Red Is The Color

I’ve just finished watching a few of Michael Moore’s movies, and my earlier conclusions and suspicions are confirmed. He is Red, Red, Red.

Roger & Me. This was his first movie. He went to Flint, Michigan (where he grew up) and busted on General Motors for umpteen minutes. GM created Flint, but also – so he claims – destroyed it by shutting down plants. As if it was GM’s duty to keep plants open just to give people jobs. I found his arguments less than persuasive.

Canadian Bacon. Fiction: the US trumps up a war with Canada when the Cold War peters out and the Russians refuse to play along. A bunch of stupid Americans try to invade Toronto, believing it to be the capital (try Ottawa) and various SCTV people get a chance to be in a movie. Dan Akroyd was quality as the trooper who advises them to repeat the nasty anti-Canadian slogans in French as well as English. Given that we haven’t invaded Canada long after the Cold War ended, I’d say this idea was pretty stupid, though it probably served to amuse a few Canucks.

The Big One. Moore goes on a tour of the US promoting his books, and stopping by various corporate headquarters along the way to hassle, harass, and embarrass various corporate PR people and media escorts. Not much happens, the highlight being his meeting in person with Phil Knight of Nike. Honestly, the odds of finding a plant full of Americans willing to put sneakers together for $5.50 an hour is pretty damn low.

The analysis here shouldn’t be how low Indonesian Nike wages are compared to US minimum wages, it should be how they compare to other wages in Indonesia. If they were paying less than the prevailing wage in Indonesia, why would anyone there work for Nike?

Then there’s this business of prison labor. How sorry are we going to be for prison inmates doing telemarketing or customer service for less than minimum wage? They’re in prison! I suppose the alternative is someone in India doing the same. Should I wonder, “hmm, this person doesn’t sound Indian. Are they in prison?” Does it really matter? Again, if Americans were willing to do this for the same price, we wouldn’t be hiring prisoners or Indians. Economics, pure and simple – and nothing wrong with it.

Bowling for Columbine. Thanks to Moore, we know who to blame for the shooting in Columbine. No, it wasn’t the two boys. No, it wasn’t Marilyn Manson. Hold your seats, people, it was K-MART! Yes, the chain was responsible. Lovable, boring, big-ass and cheap K-Mart was the merciless murderer of those poor kids in Colorado. We had no idea. Who will K-Mart murder next? Stay tuned.

Fahrenheit 9/11. More propaganda. In Mein Kampf, Hitler describes propaganda as, “don’t fight fair, fight dirty. Never acknowledge the other side’s points. Don’t argue rationally. Just cram your message down their throats, repeat the lies, and shout louder than the other guy. It’s a war.” Similar deal here. Whether it’s busting on Bush for Carlysle group connections or Saudi ties (which applied to past presidents, administrations, and Democrats), blaming Bush for Oregon’s State Police budget (try blaming Portland instead), trying to get us paranoid about FBI or sheriff’s snoops on harmless peaceniks (who were never even arrested) or simply busting on US troops in Iraq, Moore strikes out on every issue. Far from being left with a damning, smoking gun no-brainer indictment on 9-11, we simply have an incessant string of vague innuendo, tenuous connections, and mysterious allegations. When’s Moore going to tackle the Kennedy Assassination? I guess he hasn’t figured out which American multinational company to pin the blame on.

Sicko. Here he takes on the US health care system. All well and fine to slam the US system – which does have its faults – but to suggest we adopt what they have in France or Cuba? Come on. There is NO WAY the US taxpayer would accept the 90% tax rate necessary for these so-called “free” health care systems (which aren’t free, of course). So we’re back where we started.

TV Nation/The Awful Truth. I caught a few episodes of these, but did not watch them consistently. The one that sticks out in my mind was when Moore painted a tractor trailer red with a yellow hammer & sickle, and drove by various truck stops trying to elicit some sort of recognition from the trucking proletariat. Nope, not much class consciousness along the highways of US.

