Attention, Stupid White Men: Michael Moore has Your Cure!
Written: Mar 09 '02 (Updated Mar 09 '02)
Product Rating:
Pros: Humor is pretty good; Some of Moore's opinions are right on the money
Cons: Some silliness; conservatives will not agree with Moore's convictions at all.
The Bottom Line: "Stupid White Men" is sometimes silly and sometimes a little misleading and simplistic in its conclusions. But it's chock full of humor and some good insight.
Bryan_Carey's Full Review: Michael Moore - Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry ...
Michael Moore is an author, film- maker, and social/political activist who first hit the best seller lists with his book “Downsize This”. His first book was a humorous account of the clumsy, thoughtless white men who run the United States. Now, five years later, Moore has decided to write another book on basically the same subject: “stupid” white men and the havoc that they have wrecked on society.
Basic Contents of This Book:
This book contains a total of 280 pages and the following 11 chapters:
Introduction 1. A Very American Coup
2. Dear George
3. Dow Wow Wow
4. Kill Whitey
5. Idiot Nation
6. Nice Planet, Nobody Home
7. The End of Men
8. We’re Number One!
9. One Big Happy Prison
10. Democrats, DOA
11. The People’s Prayer Epilogue: Tallahassee Hi- Ho
Notes and Sources
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Typeface
Moore starts his ranting by discussing the election of 2000 and the fact that the loser ended up the winner, thanks to the incompetence of the Supreme Court and other unethical maneuvers by pro- Bush devotees. Chapter 2 is written like an open letter to the president, asking him about his apparent inability to read, his poor grasp of the English language, and his “cuts” in social service programs. Moore also gets personal on a few occasions, asking the president to come clean about his alcoholism, cocaine usage, and other possible felonious acts.
Chapters 4 through 7 present Moore’s official explanation of why the United States is in such a sorry state of existence: white men. Moore backs up his claims by pointing out that most every evil act that has ever been committed toward humanity (and toward him, personally) was undertaken by a white man or a group of white men. His remedy to the problem: turn the over the power, the control, the task of making important decisions, etc., to women and minorities. White men, according to Moore, have fouled things up so badly that we really have nothing to lose. We can’t possibly be any worse off then we are now, by Moore’s estimation, so why not let the opposite sex and repressed races take over for a while?
In chapter 8, Moore gets back to being political. He talks about all the “terrible” areas where American ranks number one among the world’s countries, like number of millionaires, amount of beef production, firearm deaths, military spending, budget deficit, etc. Moore then talks about specific areas of the world that have experienced unrest (like Israel, Northern Ireland, North Korea, etc.) and he provides his own antidote for each situation.
Chapter 9 discusses all that’s wrong with our system of (in)justice in America. Moore mentions the fact that the U.S. prison population has now exceeded 2 million and how the vast majority of prisoners are peaceful, harmless people who were caught using drugs or who were victims of California’s awful “Three Strikes” laws or some other despicable act of legal injustice.
In chapter 10, Moore attacks the group of politicians that he once loved so much: the Democratic Party. The reason for his attack is that he feels the party of the left has hopped into bed with the members of the right, and now finds itself hopelessly stuck in the center, completely oblivious to all of the important social justice causes that it once fought so proudly to achieve. He attacks Clinton and other prominent Democrats, pointing out how similar their actions have become to Republicans.
Chapter 11, “The People’s Prayer”, could prove to be too much for some people. Moore writes humorously about his wish that all the members of congress would suddenly develop incurable cancer, have a son/daughter come out of the closet, or suffer some type of personal misfortune. This, Moore believes, will cause them all to realize that the grass isn’t so green for some members of the public and it would serve as a wake up call for more government action in these areas.
Final Thoughts:
Michael Moore loves to rant and rave about politics and the lack of social justice in America. Some of what he has to say in this book makes sense, but other things are misleading and a little silly. For example, I don’t see how the fact that the United States leads the world in the number of millionaires and in the amount of beef produced somehow makes us “bad”. Quite to the contrary, some people would consider these to be good things, or at the very least, neutral.
