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Believe it or not

· North American affairs

Does anyone believe that Michael Moore actually had this conversation?

I mean, with an actual live human being, and not just in his own head.

August 31st, 2004 |

17 comments to Believe it or not

  • D Anghelone
    August 31, 2004 at 5:47 pm

    I recall a video from someone trying to turn the tables on Moore by waylaying him with videocam. Moore was too smart to hunker and gave the guy his interview.

    This conversation may or may not be but don’t underestimate these ‘Colombo’ guys like Moore.

  • spacer (New York)
    August 31, 2004 at 5:55 pm

    Who gives a rats ass what this chicken feed Goebbels has to say.

  • Perry E. Metzger
    August 31, 2004 at 5:56 pm

    It doesn’t seem so unlikely to me that he’s had conversations of that sort.

  • BB
    August 31, 2004 at 5:58 pm

    That was probably written a week ago. I love it… Moore says Bush is on the “radical-right” and has tricked the good-hearted liberals in the Republican party into supporting him. Actually, Bush is an FDR/LBJ big spending liberal who has duped the right of his party into supporting him.

  • toolkien
    August 31, 2004 at 6:08 pm

    That was probably written a week ago. I love it… Moore says Bush is on the “radical-right” and has tricked the good-hearted liberals in the Republican party into supporting him. Actually, Bush is an FDR/LBJ big spending liberal who has duped the right of his party into supporting him.

    Which is precisely the problem. People believe that it is radical-right while it is FDR/LBJ as you say. It moves the whole political spectrum leftward. Dovetails with a previous article and comments about the ‘sociologists’ movement’ supposedly underfoot. The left is winning the protracted war. It’s a rare person these days who questions Big Government/Statism. Sure there are a few knee-jerk anti Big Government sorts on paper, but cut out their piece of the pie and it’s criminal.

  • R C Dean
    August 31, 2004 at 6:32 pm

    Even if he has had conversations “of that sort”, (which I doubt) he is still dishonestly claiming to have had this exact conversation (note the quotation marks) with an actual Republican delegate in New York during the convention.

  • Michael M Mason
    August 31, 2004 at 9:05 pm

    Even if he has had conversations “of that sort”, (which I doubt) he is still dishonestly claiming to have had this exact conversation (note the quotation marks) with an actual Republican delegate in New York during the convention.

    No he isn’t.

    He’s talking about “…a number of the Republican faithful who aren’t delegates … people who call themselves Republicans but aren’t really Republicans…”

  • Mashiki
    August 31, 2004 at 9:19 pm

    Doesn’t matter anyway, he decided he isn’t going to be coming to the rest of the RNC convention. Bwahaha…

    I wonder if it’s because he couldn’t take the face of all those people against him last night. A couple of people from other blogs who were members of the press core reported the he ran as fast as he could flanked by security from the convention last night.

  • R C Dean
    August 31, 2004 at 9:26 pm

    Mr. Mason is right – Michael Moore does hint that whoever he had this conversation with while he was at the convention was not an actual delegate:

    Hanging out around the convention, I’ve encountered a number of the Republican faithful who aren’t delegates. They warm up to me when they don’t find horns or a tail. Talking to them, I discover they’re like many people who call themselves Republicans but aren’t really Republicans. . . .

    I asked one man who told me he was a “proud Republican

    I amend my comment above to state that

    “Even if he has had conversations “of that sort”, (which I doubt) he is still dishonestly claiming to have had this exact conversation (note the quotation marks) with an actual Republican in New York during the convention.”

  • Craig Bryant
    August 31, 2004 at 10:44 pm

    To tell the truth, Moore’s little “conversation” in the paper today gave me a real moment of clarity.

    Not for what it told me about Republicans, of course–for what it told me about Democrats.

    There are many people like me in America today.

    Basically of a Libertarian bent, we oppose Bush on any number of social issues. We look on Christian Conservatives with something approaching horror. We find ourselves flabbergasted that the FBI is foced to pull trained agents off corporate fraud to try to track terrorists, and yet John Ashcroft _still_ has time on his hands to make noise about pornography on the Internet.

    Basically fiscal conservatives, we like the _idea_ of tax cuts, sure, and recognize that the cuts already phased in have had a role in shortening the recession. But we know that deficits are poison, that we can’t afford the upcoming tax cuts, that “starve the beast” didn’t work in the 80s, didn’t work in the 90s, and won’t work now. We’re angry and embarrassed that the government can not live within its means, that we can’t make a budget like adults.

    And yet, here we are, backing the President. Why?

