The problem with Michael Moore is that he’s either really conniving or really stupid; he’s either consciously decided to make his money off his nation’s poor, just like the politicians he criticizes; or he’s honestly trying to make a difference with inane ideas that contradict each other. Like his “Bowling for Columbine”, Stupid White Men is an immature and cheap attempt to shock the public. Don’t get me wrong - I agree with some of his ideas and I believe he’s a good man, but I just don’t think good men can run a fucked up country like America. I mean, if I became dictator of the U.S., the first thing I would do is demolish every single damn prison in the country and let their denizens re-enter society with you and me (only, closer to you than me); I would cut back the funding to law enforcement until you’d have to be insane to want to be a police officer - just like how you’d have to be insane to be a teacher now - and I’d put those funds into public schools. My crime-preventing philosophy is: You wouldn’t have to lock dumb motherfuckers up if you actually bother to teach them a thing or two. My plan is just a more radical version of Moore’s, in his book Stupid White Men. Would it work? Probably not. Which is why I’m glad I have no sick dreams of becoming a dictator.

No, let the crooked politicians run their messed up country. I mean, it’s not as if Americans are truly unhappy - Michael Moore claims that 60% of Americans are “upset or angry” about their land, but, lets be honest about spoiled Americans: they’ll be “upset or angry” because trace amounts of toxins in water might accumulate in their bodies and do them in when they’re about 60, while kids in Africa, drinking from worm-infested rivers, are like, “People live to 60?” When Americans get “upset or angry”, they’ll usually take the extreme action of telling a poll their feelings. And Michael Moore became so “upset or angry“ he wrote a book. If 60% of Americans were truly upset or angry - in the same manner they would be if someone, say, smashed their car with a bat - then America would be a horrible, tumultuous place to live. I’m from Canada, but I lived in America for two years and continue to visit (because my parents and sister live here), and I say the land of the free and the home of the brave is not so much unlike Canada, which is a great place to live. That is... after I can overlook the fact that half the people here can’t fucking drive but attempt it anyway; or that someone in grade 10 would threaten to shoot me after arguing a call while playing pick-up basketball; or that slavery, in a concealed form, still obviously exists. But, oh damn, now I’m resorting to the kind of sarcasm Michael Moore doesn’t abandon for a single page in Stupid White Men.

Stupid White Men is, obviously, not a serious political book. His analysis of America is horribly one-sided, and he comes across just like the lobbyists he harangues, only with opposite agendas. I’m not into politics, least of all political statistics, but some of the facts stated in this book definitely seem questionable, and there were a couple of non-political factoids that I could identify as definitely erroneous. Stupid White Men is just entertainment in the form of satire, and it would be a marvelous book had it been good entertainment. But, it seems, Moore has assumed his readership consists of mostly illiterate people; he complains about Bush having only a grade 4 literacy level, and he’s gone ahead and written a book at about the said level. He continuously resorts to point-form writing, fantasy letters to powerful people, and CAPITAL LETTERS WHEN HE WANTS TO EMPHASIZE SOMETHING. Finally, the way he organizes his notes and sources proves that, perhaps, he should of stuck with completing college. Stupid White Men begs the question, is Moore trying to simultaneously eschew and reach out to the group in his book’s title?

But not only is the way the book is written banal and elementary, Moore’s ideas are also elementary. If you thought my idea of having no more prisons in America was crazy, believe me when I say I can and have written a pretty lengthy and sound essay supporting my fanciful proposal. Even though I tell everyone I don’t have any interest in politics, I guess you can call me a bleeding-heart liberal; and, I guess, that would make Michael Moore my brother. But he’s not. Michael Moore is a retard, and in Stupid White Men, he just throws radical ideas out there and backs them up with nothing but an orgy of facts and poor writing that would get nowhere without cheap humour and sarcasm (or are the two the same thing?). Some of what Moore says strikes a harmony with my beliefs, but a lot doesn’t, and because it’s so easy to get roused by this controversial book, I’m going to go through Stupid White Men, chapter by chapter, to show that “stupid white men” may as well include Moore himself.

Introduction
“A man no one elected sits in the White House.”

Michael Moore starts Stupid White Men off by trying to convince the reader that the apocalypse is upon America - the nation is on the cusp of a great catastrophe. And he’s right, if you take into account 9/11, but that was no fault of the President and America, and his nation pulled through the tragedy and is currently rebounding. I certainly have little belief that a stupid white man can ruin such a mighty nation; I think it would take either a smart white man, someone who isn’t white, someone who isn‘t a man, or Oprah. Can you imagine the uproar a President would create if he (or, God forbid, she) actually took from the rich and gave to the poor? There would simply be insanity and, once again, that whole “house divided” stuff.

