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August 18, 2002
REVIEW: When they stole America
MICHAEL Moore is well known in the intellectual circles of the US. He has penned the provocative and award-winning Roger & me and the bestseller Downsize this. Now he is back with another raver, in which he warns his fellow ‘white’ countrymen how that big, ugly special-interest group is destroying the world. This is the Stupid white men.
The book created an uproar in the literary circles of the US and Europe. It topped the bestseller lists and went into print for the ninth time.
Moore accuses President Bush of being the “thief-in-chief, a trespasser on federal land, a squatter at the Oval Office” and calls for the marines to be sent in to evict him. He claims that the United States is a country that “goes out of its way to remain ignorant and stupid”.
Though no US president has enjoyed such consistently high approval ratings as George Bush, yet surprisingly it is remarkable that Stupid white men is enjoying such success. President Bush is its number one target. Moore tells his readers, “The bad guys are just a bunch of silly, stupid white men. And there’s a helluva lot more of us than there are of them.”
Among his other targets are the nation itself and corporate America for which there is no recession, no downturn, no hard times as the rich wallow in loot. Sixty per cent of Americans are “upset or angry” about “this land in which we now live — a land where crooked courts select the president and money rules the day”. Moore may not be far wrong, if the popularity of Stupid white men can be a gauge.
The first chapter, “A very American coup”, interestingly opens with the US government having been seized by a never-do-well rich boy and his elderly henchmen. The water is poisoned, the ozone layer is in shreds, and the SUVs (suburban utility vehicles) are advancing like a plague of locusts.
Moore observes, “It used to be that politicians would wait until they were in office before they became crooks. This one came prepackaged. Now he is a trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office.”
Hence on behalf of 234 million Americans “held hostage”, the writer calls for NATO forces to enter the US. He sends a personal request to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan “to hear our plea. We are no longer able to govern ourselves or to hold free and fair elections. We need UN observers, UN troops, UN resolutions!” He is frustrated and alienated.
Though Moore’s target is Bush, yet what he says is applicable to us as well: “We don’t prosecute felons if they’re rich or married to a governing Bush.”
The very release of Stupid white men is a story by itself. It was due in the stores on October 2. But 9/11 prompted the publishers to put 50,000 finished books (out of an announced first printing of 100,000) in a warehouse on hold. Moore was asked to include new material to address the recent events, change the title and cover art and remove an open letter to George W. Bush asking the president “whether he’s a functional illiterate, whether he’s a felon and whether he is getting the necessary help for his drug and alcohol problem”.
Moore agreed to these requests. But, he stalled when he was asked to rewrite up to 50 per cent of the book to defray half the cost of destroying the old copies and of producing the new edition, by contributing $100,000 from his royalty account.
After about three months HarperCollins informed Moore, to his surprise, that Stupid white men would be released in March.
What changed the publisher’s heart? A librarian who was also a board member of the American Library Association (ALA), heard about it. She posted an e-mail message to all the libraries and newsletters disclosing the treatment being meted out to Stupid white men and Moore. Publishing trade magazine, Publisher’s Weekly broke the story. The New York Post followed up the next day. Within days HarperCollins decided to release the book.
An instructive story, indeed. It shows what a free society does when one of its member is confronted with a crisis. Does it maintain its sense of freedom and liberty and dissent and open discussion of the issues? Or does it start putting the clamp down?
According to Moore, “much of the harm that is caused to the people to this country (America) is caused by stupid rich white guys”. Perhaps, the same may be true in our case back home. For “white”, we may substitute the ‘kala sahib’.
But the point driven home for us is that the President-cum-commander-in-chief of the mightiest country in the world, who is busy waging a war against terrorism has been put on a chopping block; neither the publisher nor the author nor their families have so far been dubbed traitors and hounded by government sleuths. They are as free as a butterfly; the author is appearing on TV talk shows and is going round the country’s prestigious universities discussing the Stupid white men.
Stupid white men: and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation
By Michael Moore
HarperCollins
ISBN: 0060392452
304pp. £18.99
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