David Swanson | OpEdNews | October 4, 2008
Michael Moore’s new book is called “Mike’s Election Guide 2008,” and it’s a nice combination of the comical and the useful. The comical comes first. Chapter One consists of Mike’s answers to random election-related questions, and his answers are for the most part funny, insightful, informative, and sometimes brilliant.
The background Moore provides on John McCain’s fits of temper is frightening, and includes this “statement from McCain, spoken loudly and freely while riding in 2000 with the press in his Straight Talk Express: ‘I hated the gooks and will continue to hate them as long as I live,’” and this one made by McCain to his wife in response to a comment from her about his hair: “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.”
Moore also provides good answers to such key questions as “Is it true Democrats drink from a sippy cup and sleep with the light on?”
But there are some sloppy moments in Chapter One, including a claim that Kerry lost Ohio to Bush in 2004. Later in the book, Moore proposes paper ballots as one of the very few key reforms needed by our nation, and yet he repeatedly makes clear his unargued belief that electronic machines have not yet done any damage.
Moore also provides a good description of the hideous crime in which McCain was involved when shot down and imprisoned in Vietnam. He was bombing civilian areas in a war of aggression. Yet, Moore begins this section with these grotesque lines:
“[McCain] was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our nation. And for that, he was tortured and then imprisoned in a North Vietnamese POW camp for nearly five-and-a-half years.”
While Moore contradicts this nonsense in the very next sentence, the wise advice he offers in the following chapter begins with an admonition against saying untrue but positive things of just this sort about McCain even if followed by explanations.
Moore also proposes a questionable solution to the prevalence of bad politicians:
“Remember those weaselly weird kids who always ran for class president or student council? They should have been stopped right then and there. Because they grow up to be the awful politicians we can’t stand. It was our responsibility back in junior high to smack the devil out of them and give them a good swirly — but we didn’t.”
This from a man who elsewhere in the book calls himself a pacifist and whose awareness of the crazy violent potential of American young people is made clear in his film “Bowling for Columbine.” Continue reading ‘Vote Like Mike’