A Very American Coup
“Personally, I will settle for nothing less than multiple show trials and their immediate deportation to a real banana republic.

If the introduction didn’t make it clear enough, Moore asserts here, with all the glory of sarcasm, that he hates Republicans. He tries to convince the reader that Florida was illegally given to Bush (which it probably was) and he names the despicable Republicans in office today and all their despicable pro-life beliefs. The problem with Moore’s argument is that it’s implying he wanted Gore and the Democrats to win when, in a later chapter, he lambastes the Democrats (in particular, the Clinton/Gore administration) as being worse than the filthy Republicans. Apparently, as the author admits in this chapter, Moore never voted for Gore, which leads to the assumption that he voted for Nader. So what difference does it make to Moore if Bush stole the election from a worse candidate and Nader didn’t have a chance anyway you slice it? Does Moore want justice to be done so he can go ahead and write Stupider White Men?

Dear George
"George, are you able to read and write on an adult level?"

First of all, I don’t know why everyone must point out W. Bush’s alleged lack of education concerning the English language. It’s as if we think being astoundingly eloquent and grammatically impeccable are essential for running a country. May I remind you that Bill “It depends on what the definition of is is” Clinton was not the brightest speechmaker either. Oh, and before I forget: Second of all, I don’t know why everyone must point out that Collin Powell, more than any other politician, is “well-spoken”. It’s as if we think every black person should be an uneducated retard.

But in this chapter, along with the accusation of being uneducated, Moore also claims W. Bush is an alcoholic and a cocaine-using felon. Honestly, I do not care what America’s President did when he was younger - we all have had our times back then. I thought it was great Clinton tried weed back in his youth and if W. Bush sniffed coke back in his, then more power to Bush. What’s disappointing, and what’s validly brought up later on, is that these two Presidents became hypocritical and decided to crack down on not only drug dealers, but drug users as well.

The really annoying aspects of Moore’s writing show up in this chapter. He insists on using point-form writing to throw out one-sided facts missing the context sorely needed for a convincing argument that would prove W. Bush’s administration is evil. And then he writes a bitter, sarcastic letter to George W. Bush in his Stupid White Men, trying to denude a few wrongs in W. Bush’s pre-Presidential life. These writing techniques are frankly childish and has me wondering, “Michael, are you able to read and write on an adult level?” Or, perhaps more importantly: does your fanbase?

Dow Wow Wow
“The rich are wallowing in the loot they’ve accumulated in the past two decades, and now they want to make sure you don’t come a-lookin’ for your piece of the pie.”

I really sympathize with the poor and, since I’m broke, why wouldn’t I? I guess this is the common ground Moore and I stand on: If you can’t sympathize with struggling, poor folks on welfare, then fuck you and die. Moore does a virtuous job of trying to incite the rage of all the people adversely affected during the receding market of 2001 and 2002. Where’s your piece of the pie? Moore claims that the boss that laid you off still has it, but just doesn’t want to give it. But the recent rebounding DOW shows that if companies are doing well, they’re willing to give their employees security, just as willing as they are to take that security back when things aren’t going well.

And, after 9/11, things weren’t going well for the flight industry. What’s really interesting about this chapter is that Moore jumps on the pilot’s agenda before what happened in 9/11, so one can only assume things have become a lot more fucked up for the pilots. Moore uses the plight of pilots as a microcosm of the general corporate greed he continues on to discuss - apparently starting pilots get paid about as much as burger-flippers, and veteran pilots don’t get paid much better. After reading his statements, I wonder why anyone would want to be a pilot? I hate economics but I know all the monetary figures in free markets are dependent on supply and demand. If becoming a pilot is training intensive and inauspicious, shouldn’t the supply of pilots go down and, thus, the demand go up, causing salaries to rise above the $13,000 figures Moore was printing? Hmm, makes me wonder about what’s going on with our pilots...

Kill Whitey
“Every mean word, every cruel act, every bit of pain and suffering in my life has had a Caucasian face attached to it.

In this outrageously titled chapter, Michael Moore seems to hate white people so much that he’s put me in the uncomfortable position of defending white people. He tries to convince the reader that because black people have never done him wrong, black people don’t do wrong - only white people do wrong. Which is bullshit. Perhaps the only reason “Every mean word, every cruel act, every...” inflicted on him has been by a white person is because he is a white person who only puts himself in a position to be harmed by white people. If you ask a black person in Yonkers, “Who stole your car? Who shot your cousin dead? Who evicted you and your pregnant girlfriend at gunpoint?” He’s not going to tell you about some Caucasian. As for me, I live in a multicultural community and every race has done me wrong.

