If the title Stupid White Men doesn’t mean anything to you, then you can’t have been anywhere near a bookshop. Either that, or you are so used to picking your way through the piles of Michael Moore books that you no longer notice them, or the accompanying recommendation: ‘Staff pick! Really cool – the book that exposes Dubya as a fascist.’
Moore likes to hint that the Bush Administration had a hand in September 11. He has a huge following on campuses on both sides of the Atlantic; he, more than anyone else, has persuaded British students that the current occupant of the White House is, like, such a moron.
Dude, Where’s My Country? carries on where Stupid White Men left off in its critique of America since Bush’s arrival in the White House. Perhaps in response to the fuss over Moore’s alleged fact smudging last time, his new book is heavily referenced, attributing the most significant arguments, fully furnished with statistics, to such reputable sources as the New Yorker, Time and Washington Post, among others.
What Moore does is repackage and sensationalise serious reportage in order to bring it to a wider audience. Stupid White Men was the bestselling non-fiction book in America in 2002, with more than four million copies worldwide, a considerably wider readership than achieved by the more elegant and sober original articles in the New Yorker and its like.
The new book is predominantly a cold collation of anti-US clichés about Iraq: oil greed, the deliberate lies about weapons, the claim the real terrorists are the corporate interests. It is bar room stuff and an inevitable conspiracy theories feature.
It takes Moore just a couple of paragraphs to absolve Osama bin Laden of the destruction of September 11. ‘How could a guy sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, have … plotted so perfectly the hijacking of four planes and then guaranteed that three of them would end up precisely on their targets?’ he asks.
His fast morphing conspiracy theories are all built on the same, unshakeable foundation – everything in the world is the fault of stupid white Americans – in which category he apparently includes the September 11 plane passengers. He has a stand up routine in which he suggests that if the victims had been black rather than white ‘scaredy-cats’, they would have had no trouble overpowering the hijackers.
This is not to say Moore’s material is unfunny or unworthy of attention. Roger and Me, his odyssey to interview the man who closed the General Motors car plant in his native Flint, Michigan, was an affecting and humane film. Bowling for Columbine is a brilliantly constructed documentary; it’s hard not to cheer when Moore embarrasses the K-Mart chain into banning the sale of live ammunition to teenagers.
The books are dismal in comparison, but even they raise the odd laugh. There are some good things threatening to break through. Moore is acute on the fear that besieges Americans. This fear, he argues persuasively, is used by their leaders to inflict restrictions on civil liberties. It is the level of debate and the effectiveness of his satire that is most concerning. His writing is sloppy, tired and conventional. Getting through his books is a chore.
As David Aaronovitch recently pointed out, Moore serves up political comfort food. ‘You get served up your own prejudices in a way that makes you feel better about yourself. It’s fine to hate Bush, to loathe Tony Blair and to feel yourself – uncomplicatedly – vindicated.’
Moore has gained international success because it is the most crass aspects of America that are most easily exported. There are two audiences for Michael Moore. One is a political underclass, a product of the Anglo-American media and of the prevailing ultra-populist political style. In this sense Moore is the left-wing counterpart of Arnold Schwarznegger.
The other audience is composed of people who should know better. Reading Moore is for them an act of fashion and of impotent style against the US. Nostalgic for lost superiority and desperate to believe the worst, they delight in venomous simplicities, relish his crudities and see humour where none exists.
There’s a place for satire; and there’s plenty in America to satirise. There are a few occasions when Moore manages to do just that, but too often he doesn’t. It isn’t even in the service of some kind of coherent alternative. Moore equates Tony Blair and George Bush with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and yet never asks whether either bin Laden or Saddam would let him do the work he now does in democratic societies. The right words for this are depravity and mendacity and it doesn’t make me laugh.