Menand's take on Michael Moore

Let me preface this with a relevant backstory: for my senior "Capstone" project in high school (an English AP necessity upon graduation; a thesis paper, if you will), I chose Mr. Michael Moore as my subject. I fancied Moore to be a modern day Thomas Paine, one whose incendiary content was amusing and passions seemed sincere and worthwhile. Two weeks and a few hundred pages of research later, I sincerely despised Michael Moore and felt daftly credulous for once falling victim to his petulantly, gleefully masked propaganda.

Menand doesn't give Moore a complete free pass, but his criticism is wrongly focused on the mere directions of Moore's arguments. He glibly states his own opinions on the motivations behind the Iraq War and how they differ from Moore's while defending his hyperbolic rhetoric, so much as comparing it to the great Errol Morris. The differences between the methods and ambitions of the two filmmakers is not hard to identify; where Morris uses behind the scenes footage to help contextualize his characters and humanize their vulnerabilities to the audience, Moore DEhumanizes them into a vindicated "bad guy," and he does so by any means necessary. He reverses the orders of their interviews, constantly edits their words to respond to different questions than those they were actually asked.

Moore is mostly tendentious towards asking half questions and, instead of answering (since his inferred answer would be a flat out lie), leaving implications through images rather than actual proof. I will not spoil this blog with dozens of examples like these, though I'd be glad to share them with anyone interested, as I've avidly gone out of my way to inform people of his Ophidian morale (a simple internet search or two provides ample information as well; it's all documented, just look at all the lawsuits his own guests have filed against him!). I will just say that Michael Moore attacks specific human beings by ruthless, vitriolic incisions that are almost always fabricated to ridiculous extents. At what point does a filmmaker's message become more important than humans themselves? Is it really alright to martyr innocent people and twist history for the sole sake of making an argument? And at what point do we as spectators accept the responsibility of doing our own research on the matter rather than lazily accepting the specious information that people with ulterior motives preach?

In summary: Ugh.