It’s very true that black people in America have been unfairly portrayed as dangerous criminals to be feared, but Moore, one-sided as usual, exaggerates the innocence of the black and the guilt of the white. He fucking even quotes the lyrics of the Wu-Tang Clan (“I sold bottles of sorrow, then chose poems and novels”) and then compares them to those of Johnny Cash (“I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die”) to show that white people are more violent than black people. I think it’s wrong to equate violence in lyrics with actual violence, but as far as lyrics are concerned, Wu-Tang is more violent than Johnny Cash. Here, I know Moore has twisted things, which makes me wonder what other things he twists in Stupid White Men.

And here’s a factoid that I know is wrong: Moore writes, “Who gave us the black plague? A white guy.” As a Chinese man, I know that, in fact, it was the Asians who caused the black plague, which started around 1340, spread like wildfire amongst a virgin population, and would wipe-out a third of Europe and uproot its feudalistic social structure. Shit, I agree white people are bad, but they aren’t that bad. If Moore must insist on quoting lyrics, I recommend Curtis Mayfield: “And if there’s hell below / We’re all gonna go.”

Idiot Nation
“Yes, I, Michael Moore, am a college dropout.”

Believe me Michael, I can tell you were. This chapter shows that Moore is pretty clueless about what made America the most prosperous country ever: specialized education. If you’re aiming to be a neurosurgeon, you don’t need to know what the fuck an Illiad is, but Moore bitches about how these college seniors at prestigious universities can’t answer fundamental questions such as, “When did the Civil War take place?” The reason the greatest minds of whatever field today are usually American is because they’ve been specialized. I’m sure if you panel NASA scientists, many of them wouldn’t know when the Civil War took place either. I mean, Moore can ridicule people all he wants about not being able to answer “fundamental” questions, but, as he admits himself, those people are all about to get good fucking jobs and, thus, not have to complain about their nation.

What I emphatically agree with Moore on, as he begins getting on track later on in the chapter, is that many schools are insufficiently funded and many of their disciplinary measures are overreactions. Moore mentions the fact that a kid, after the Columbine massacre, is still more likely to get killed by a bolt of lightning than by a bullet in school. So how safe do we want make schools anyway? So safe they become like prisons? Last I checked, however, prison inmates are more violent than typical students and typical students going to the far more lenient Canadian high schools are less violent than typical American students. So, how about relaxing with the detentions and metal detectors and concentrating on education rather than safety and discipline?

Nice Planet, Nobody Home
“I think recycling is like going to church - you show up once a week, it makes you feel good, and you’ve done your duty. Then you can get back to all the fun of sinning!”

If there’s one political agenda I truly hate discussing it’s got to be environmental issues. I’m not lavish by American standards, but American standards are pretty fucked up. I don’t recycle, but I don’t litter, and I don’t know what to say about helping the wilderness. I love animals, but let’s face it, they’re all gonna die in order to keep our growing population happy. I like people (for the most part) more than animals; and we’ll never choose to inconvenience ourselves now in order to perhaps save us from a major climatic and ecological disaster in the future. Humans are fucked... what else is there to say? Well, sometimes, I even joke that I’ll like it warmer! “Speed up global warming!” And Moore takes relatively the same stance. He doesn’t recycle either (although he’ll provide a good excuse) and he drives a mini-van, but declares war on SUVs. Moore seems to concede that there’s no saving this planet and the finger-pointing he does seems futile because he’s guilty too... anyone who drives a car is guilty. And by that standard, incidentally, I’m innocent!

Michael Moore, however, does display incredible stupidity in this chapter. A sure sign of the kind of stupidity most people possess can be seen whenever a new disease emerges and everyone goes crazy trying to sensationalize the damn thing. Remember Richard Preston and his civilization-ending airborne ebola? Moore takes the stupidity even further by claiming that the British’s mass cremation of cattle created some sort of prion dust plume that would further spread bovine spongiform encephalitis (better known to the panicking public as “mad cow disease”). If Moore knew fundamental things about pathology, he wouldn’t have become a part of his “Idiot Nation” and type something as stupid as prions drifting in the air. For the record, known prion diseases are not easily transmitted and are a statistically insignificant cause of death. It may eventually be found that Alzheimer’s disease is a prion-related illness but it certainly is not caused by cows (as Moore suggests). And finally, contrary to what Moore states, even though prions are just proteins that are not alive, you can “kill” them with extreme sterilization methods. Why does Moore insightfully bring up the statistical insignificance of school shootings and yet try to scare people with mad cow? Why doesn’t anybody in media go crazy about how likely you are to die driving a car and have governments destroy all cars? Maybe then this planet will have a chance.

