It's a pretty big stretch to try and take on capitalism in an era of history when the alternative methods of organizing an economy have been so thoroughly discredited. But Michael Moore has never been one to avoid stretch goals ever since I first got to know him as an underground newspaper editor in our mutual homeland of Flint, Michigan.
Okay, so Flint wasn't exactly my homeland, though my parents did live and work there after I left home, plus I grew up, first down the road a ways, and then, up the road a ways, in very similar environments to Flint's all during my formative years.
My people were autoworkers just as his people were. Only difference: Mine were first-gen immigrants.
I liked Michael from the first because of his spirit. I'd already heard of the controversy he'd been causing back home, and it resonated with me due to my own past efforts trying to forge coalitions in the 1960s between antiwar and civil rights activists on campus with striking autoworkers and welfare Moms in and around Detroit.
Later, during a more problematic period for Michael, when he was trying to live and work here in San Francisco, I tried to help him manage the cultural transition from the Midwest to the Left Coast.
That one didn't work out at all. And, in my view, he drew all of the wrong conclusions as a result.
Then, as a fellow journalist, I also couldn't help but notice certain methodological flaws, to put it kindly, in his work. Over the years, as his career as the most successful documentary film maker in history has progressed, I often took deep issue with his work.
He cut corners I wouldn't cut, edited in ways I'm not sure were ethical, and fell back on more of a propaganda-type style than I could ever feel comfortable with, among other things.
But I share a lot of common values with Michael, and his last two documentaries, Sicko and this one, have re-opened my eyes to the true brilliance of the man. His art of connecting with the mainstream of America is truly inspiring.
This new film has an additional component: It is moving. What has happened to ordinary people in our time is criminal. There have not been many willing to stand up for the common person. Many politicians voice concern but in reality they are on the take.
Not Michael Moore.
The only question I will have for him, should we run into one another anytime soon, is why he lets Obama off the hook in this documentary. After all, the same wolves are still guarding the hen house when it comes to the Wall Street criminals he so accurately denounces, no?
That, sadly, is the key question now. Reagan, Bush Sr.(not mentioned in the film), Clinton, and Bush Jr. presided over this dismantling of an effective regulatory system over the banks, it is true.
Obama inherited it. You've done a great job of going back to FDR's final analysis of what needed to be done 60 years ago to avoid our present fate, which of course never was done, because it came perilously close to what right-wing freaks call "socialism."
Is Obama the leader who will have the guts to return to FDR's "Second Bill of Rights?" That is the question your film raises, but never in any explicit way asks nor answers.
I think that, from a journalistic and an ethical perspective, this an error, a flaw in your new film, Michael. It is also an indication of some hard work that still needs to be done.
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