It took some cloak and dagger negotiations, but PW finally tracked down Michael Moore on a recent Sunday afternoon at his New York film office on Broadway, just a few blocks south of Columbus Circle. Dressed in a sky-blue T-shirt, jeans and the ubiquitous baseball cap, Moore drops into a big comfortable chair under a François Truffaut film festival poster and is ready to discuss Dude, Where's My Country? (Warner Books), his latest tome, a direct frontal attack on George W. Bush and his policies (it debuts at #2 on PW's Nonfiction list this week).
After years of taking a backseat to conservatives not only at the polls but on the bestseller lists, writers such as Al Franken, Joe Conason, Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins have launched a carpet-bombing literary attack that has left the conservative movement thinking a little like Satchel Paige: "Don't look back, someone might be gainin' on you." PW asked Moore if he was surprised that writers, and not the politicians, have led the revival of the Democratic Left.
"I don't think it's surprising at all," he says. "I think people who are artists, who are creative people, throughout history have always been the... leaders, in terms of... trying to bring the society toward more enlightenment, toward a more liberal and progressive way of looking at things. Remember Ben Franklin and all these guys who founded this country, who sort of invented the concept of a liberal democracy, which is what they referred to it as, something that was extremely radical and progressive for its time. They were writers, artists, inventors; that doesn't surprise me."
Although Moore is known for his humor in both his books and documentaries, Dude, Where's My Country? focuses on facts and takes a drop-the-hammer-and-take-no-prisoners approach. Does he think his fans will be taken aback by his stridency? "I feel we live in pretty perilous times," Moore says deliberately, "and that it was important to immediately lay out the case for why the Bush administration has miserably failed the country in terms of September 11, homeland security, and the way it has dragged us into a war without end. My read of the public, my read of where the country is at, is that people are desperate for that information right now. And so I decided to lead the book with that."
The opening chapter of Dude details the cozy Bush family history with the Saudi Arabians in general and the bin Ladens in particular. "I think that there's a mood in the country right now where people are very anxious that we do something to make sure that he [Bush] doesn't have another four years. Is it strident to ask Bush why he and his family have had a financial relationship with the bin Ladens for over 25 years? Is it strident to ask him why in the days after September 11, when no one could fly, 24 members and associates of the bin Laden family were able to fly around the country in private Saudi jets? Is that strident or is that a citizen asking some extremely legitimate questions about what Bush has been up to?
"I've been asking this question for two years," he continues. "Why were the bin Ladens given this free flight out of the country without any kind of real interrogation by the FBI? It's absolutely appalling. And as I say in the book, imagine if Clinton had done a similar thing with the [Timothy] McVeigh family, the Republicans and the press would have been up in arms. But for crying out loud, to just say 'you're outta here' when no one else can fly. There were people who needed hearts for heart transplants, and they couldn't fly the heart. But they could fly bin Ladens. I think when people read the first two chapters of this book, they will actually have to put the book down. They will not be able to read through it because it is so upsetting to think this went on."
Chapter 2 is dedicated to the "Home of the Whopper": "All the lies about Iraq," says Moore, "laid out in a way where people can finally see the whole, not just say with rhetoric that Bush lied.... Here's when he said it, where he said it. I annotate it. I footnote it. I back all the stuff up so there is no question. I want people to see that there has been serial lying going on to the point where to me it's pathological."
Moore's revolutionary zeal prompted PW to ask what part Irish-Catholic guilt played in his anger and politics. "It's both the anger and the humor," Moore says with a guffaw. "You have to understand, these are two sides of the same point, and you can't have one without the other. The best humor comes out of anger, whether it's George Carlin, Lenny Bruce, Charlie Chaplin—these were very angry people. And from that anger came this incredible humor. If they weren't upset about the state of the world, you wouldn't have had the great humor that they gave you. So, yes, my Irish-Catholic upbringing has a lot to do with how I view the world. And the sense of humor that comes from that upbringing is what saves me from sinking into complete cynicism and despair over what's going on."
Moore claims that the American people are a lot more liberal than they are given credit for. "The American people have moved to the left," he insists. "The American people have gotten more progressive. This is again one of these uncovered stories. You look at these opinion polls and you say, 'Oh, look, Bush has these high approval ratings.' Those polls have been completely misinterpreted."
