Michael Moore
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Early Life
Moore grew up in small-town Michigan with two thoroughly working-class parents (a secretary and an assembly lineman), which would later provide him with an appropriate back-story to complain about rich people.
In high school, Moore was involved in theatre and debate leading him to the revelation that he could get a ton of people to pay attention to him if he was both loud and argumentative. To make things worse, he was an eagle scout, an achievement he is, sadly, still proud of. Immediately after commencement, he ran for an elected school board position on the platform of firing the principal and vice-principal at the high school from which he had just graduated.
Partway into college, Moore dropped out and started working at the kind of weekly political magazines that pile up on street corners and get delivered to hippies. He also signed up to work on the political campaigns of…sigh…Ralph Nader, marking another chapter in the very appropriate early life of Michael Moore.
Films
While it is easy to see why many conservatives hate Michael Moore, many liberals, who actually enjoy his films/support the causes he whines about, also find him to be a toolbox. Moore has a rare talent that allows him to find the most shrill, controversial tactic to reinforce his point, inviting as much negative feedback as possible from the audience.
Here is a chart of his filmmaking activities:
| Movie | Point Being Made | Irritating Tactic |
| Roger and Me | Corporate priorities are out of line. | Never actually gets to Roger as advertised in the title. |
| Canadian Bacon | Politicians like to distract us. | Indirectly led to the death of John Candy. |
| Bowling for Columbine | Firearms are bad. | Interviewing a nearly-dead Charlton Heston. (Come on, he carried Jesus in Ben-Hur.) |
| Fahrenheit 9/11 | We invaded Iraq for the wrong reasons. | Making a movie French people loved. |
| Sicko | America's health care system is faulty. | Illegally went to Cuba and brought back footage, but no cigars. |
“Shame on you, Mr. President!”
At the 2003 Academy Awards ceremony, just days after the invasion of Iraq, Moore boldly criticized the military action and the Bush administration in a long, rambling speech involving around 17 uses of the word “ficticious” and ending on a very confusing note about duct tape. The speech elicited a mixed reaction or boos and cheers from a crowd that will pretty much give a standing ovation to anything (See: Three Six Mafia winning an Academy Award).
In retrospect, many people have argued that Moore was simply ahead of his time, providing criticisms of the war that would later be echoed by major politicians and the news media. Other people have argued that they still don’t know what the hell that duct tape thing was about.
The Quest for Attention
Michael Moore’s success as a celebrity and filmmaker seems to be predicated on his drawing enough attention to himself. This phenomenon most recently, and pathetically for everyone involved, resulted in Moore incurring a federal subpoena for his trip to Cuba in defiance of the US embargo.
Moore has also written a number of ironically titled books that many people have purchased, few people have read, and that contain just enough passages that can be easily taken out of context and then railed against by other shrill, annoying people with television shows and newspaper columns, effectively doubling the amount of unnecessary whining to which he subjects everyone.
Shock, alarmism, and smugness have made Moore the resident drama child of liberalism. Possibly the most offensive thing about all of this is that, in interviews, Michael Moore has sort of solved this problem by acting as though he were simply the victim of a giant government conspiracy. Even so, he has yet to solve the problem of his immense girth.