He also wrote an article for The Nation years ago (I wish I could find it) in which he slammed US leftist intellectuals for being snobs who wouldn’t deign to have a beer, bowl a few pins, or (God forbid!!!) hunt with Joe Sixpack, the American Proletarian. These are the American workers: how are you going to win them over writing obscure books full of Marxist jargon 99.99% of these people will never read? Don’t talk about “bourgeois”, “proletariat”, “capitalist imperialist exploiters”, etc. Simply ask them if they think they’re getting a raw deal from management. Paul Wellstone had the right idea. Fortunately for us, the Wellstones are few and far between.

Books. I haven’t read any of his books. His movies are annoying enough, why go through the hassle? Hell, it took me ages to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” because I wasn’t keen on giving Moore any of my money.

Ralph Nader. Before Moore, there was Nader, causing a stink. I recently heard him speak at one of these eco/green conventions in DC, badmouthing corporate America as usual. I’ve read his book Unsafe at Any Speed. Granted, GM was being a major dick with him, and the Corvair was a shitty car – an idiotic competitor to the Mustang, and far outclassed by the Camaro and Firebird which should have been GM’s answer in the first place. But he seems to ignore Volvo and other companies which voluntarily introduced safety features without government mandates. The reality is, if people want to pay for safety they will. But the fact that Volvo doesn’t have a lock on the market suggests that consumers sometimes have other priorities than safety. Maybe they’re not Nader’s preferences, but who cares what Nader wants in a car? He doesn’t speak for anyone except himself and the tiny minority of leftists. However, I do hope he runs again and draws off Osama/Clinton voters so McCain can win (even though Ron Paul is my choice).
Both Moore and Nader are clearly lefties (to use the food analogy I brought up last week, watermelons: green on the outside, red on the inside). Moore never met a corporation he liked. I suppose if you wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, you could say that he simply wants to hold corporate America accountable and expose bad companies.

Fine. But why not show us good companies too? We know they’re out there. Why not show us a company that treats its employees fairly – or even one that’s employee-owned (you NEVER hear about them from Moore and Nader). The obvious reason for this is that his ultimate motive is to make us mistrust corporations as an aggregate and capitalism as a system. For that matter, neither have I ever seen Moore do the obvious thing: purchase stock in a company and show up at its annual shareholders’ meeting to bitch and gripe.

Nor does he spend much time talking about unions. Many leftists (including many of America’s various socialist parties) dislike unions because they represent an attempt to work within the capitalist system instead of overthrowing it. It’s a sellout to The Man, they claim. To the extent workers get tangible benefits and a decent wage from a union, that shows the system works, right? Why give us a totalitarian North Korean regime – or even watered down “market socialism” like Denmark or Sweden with 90% taxes – when we can get what we want within the US capitalist system?

I see the European model as being philosophically incompatible with American culture. Americans are the adults who moved out of their parents’ house in the 17^th century and grew up. Europeans are the 30-somethings still living at home, living off mom & dad. They pay 90% taxes and keep a small, nominal allowance. Mom & Dad pay their health insurance, rent, education, etc. and provide for their needs. After that, what more do they need?

Paul Weaver. Having busted on Moore, I’ll mention Weaver’s book, The Suicidal Corporation. (I’m still reading John DeLorean’s book, On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors, which I’ve momentarily misplaced and will finish when I find it). Weaver started out as a neoconservative who felt that Big Business got a bum rap from Nader and the left, and went to Ford in the late 70s to help them set the record straight. Once there, however, he learned that much of the shit that Big Business catches is well-deserved, and most of it brought upon itself by its own idiotic political maneuvering. Moreover, there was NEVER a “Golden Age” in which Big Business was pro-capitalist; for the most part of its history, since the late 19^th century, business has behaved badly, has never been pro-capitalist or pro-market, and has constantly sought government favors and protection. He describes a corporate atmosphere reminiscent of Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) with Cuffy Meigs, Orren Boyle and Jim Taggart, and uncomfortably close to Mussolini’s Italy. The book is dated from 1988, the tail end of the Reagan era (he wasn’t phenomenally impressed by Reagan) and is 20 years out of date. But many of its points are well taken, so I won’t call Moore and Nader 100% off the mark.

So where does that leave us? Capitalism does work, although it also, quite obviously, has problems. But that doesn’t mean the solution is revolution, as Moore and Nader so quietly shout (don’t get me started on Rage Against the Machine).