When asked why, if the American people are so liberal-minded, how come the Republicans are in control of the presidency and the Congress? "Well," he says, "the majority have chosen not to vote. And they have chosen not to vote in large part because even though they themselves have liberal values and beliefs, there's no one on the ballot to vote for. They look at the ballot and they are not impressed. They look at what the Democrats put up, and they don't see candidates with a spine. They don't see candidates that will really stand for something.... When [Republicans] stand for something, they stand for something and they are unwavering in their beliefs. The Democrats," he says imitating a nervous, nerdy voice, "are like 'well, I guess we could have a little capital punishment and we could give the rich some tax breaks.' Geez, you lose right at that moment when you give in like that."
Dude is Moore's fourth book, after Downsize This! (1996), Adventures in a TV Nation, with Kathleen Glynn (1998), and Stupid White Men (2002). Moore devotes a significant part of the Introduction to his new book recounting the problems he had getting Stupid White Men published, which came off press on September 10, 2001. "The publisher then held the books hostage for five long months," he writes, "…out of a desire to censor me and the things I wanted to say. They insisted I rewrite up to 50% of the book…. I refused to change a word." Stupid White Men sat in limbo, according to Moore, until it was rescued by the efforts of some librarians. In November 2001, Moore gave a speech in New Jersey to a consumer group and the news of his book not being released hit the Internet. Moore says that complaints, mostly from librarians, about his book being held up forced Harper's hand, and they decided to issue Stupid White Men with no publicity. Moore then took action of his own. "The days leading up to the release, I go on the Internet and I tell people on my Web site what happened and how essentially they're just dumping the book in stores. Immediately, on the first day it's released, it goes to #1 on Amazon. By the fifth day of the book's release, it was already in its ninth printing."
Moore seems to relish his battles with the right-wing media. "Al Franken has done more to slay two of the biggest icons on the right, Rush Limbaugh and O'Reilly—and he's done it with humor," says Moore. "Franken comes along, and he uses humor and ridicule, and he baits them and snares them to the point where they were literally laughed out of court. Now all of America laughs at the Fox News Channel. It's a huge joke, not just among liberals and the left. The average person now has seen how stupid and backward this channel is. And nobody likes anybody without a sense of humor."
In fact, one of Moore's favorite targets is Bill O'Reilly, who is the preferred punching-bag of the literary left at the moment. "I've been on O'Reilly," says Moore as he does his O'Reilly impression. " 'So,' he goes, 'how much do you think I should be paying in income tax? 50%?' I said, no, more. '60%?' No, more. '70%?' Yeah, that sounds about right. 70%. 'You think we should be paying 70% of our income in taxes?' No, no, no. You said how much you should be paying. I think you should be paying 70%, Bill. Not everyone else. And he just kind of cracked up. I said to him, Look, you must have been raised Irish-Catholic, is that right? By the nuns and the priests. 'Absolutely,' he said. I said, then what happened to the lesson that you were taught? That we are going to be judged by how we treat the least among us? Is that how you live your life? Is that what you do in the show? He was stumped."
PW asks Moore if he was really calling for a revolution? "Absolutely," he says. "A nonviolent revolution. And here's the basic precept of this revolution—full democracy. I don't want to live in a country that has democracy only in the voting booth. That is not a complete democracy. We have to have democracy in our economy. We have to have democracy in the workplace. If we say we believe in democracy, then we truly have to live it and we have to have the people participating more, not just in who the political leaders are going to be, but how this economy is run. And how the pie gets split up. We can't truly call this a democracy until we have an economic system that is fair and democratic. That's the revolution I seek."
A conversation with Michael Moore wouldn't be complete without asking about his war protest, along with all the other documentary nominees, when he won the Oscar for Best Documentary for Bowling for Columbine. "I was extremely nervous. First of all, I didn't think we were going to win, so that surprised me. And then all the way up to the stage I'm just thinking: 'Just blow them a kiss and walk off with the statue. Don't say anything.' It's my moment. How many people get to win an Oscar in their lifetime? Then there's the other voice in my head going: 'You have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to say something.' But it's not appropriate. This isn't the right place. 'When is the right place? When is the right time?' So I start by saying something that I thought was very poetic: 'We make nonfiction films because we like nonfiction. We think it's important, nonfiction, when you live in fictitious times, with a fictitious president elected by fictitious election results, leading us into war for fictitious reasons.' There's a small group that started booing. I'm not going to get through my 45 seconds and say what I want to say. And so I got upset and decided to cut to the chase and say: 'We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you for this.' And then I ended it by saying: 'Anytime you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.' "
