Michael Moore simply makes it too easy for me to go back to the well. I like to write about stuff other than the guy I made a flick about many years ago, but every now and again I open my email accounts to find myself inundated with questions from friends, fans and reporters about what I think about the latest Moore dust-up. This week, Moore sued Bob and Harvey Weinstein for a boatload of money he claims they hid from him in the accounting for “Fahrenheit 9/11” and I’ve been asked repeatedly what I think.
First, I see no problem with Moore suing the Weinsteins. If Moore’s audit showed irregularities, he should go after the dough. As someone who’s seen this very issue first hand, I can tell you that it is extraordinarily painful to see someone else spending your money on a big, expensive lunch, while smiling at you from across the table. Moore sued, they’ll likely settle, nobody will be happy, and in their unhappiness, they’ll all know they got a good deal.
But Mike Moore (and to some extent, the Weinsteins) has made a living espousing socialism and communism, wherein the government divvies up the money. You don’t like the result? Well, you can go fuck yourself, because you ain’t suin’ the government. And if you do, your monthly bag of government rice might come with a little hole in the bottom that allowed half of it to leak out during transit.
And that juxtaposition is what we in fly-over country most dislike about Hollywood. While we dig the music and the shallow celebrities we follow on TMZ and provide the bulk of the ticket receipts for the flicks, it’s the juxtaposition of big, rich guys using the system we espouse – where courts ARE one of the few Constitutional functions of government to help settle such disputes, and where we think Mike, Bob and Harvey should be able to make ungodly amounts of money and spend it however the hell they want – versus the ideology of slavish socialism they wish to inflict on those of us who can’t fly to Cannes on a private jet at any given moment.
It’s not just hypocritical (as my friend Penn says of hypocrites: “If someone does one thing and says another, it only doubles their chances of being half right”), but I think it’s immoral. It’s immoral to literally strive and campaign for your fellow Americans to lose their rights to do the things you have done to take yourself from being unemployed in Davison, Michigan to a “multi, multi-millionaire” (and let’s give Moore credit, he IS a self-made “multi, multi-millionaire”).
America can remain the place where you can say anything you want and even make a boatload of money doing it. We’re creative and innovate and brilliant. Sadly, now that he has everything he could want in life, Moore wishes to cast a cold, gray cloud of sadness over the shining city on the hill, so that no others may discover its wonderment.
And while the rest of us try to scrape by, Moore still wants his movie check.