However, while I see some clear flaws in his films (e.g., I’m not a fan of his hyperbole), in general I think they’re great and needed. So often people are not deep thinkers so to just get them aware of topics, they need to see and hear things with broad strokes. Then they may be primed for deeper analyses. Unfortunately, part of the problem is that you do get angry and then have no place in which to constructively use that anger. Moore’s films need to be paired with resources where you can read more in depth reporting on the topic or places/groups where you can volunteer your time, money, etc.

For me, the major things I love about Moore’s films are the stories he tells. If you can get past the manipulative parts, he finds people who are riveting and relates the very stories that should be at the heart of our national conversations yet aren’t. From Fahrenheit 911, I will never forget the image of the grieving mother doubling over in front of the White House as she tries to protest the unjust war that killed her son. There were tons of great stories from Sicko. As a psychologist who works in healthcare, I can tell you that he got it right in showing how people suffer under our current system. These are the stories that the mainstream media should be showing but aren’t. Like I said, I could do without all the fluff he presents but I admit I laughed at the “evildoer” line when he approached Guantanamo and I think his broad point about how we do provide good healthcare when it suits us is valid.

In short, I think his films have huge limitations but no one else is offering the stories he can tell on the topics that matter.

as for michael moore and the propagandists, i have nothing to add, except that it is great to see both my concern about the political shouting match as well as the apparent uselessness of even attempting to play fair, actually frikkin articulated in a lucid manner.

pardon me for piping up with what ought to be an unnecessary compliment, but it seems to be so out of vogue these days and that, i think, has been the chief source of my personal distress.

thank you all so very very much. i am officially addicted to this blog.

“Comment again sometime! But, you know, in a way that’s a little less derail-y, if you can.”
But your post was about Tarantino as much as it was about Moore.

“there are probably more words, in your comments put together, than there are in the original post. Which was lengthy. Do you even SEE the problem here, or…”
I don’t. Is the issue that McDuff was writing a lot? How is this bad? Forgive me, but I love your blog and think that each post is worthy of discussion. It’s disappointing to see that a particularly wordy contribution to that discussion merits a dismissal.

“And that’s why he scares me. To be honest, it’s what scares me sometimes about myself. Because I basically think that, in order to be a good person, you have to continually ask yourself whether you are a bad one. You always have to consider the possibility that you’re the bad guy – that you can be a bad guy regardless of your cause. You have to constantly look at your enemies, not to see how you are different, but to see how you are the same.”
I love this. I was actually confronted with the same truth upon hearing about Obama’s factual error concerning Otto Raddatz, and feeling pretty apathetic about it; the particular way I justified it was “it could have happened, and probably does quite a bit.” If such an error had been coming from the right, however, I would have been furious.

My point is that essentializing market capitalism as pure, unadulterated evil, especially if one is suggesting that there is clearly some alternative that evades the messiness of history doesn’t advance the discussion much further. At best, it only keeps the discussion going among the liberals who know enough and care enough to parse it out.

Just to take this back to the upcoming Moore film in question: the current political climate, in which the word “SOCIALIST!!11!!1″ is being thrown around by conservatives as if it’s synonymous with “EVIL” (also fascism and nazism, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so sad) really needs is a pragmatic engagement with different social theories that disrupts the assumption that ANY model is a transcendent good in and of itself.

What we need is someone to honestly say that capitalism has a long history of exploitation, corruption, and despotism JUST LIKE SOCIALISM. Yes, you have U.S. based mega-corporations, industrial era sweat shops, the slave trade, etc., but I also don’t think you can seriously engage socialist theory without being honest about, you know, the government mandated starvation of peasants in the Ukraine or the Stalinist party purges. There’s horror on every side, so suggesting that what is a feature of one system is just a bug in the other is loathsomely disingenuous. However, once we’ve established that its the application of social theories to practical situations that matters, and that taking from each in moderation is a tenable middle-ground–like, say, free market principles are a great way to advance the latest computer technology but are a shitty basis for a health care system–then maybe a discussion will be possible.

Moore’s film isn’t out yet, so I might have to temper the following once I actually see it, but what it seems like he’s doing is merely replacing one set of essentialist principles (socialism is evil, capitalism is good) with another essentialist principles, even if all he’s doing is characterizing capitalism as inherently and unavoidably evil without demanding some kind of Marxist Revolution. If, as Sam Holloway suggested earlier, Moore really is trying to win the hearts and minds of his opposition, than going about it this way is 100% guaranteed to fail.