Moore Preaches at the Brattle

Last week Michael Moore, director of "Roger & Me" and "Canadian Bacon," and the main man of "TV Nation," stopped by the Brattle Theater as part of his nationwide publicity tour for his new book, Downsize This! Through inventive satire, Moore's work consistently emphasizes the plight of a working class endangered by the trend of downsizing in the marketplace, relentlessly targeting politicians on both sides of the fence.

A full house awaited Moore's entrance, a typically Cantabridgian assortment of students and other, undetermined intellectual types. Loud applause greeted Moore, who entered wearing jeans, a plaid shirt and a blue cotton jacket, topped with a baseball cap. With his glasses and slightly shaggy brown hair, and he actually looked like he might be Bill Gates' large country cousin. The first thing he wanted to know was, "Did you guys have to pay to get in here?"

Moore's resentment of downsizing policies is a result of the devastation his hometown of Flint, Michigan suffered when the original General Motors factory closed its doors and destroyed the town's employment base. This was the subject of his first film, "Roger & Me," which he made without previous filmmaking experience, and Flint continues to be a point of reference in his discourse on the working class.

Moore began by speaking about the current political scene. In Flint, the community has responded to its economic depression with a proliferation of militant groups. "The right wing is there with all the answers," he said. "Where's our solution?" He observed that the majority of Americans take a liberal stance on the issues, while many continue to vote Republican because there is no leadership on the left.

"You know why Americans don't like liberals?" he asked the crowd. "Because liberals are wimps! They don't really stand for anything. They don't have the courage of their convictions." Pointing to Clinton's emphatic denial of the L-label during the presidential debates, he exclaimed, "Now if you ask Newt Gingrich if he's a right-winger, he'll say, you bet!" Clinton, he said, just looks at the polls to see which way he should vote...and even then gets it wrong. But to keep the record straight, his scorn is reserved for Bill Clinton; Hillary Rodham, "or Hillary Clinton, the male-user-friendly name," elicits the approving declaration, "I think she's one hot shit-kicking babe!" A picture of the First Lady in a cowboy hat and shades was propped up onstage during Moore's speech.

On the other hand, Republicans and Democrats have grown to resemble each other so much that, referring to the "bridge to the past/bridge to the future" image that also cropped up in the debates, Moore quipped sarcastically, "Oh! Bridge-building! That's what the difference is!" He proposed that the two parties consolidate and make room for a real second party, thus eliminating the problem of the 1996 election. He did give credit to some left-of-center parties, naming the New Party and the Labor Party with approval.

An advocate of grassroots organization, Moore pointed out that monthly local party meetings are usually sparsely attended, and with a posse of about 20 friends, one could take over the local government.

Moore consistently reaffirmed his allegiance to the middle-class majority. Though his audience was supportive to the point of adulation, supplying ends for his sentences every time Moore paused, he did not hesitate to point a finger at what he saw as "Kumbaya"-singing intellectuals who spent all their time in meetings. "Aren't you tired of the left-wing circle jerk?" he demanded, insisting on the importance of intellectual liberals consolidating with working-class groups. "The working class knows that you feel superior to them," he admonished, and prescribed a diet of mainstream movies, TV, and country music to get in touch with the concerns of the average American. His tour took him primarily to working-class areas, with the exceptions of the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor and Berkeley, California, and, of course, Cambridge. Acknowledging that he was "preaching to the choir," Moore nevertheless stressed, "Let's stop meeting with ourselves and get out into the real world."

Speaking of his show, "TV Nation," which had a summer run on NBC and has been bought for one million dollars by Fox to run as a late-night weekend show, Moore remained firm in his commitment to continue being a media gadfly. He mentioned, however, the difficulty of finding "people with politics" to staff the show. "It's just a pitiful state of satire in this country," he said, complaining of the domination of "junior high school, boy's locker room, dumb humor" naming as an example the Harvard Lampoon. He then ticked off his personal list of requirements for a staff member: satire experience, but also chutzpah, political convictions (his, probably), and a sense of humor. "I'm serious. If you have these things, we're looking for you," he said, seriously, and added that his address was listed in the back of his book: P.O. Box 831, Radio City Station, New York, NY, 10101-0831, or MMFlint@aol.com. In regards to e-mail, he cautioned that while all his mail gets read, only 12 out of the hundreds of messages that he receives daily ever get answered.

Moore uses satire to push his opponents' positions to their most extreme limits, and thus expose the ridiculousness of their thinking. Speaking of right-to-life activists, he noted that if a fetus was a human being, it might as well get a Social Security number, everyone should add nine months to their age, and abortion should warrant capital punishment. "Canadian Bacon," which mocks the American people's willingness to follow President Bush into the Gulf War, presents us with an American president who arbitrarily decides that Canada will be the U.S.'s new enemy, and accordingly declares war.

A few censored episodes of "TV Nation," stolen from network headquarters in true Michael Moore fashion, played on the screen while Moore signed copies of his book. In one segment, Civil War veterans re-enacted "great battles" of the past. In another, Janeane Garofolo invaded the private beaches of Greenwich, Connecticut, rousing the ire of its inbred residents; one of them denied being prejudiced against Garofolo's black friends, remarking that Greenwich people were very much in touch with minorities--they employed them in their homes. Although his audience needed no converting, Moore's acute observations and outrageous humor were rewarded by an enthusiastic standing ovation at the end of his speech.