There is nothing Michael Moore appears to enjoy more than bashing up the bad guys. In fact he embodies this era?s American cowboy ? baseball cap, an oversized check shirt shabbily covering a frame seemingly spun off many Mcdonald?s happy meals, jeans and attitude aplenty.
In 1989, when he first hit the mainstream radar with a documentary, critics were bowled over. Here was a peculiar coming together of two Flint, Michigan natives: General Motors and Moore. The former had closed down its 11 plants in the vicinity, the latter had gotten mad and the result was Roger & Me. As people began being evicted from their homes, Moore mortgaged his own to go after GM head Roger Smith. But as neatly as he exposed corporate callousness, a greater achievement lay in juxtaposing it against the hard choices made by ordinary people. He introduced the world to Rhonda Britton, who was caressing lovely little rabbits in one scene and hacking them to death in another, to put food on her dining table. As far as survival games go, that was as powerfully pathos-ridden an image as any in the archives.
Kindness, sympathy, empathy and all that?s gentle gets short shrift in Mike?s Election Guide 2008. Whether it?s Gladys Simple who wants to know what good it will do to fly an American flag on the back of her Dodge Ram or Betsy Hill who is struggling to cope with a pastor who doesn?t recognise her right to terminate a pregnancy, whether it?s Richie Bouton asking when the first ballot was cast or Bill Nelson who questions why the Electoral College gives special rights to the Iowa and New Hampshire electorate, or whether it?s Rose NgBacThiu being curious about why the Vietnamese had once shot down John McCain, Moore couldn?t feel less for them. All these characters, complete with reality-emphasising mug shots, pin together the opening chapter of the Guide. Its rejoinders may be persuasive, but their tone is uniformly abusive. Only a doofus would ask such questions, right? Often been accused of preaching to the choir, here Moore is bawling them out as if they were Satanites.
When Moore is done haranguing the choir, he turns the heat on his preferred presidential candidate. One of the many things that this ?preacher? thinks Barack Obama is doing wrong is acting as if he were the spokesman for an Israeli lobbying group. Another is that he keeps saying nice things about his Republican opponent John McCain. Obama would say that Moore is ?cruising for a bruising?.
In Florida this week, in his first ever campaign appearance with Obama, supreme Democratic hot rod Bill Clinton found Obama drawing enormous strength from the public around him. And channelling this energy back into the public, positively. In contrast, at their rallies, McCain and Sarah Palin have been name-calling Obama like they had some severe serial disorder: he pals around with terrorists, he is a socialist, he is giving Joe the Plumber a serious short end of the stick, and so on. Not to mention the abuses that the supporters have been shouting out at these rallies, with little censure. On the other hand, when Obama supporters hooted down McCain this week, he admonished: ?You don?t need to boo, you just need to vote.?
So this is a campaign that likes making nice, a strategy that is anathema to the Guide. In part, this is because of a doppelg?nger effect. Those who have invested enormous energies into Bush-bashing, something that must have felt like a hard swim against the tide in the most doctrinaire of the last eight years, often end up echoing the angry, divisive stance of their proclaimed archenemy. It?s thanks to their steadfast speaking truth to power that the tide has now turned, but they seem tragically incapable of recognising this.
If Obama does win this Tuesday, one fears that Moore may end up sharing the fate of James Clavells? King Rat, someone who bludgeons away like a warrior prince in a POW camp, but can?t find his pitch in peacetime.