Some of the “facts” that Moore quotes are also misleading. For example, he talks about how conditions in America were going great for a while, back when we had budget “surpluses”. The truth is, the general fund of the budget was never in surplus. The phony surplus was created by adding the Social Security surplus to the general fund deficit. Since the Social Security surplus was greater than the general fund deficit, it resulted in an overall surplus. Of course, Moore himself contradicts this statement (about conditions in America being “good”) in all of the other chapters of the book, so I don’t know if he intended this to be taken seriously or not.
Another misleading subject is that of budget cuts. Moore whines about the Clinton and Bush administration’s sorry record of budget cuts, and he lists out some of the specific areas that were cut, in this book. What’s misleading is that most of these programs were never actually cut at all. The only “cut” was that the annual scheduled increases of some programs were reduced to slightly smaller increases than originally planned. Also, Moore conveniently fails to mention that the overall spending budget has increased every year, throughout both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and it now stands at an all- time high.
In other parts of the book, however, Moore’s observations are dead- on. Chapter 9 is especially riveting. Moore talks about the grave injustices that exist in the United States, and the resulting explosion in the prison population. Why, Moore asks, are crack users punished so much more harshly than cocaine users? Why are casual marijuana smokers, who are otherwise productive members of society, sent to serve mandatory, multi- year terms in prison? Why are rich people constantly getting reduced sentences (or no sentence at all) for committing serious crimes against the public (like embezzlement and fraud), while poor people are locked up for harming no other person at all?
One thing about Moore’s book that might bother some people is the way he uses his humor. This book was written as a humorous attack on injustice. However, on some occasions, you might start to wonder whether Moore really means what he is saying, or if he is just splashing a little humor in the face of a serious topic. In some cases, it’s easy to tell. But in others, it isn’t.
Moore is a good writer, but I don’t know if I can take much of what he says too seriously. In chapter 3 (Dow Wow Wow), Moore discusses the skyrocketing stock market of the 1990’s, then proudly proclaims that he has always kept his money in a bank account. He makes light of the unnecessary risk taking that people accept, to make a greater return in the stock market. This, of course, shows that Moore knows nothing about personal finance. He could easily be making more money than he’s making with all of his cash sitting in a bank account, without investing in the stock market. There are other good, safe investments that provide greater returns than bank accounts.
In other parts of the book, Moore makes some other quotes that hurt his credibility. He talks about Ralph Nader like the man is a saint, and even refers to him as a “genius” (I’ve heard Nader referred to in many ways, but I’ve never heard anyone call him a genius!). He even makes the assertion that “90 percent of America supports Nader and would benefit from his economic plans”. I don’t know what planet Moore is living on, or where he got his economic degree, but I feel pretty confident that the number of people who support Ralph Nader is quite a bit less than 90%. And I don’t know of any distinguished economists who would support Nader’s plans for a more socialistic, classless society.
Overall, this is a fairly good book with some important messages to convey. I like the way Moore emphasizes citizen involvement by the public. He even provides the phone numbers to congress, along with the web sites where you can logon and send e-mail messages to your congressperson about some of the important issues that concern you. But, on the other hand, Moore shows his own lack of knowledge on several occasions, making it difficult to take him as seriously as he would like. In the acknowledgement section, he even thanks certain friends for helping him to “sufficiently cover up his lack of education and manners” when he wrote this book.
So, with Michael Moore, it’s a mixed bag. His humor is pretty good, but some people may not like what he has to say, with or without the added laughs. Conservative Republicans, in particular, will not like this book at all.
It’s obvious that Michael Moore doesn’t know finance or economics, and some of his solutions to the world’s social ills are far too simplistic to have any hope of success. But he does offer some good humor and some interesting perspectives on things. For those reasons, I give this book a marginal thumbs- up recommendation.
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