The End of Men
“No longer do women have to crawl out from underneath some slobbering man with his face buried in the pillow simply because they wish to have babies. All they need now is a test tube.”

This chapter is, by far, Moore’s dumbest. Here, he gives men the same treatment as whites in “Kill Whitey.” I have no idea why this man is trying to be a feminist and my stance has always been, if only all guys learned to fuck like they’re supposed to, their would be no damn feminists... if all guys appreciated and looked after their own bodies as they age, instead of constantly obsessing over women’s... Take Michael Moore over here - I think he’s just upset he’s physically appalling, so he has to make all men sound physically appalling. Why doesn’t he lose the pot-belly, shave (for God’s sake), get a proper haircut, and buy the clothes he only pretends to be unable to afford? And then he’d be up to par with his companions because, last I checked, my competition will be pretty healthy for many years to come.

Moore tries to sound as if the days of men are going to end and in a few generations there’s only going to be women on this planet. His key piece of evidence is the fact that there have been more girl babies recently then boy babies. Is the man retarded? There have always been more girl babies then boy babies because men have a larger body size - if Moore had bothered learning about basic biology and something called sexual dimorphism, he’d know this. It’s so very like writers, historians, and artists, who are completely retarded when it comes to science and business, to complain about how scientists and lawyers and businessmen don’t know about The Odyssey.

The bitter Moore does not stop at proclaiming the end of men; he also has to go below the belt by telling everyone, graphically, how grotesque the penis is: “Like a creature from Alien reupholstered by Frank Purdue, the male organ is testimony to the fact that every now and again, as with the floods of Bangladesh or the teeth of the British, God just fails to get it right.“ And I suppose the female genitalia is like a rose? It’s not. Period. Oops - did I say the magic word? The privates of both genders aren’t exactly works of art - we pee out of them for goodness sake - and this is why, for most of us, we have to be seriously in love (or seriously drunk) before we have a face-to-genital conversation.

Of course, Moore goes on to comment about all the horrible things men have done and women haven’t and how aesthetic women are. I don’t want to come across as a misogynist, but I have to come to the defense of my brothers: men do horrible things because women love being behind the scenes, driving us crazy - Moore himself brings up the curious fact that many years after they were given the vote in America, women continue to vote for their supposed oppressors. And, as far as beauty is concerned, gravity does horrible, unspeakable things to the once lovely fat deposits of aging females. Besides, if you look at those Greek sculptures of Olympians, you’ll see that men are beautiful when it comes to motion, while women are beautiful when they’re just still. I mean, I’m sure you’ve seen a female figure skater struggle on a triple axel, or sprint a hundred meters, or any girl try to throw a baseball - it’s pretty awkward, thanks to burdensome hips and breasts that throw women’s balance off. Male athletes, on the other hand, are like exquisite machines designed for performance. I agree that Moore’s pretty fucking hideous, but as far as general male vs. female beauty goes, I’d say it‘s a tie, with both sides having different ups and downs.

We’re Number One!
“What if the teeming billions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America get to thinking that the one billion of them without clean drinking water should actually have it? Do you know what that would cost? At least 25 percent of our “Star Wars” program!”

I like the first part of this chapter because it shows that Michael Moore knows what’s obvious to the rest of the world: America is despicable. In fact, much of America also thinks America is despicable. The “Star Wars” program is just one example Moore offers to show the outrageous spending done for National security at the cost of proper education and health care for its poor citizens. Just when will America feel safe? I mean, if I were an ignorant American politician, I’d be advocating the “Just Get It Over With” plan, where every non-democratic and French-speaking nation gets nuked. Fuck it... just nuke everyone - those Kyoto-hippy bastards. And then, maybe we can finally breathe easy and reallocate some funds to get the kids in West Philadelphia some textbooks.

Okay, “Just Get It Over With” is a dumb plan. But Moore doesn’t seem to have any better ideas as, later in the chapter, he offers solutions to all the worldwide powder kegs of conflict: The Middle East, the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and North Korea. For the first three areas, any smart person will know that any solution short of a major war will only be ephemeral. The suggestions Moore offers are for amusement only and the letter he “writes” to Yasser Arafat is both idiotic and offensive to both the Jews and Muslims of the Middle East. North Korea, on the other hand, might be a matter that can be resolved permanently by peaceful means, depending on America’s next president and the natural death of semi-insane Kim Jong II. I agree with Moore in that taking military action against North Korea would be a horrible mistake and I doubt it will happen because, unlike with Iraq, I think the Bush administration genuinely suspects that North Korea has “weapons of mass destruction“.

