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Stupid White Men - A Book Review - Page 3

© Thomas James Martin

Whether Republican or Democrat, corporate chieftain or Joe Sixpack, Moore makes an all too unsettling though humorous case that they are all just "stupid white men," IQs not quite hitting on three digits. Even more frightening, in his view they are as clueless of the navigation of the "Ship of State" in the waters of foreign policy as they are of the needs of the people for clean water and air, the educational needs of children, justice for all Americans, and safety nets for workers in a boom/bust, cyclic economy.

Hemingway once defined a writer as someone with a "built-in crap detector." Well, if that is the definition, then Michael Moore, has patented and built an original version of that invaluable machine. With his restless, incisive wit and devastating cynicism, Moore at his best reminds me somewhat of a Mark Twain or even a Jonathan Swift. However, as a satirist, Moore is probably neither as cynical as the incomparable Twain nor as imaginative as the ineffable Swift. Rather, he is in a class by himself; a brilliant wit and caricaturist with the precise timing of Vaudeville slapstick in his send-up of contemporary society and politics. No one is left out in his brazen attack on the mores and absurdities of American culture:

. . .this wonderful psycho nation of idealists and accountants who only want the right to drive their Chevy Blazers across the fruited plain, whose only request is to someday be told the difference between "partly sunny" and "partly cloudy," who seek nothing more than a cellular plan with enough peak-time free minutes so they'll always be ready if one of their kids should call from inside a school shooting. . .

Moore's knows his subject well and his years as a political activist and all around socio-political gadfly add greatly to his observations of American life and interpretations of the political scene at the beginning of this new millennium.

By the way, I said that Michael Moore is a populist. Let's check! The American Heritage Dictionary (4th Edition) offers the following definitions of the word, "populist:"

NOUN: 1. A supporter of the rights and power of the people.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Of or relating to populism or its advocates: a populist aversion to business monopolies.

Yup, Moore's a populist.

He believes in that wise ol' saying stated so eloquently on a bloody, nineteenth century battlefield by a past president with a long, dark beard "that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish. . ."

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