Moore had the following to say in an interview with the Financial Times:
“You have a Republican group of candidates that are certifiably insane. They think the country is as crazy as they are. It’s not. Granted, I think a good 50m people are probably certifiably nuts too but this is a big country. There’s over 200m voters. We can weather 50m idiots.”
The New York Times Book Review mentioned the time, in high school (when Elks Lodges still accepted only Caucasions), that Moore took the opportunity to use an Elk-sponsored essay contest about Abraham Lincoln to excoriate the organization in front of the Chief Elk.
The speech began, the author recalls, with the words “How dare the Elks Club.” It ended with: “And you can keep your stinkin’ trophy.” “The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite” and other national media outlets called for interviews. A rowdy star was born.In the opening chapter, Moore described his efforts while out of the spotlight to get fit and the results:
“If you take a punch at me now,” he announces, the following will happen: “(1) You will break your hand. That’s the beauty of spending just a half hour a day on your muscular-skeletal structure — it turns into kryptonite; (2) I will fall on you. I’m still working on my core and balance issues, so after you slug me I will tip over and crush you.”
The Catholic boy that’s still alive inside Mr. Moore adds: “It won’t be on purpose, and while you are attempting to breathe, please know I’ll be doing my best to get off you.”
I saw Michael Moore two days ago at UC Berkeley. As with his "documentary" films, there was a lot to swallow, some of it probably true, but I got the feeling he may have been embellishing or exaggerating at many points. Here are a few of the claims he made that seem worth fact-checking:
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• In Canada, voting is done with #2 pencils, the votes are dumped out and counted right at the precincts in front of the representatives of the five major political parties, and the results are all in by 11 p.m. on election night. (I happen to agree with Moore that electronic voting is dangerous and there is no reason why anyone who cares about election integrity should support it, but his report of how it works in Canada sounds almost too good to be true.)
• Moore decided to run for School Board at age 17 after being paddled by the assistant principal at his high school, Dennis Ryan, for having his shirt tail out. He takes credit for both Ryan and the school's principal being forced to resign after he wins the election with the most votes of any candidate.
• Moore strongly implied that a speech he gave at a "Boys State" event at which he said the governor and lieutenant governor of Michigan were present, against the Elks Club for sponsoring a contest to give a speech about Abraham Lincoln when they at the time refused to admit non-Caucasians to their club (Moore claims his father saw this on their membership application, and declined to join the group for that reason), was a major factor in getting racial discrimination by private groups like the Elks outlawed.
• Claimed that the only Republican presidential candidate who said when asked that he believed in science was Jon Huntsman
• Moore said he declined an offer to appear on the Walter Cronkite show, and ignored lots of calls from reporters, that came as a result of the above incident.
What I found most interesting about his talk, however, was the amount of time he spent complaining about the rules for buying tickets and so on for the event, as well as the excerpts he read from his book having a very anti-rules theme. This from a guy who wants bigger government and more intrusive regulations! (He complained for instance that EPA rules were tougher under Bush than the new rules that Obama has signed off on.) The irony was thick.