One Big Happy Prison
“No other industrialized nation executes its children.”

This is where I agree completely with Michael Moore. America’s obsession with “justice” is FUcKED UP! - oh look, I’m even typing like Moore. I’m not particularly unhappy with the way America treats others, but I’m shaking my head at the way America treats it’s own people. People talk about the human rights situation in China, but what about the shit going on in the United States? It boggles the mind how such a large percentage of a population can be caged, and how anyone can consider America’s justice system not rigged for the rich (or, O.J. notwithstanding, rigged for the white).

In this chapter, Moore gives many infuriating examples of America’s biased justice and compares corporate leaders to gangsters. “Real” gangsters sell a few pounds of dope, ruin a few lives, and end up getting 460, or some other ridiculous number years, to life in prison. Meanwhile, corporate gangsters ruin the environment, ruin many lives, and end up whispering deals in politician’s ears. But let me take it one step further than Moore: The President of the United States, with F-22s and smart bombs (instead of pistols and the odd sub-machine gun) kills thousands of innocent people in order to put an end to his enemy, is the biggest gangster of them all. In light of all the deaths the commander-in-chief is responsible for, there’s no justice in locking anybody up.

Democrats, DOA
“Bill Clinton was one of the best Republican Presidents we’ve ever had.”

This chapter proves that Michael Moore only has interest in shocking people with isolated facts than provide anything useful. Here, he attacks Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton! I don’t care what the hell Moore tries to say, America was happy under Clinton. But, here he claims that Democrats are, in a way, worse than Republicans because they say the right things and do the wrong, while Republicans say the wrong things, but at least do what they say. He blames W. Bush’s deplorable actions on Clinton and it makes me wonder just what the fuck is Moore’s agenda? The guy practically dedicates a book to assassinating a man he calls everything from Junior to Son-of-a-Bush and then he turns around and says, “It’s actually Clinton and the Democrats’ fault.” At this point, it appears to me that Moore’s agenda is to shock people, and thus sell copies of Stupid White Men, and thus make money for himself.

The People’s Prayer
“Dear Lord, we ask that You inflict every member of the House of Representatives with horrible, incurable cancers of the brain, penis, and hand.”

I have an intellectual friend, well on his way to a PhD, who used to love the police and believe they should have more freedom, if anything, to inflict justice on delinquents. Well, after an unfortunate twist of fate, he found himself on the wrong side of justice, and spent a few nights in jail, where he was denied his diabetes medicine for a long time and where he saw someone get beat up by guards for no justifiable reason. Now he hates the police.

I have to admit, this last chapter is the best one as Michael Moore exposes the conservatives as the hypocrites they really are. Among the examples Moore uses are Nancy Reagan’s dying husband finally shifting W. Bush’s principles so that he now supports embryonic research and Dick Cheney’s lesbian daughter changing her feather’s once-firm antigay stance. Unfortunately, sympathy for the less fortunate is something privileged people just don’t learn until something bad happens to them. So, Moore basically writes a "letter" to God praying for every ill to afflict every kind of politician he’s against. And I say amen to that.

Epilogue
“I am the person responsible for the “presidency” of George W. Bush. Me. Michael Moore. I could have prevented it all.”

It’s the dream of every laughingstock politician to do something that actually changes the country - and that’s exactly what Moore is: a laughingstock amongst politicians. Here, Moore seems to admit he fucked up, by supporting Ralph Nader. But, using his constant companion that is sarcasm, Moore turns the epilogue into an annoying advertisement for Nader and smugly shows his own “political power”. I think it’s easy for a guy like me to hate a guy like Moore and I think nothing would upset him more than by hitting him with reality: Moore has no political power - he’s an entertainer, not a serious politician - and he didn’t cause Gore to lose the election. And even if Moore did, why would he be proud of himself? I don’t give a fuck what he says about Clinton, I want to see the Democrats remain in power.

Stupid White Men is, undeniably, written by a stupid white man. I know very little about politics, but enough to realize that this book doesn’t make sense - it doesn’t have a stance, and it’s poorly written as well. If it tells the reader one thing, it’s to get involved in politics and “use your power” because “you deserve better.” No shit you should think you deserve better; since when does anybody think they don’t deserve better? And those with a sense of conviction get involved with politics and they whine to leaders and they lobby and yada, yada, yada, until they do get better. The only problem is that now someone else is pissed off. How many people would I piss off if I got all the prisons of America shut down? So telling everyone to use their power because they deserve better is simply restating the point of democracy: attempt to get what you want and fuck those who disagree. It’s a world of lobbyists and Moore is simply one of them. Thus, Stupid White Men‘s only cohesive point is redundant.


Recommended: No