premieres at the Venice Film Festival today. Reuters has most of the details, the usual-usual from the 55-year old mega-millionaire. But buried below the usual-usual is the real story — a point of agreement with we right-wingers:
Amid the gloom, Moore detects the beginnings of a popular movement against unbridled capitalism, and believes President Barack Obama’s rise to power may bolster it.
Well, let’s hope Ted Kennedy’s enjoying his day on the slopes because Mr. Moore and I just found some common ground.
Here are the other bullet points. To save you time, the following words are not used together in describing the film: “personal” and “responsibility” — “taxes” and “too high” — “Michael Moore” and “gave all his wealth to the federal government.”
1. “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil,” the two-hour movie concludes. “You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.” …
2. The bad guys… are big banks and hedge funds which “gambled” investors’ money in complex derivatives that few, if any, really understood[.] …
3. [L]arge companies have been prepared to lay off thousands of staff despite boasting record profits. …
4. [R]egulation has been changed to favor the few on Wall Street rather than the many on Main Street. …
5. [E]ncouraging ordinary Americans to borrow against the value of their homes, businesses created the conditions that led to the financial crisis, and with it to homelessness and unemployment. …
6. Moore interviews priests who believe that capitalism is anti-Christian, because it fails to protect the poor and encourages greed.
And one final point of agreement:
Moore drives a truck up to some of the biggest banks in New York and, through a loud speaker, demands they give back the hundreds of billions of bailout dollars to the country.
Though entertaining, Moore’s films have never been at all persuasive. Whether it was the reelection of George W. Bush or a push for socialized medicine, Moore’s a gift from above for our side — who, like Oliver Stone, is so clownish and anti-intellectual he’s become a national punchline.
May Michael Moore live forever and never stop making movies.