Michael Moore
I’ve always admired Michael Moore immensely, but after watching his extended talk with the folks at Democracy Now, I’m dangerously close to upgrading my admiration to hero worship.
Here’s why: a good portion of the interview is devoted to the Oscar speech he gave in 2003 — after he won Best Documentary for Bowling For Columbine — and its aftermath. He used his 45 seconds onstage to condemn Bush and the just-started Iraq War, and got an angry chorus of boos for his trouble — before he was completely drowned out by swelling emergency Oscar music and ushered offstage.
I remember all that. What I’d forgotten was how thoroughly he was ostracized by everyone afterwards — and not just the usual suspects, but people who should have known better, from Keith Olbmermann to Al Franken to the New Yorker. He was absolutely right, of course, and in retrospect everything he said seems not just uncontroversial but blindingly obvious — at the time, though, five days into the war, what he did in front of billions of people watching all over the world amounts to an immense act of bravery.
And he suffered the consequences: death threats, assaults, crazies plotting to blow up his house. He had to hire bodyguards to protect himself from people who were (literally) coming at him with knives and pipes and scalding cups of coffee. But what’s so remarkable about the interview is his account of how scared he was throughout — his apprehension about giving the speech; the trembling walk off the stage; the hour he spent that night flipping through channels, watching newscaster after newscaster pronounce his career over; his concern for his family; his quiet admission that, if he had to do it all over again, he very probably wouldn’t have. What emerges is a portrait of a human being with the same fears and doubts and weaknesses as the rest of us, doing courageous, principled things.
I don’t want to descend too far into hagiography. Moore has his faults, like everyone else. But he’s devoted a good deal of his life to pointing out the injustices all around us, and trying to make people’s lives better — always in the face of fierce condemnation, and worse. He’s not fearless, though: fearless is easy. He’s brave.
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