    Moore’s answer, or the answer of his hypothetical interviewee, is that we fear irrationally “tax and spend” Democrats. It doesn’t hold water, does it? Sure, there are plenty of party faithful who will parrot any silly line about the opposition. But divided government and gridlock served us well in the 90s, and I see no reason why it wouldn’t do again.

    No, the real answer to the problem of Moore’s “RINOs” (Republicans in Name Only) should be blindingly obvious:

    We must win this war.

    As Mark Steyn said earlier this week, the best prescription drugs plan in the world just isn’t going to matter much if the Jihadis take back the offensive. We are in a war not of opposing civilizations, but of civilization against barbarians, and history tells us that the barbarians are perfectly capable of winning. At the end of the day, the conduct of this war is not only the paramount issue, it is the _only_ issue.

    I vote for whoever can best defend our civilization. We can squabble over the little things later.

    And that brings me to that moment of clarity.

    I’m deeply disappointed in a number of things that have happened in the course of the war this last year; many of us are. The brilliant war to conquer Iraq turned into a shocking embarrassment of an occupation; it’s easy to see how blinkered ideology led us to commit the most ridiculous blunders (disbanding the army, having too few troops to maintain order, etc., etc). We see worrying signs of backsliding in Afghanistan, no progress in North Korea or Iran, and so on.

    There’s a theory for backing Kerry that I call “Change of Management.” Maybe the Bush team his just made too many mistakes to be allowed to continue. Kerry won’t do anything bold, but maybe inaction is better than another blunder. Then, in 2008, we can try again. And vast swathes of the civilized world–our allies in this war, love ’em or hate ’em–have had about all of Bush that they can stomach. So maybe we’ll smooth some feathers into the bargain. Our enemies take a long-range view; we have to do the same.

    But then comes Michael Moore.

    The war has always been a sham to Michael. Remember 9/11/01? He just couldn’t understand why anyone would fly planes into the World Trade Center, because, after all, New York city “didn’t vote for Bush!” A party we could trust in this war would have kicked his copious rear out into the cold, as it did with Georgia Representative Cynthia McKinney. But Cynthia’s back on the ballot in 2004, and Michael’s fame has never stopped growing.

    Kerry can salute and talk tough all he likes, but Michael Moore is the true voice of the Democratic Party.

    Bush presides over a War Coalition, an amalgamation of people that, whatever our disagreements about everything else under the Sun, undertstand what this war means to the future of our civilization and are determined to win it.

    Kerry presides over a coalition that finds John Ashcroft more evil than Saddam Hussein, George Bush a greater threat to the world than Osama bin Laden. Vast segments of his constituency are so deranged by Bush-hatred that they have abandoned the capacity for rational thought. Maybe the war is our fault. Maybe the whole thing is just a sham. Maybe Michael Moore is right after all.

    I’ve been grappling and grappling with where to send my vote in November, and thanks to Michael Moore, I finally know. Kerry might not be a terrible person. In the right decade, he might not have been a bad President. And his personal inclinations might not be miles away from what Bush would end up doing in his second term.

    But.

    We can not give power to Kerry’s party. One party is serious about this war, and one party is not. We can not afford four years of unseriousness.

    God, what a ramble. But the point is: thanks, Michael. You cleared a whole lot up for me today.

    Craig Bryant

  • Will
    September 1, 2004 at 12:30 am

    Thanks for reminding me to check whether USA Today would drop Moore the same way they dropped Ann Coulter during the DNC. See

    humaneventsonline

    For the story.

  • Rob Fisher
    September 1, 2004 at 8:34 am

    Oddly Michael Moore has touched upon something I’ve been thinking about during my current stay in the USA: The choice between Republican and Democrat is a huge false dichotomy and somehow no-one seems to notice.

    Why aren’t more people pointing out that it’s not gay marriage *or* low taxes?

  • flaime
    September 2, 2004 at 4:02 pm

    We must win this war.

    But what good does it do to win a war overseas if we wind up with a government that supports the ideals of our enemy (theocracy, proscribement of freedoms based on religious grounds, catering to the wealthy as long as they give lip service to the ideals the government wants people to subscribe too)?

    We can win the war with a president who doesn’t do it the way we want. Kerry is going to be weak enough that he will have to follow the Pentagon and the people. But Bush doesn’t care, and will do more damage to our nation than can ever be repaired.

    When the choice is between bad governement and worse government, bad government becomes the clear choice. And the religious right will always be worse government, no matter the wars, the taxes, if what you really strive for is freedom from government.

  • Ironchef
    September 2, 2004 at 8:19 pm

    Moore is describing those who are socially liberal. I consider my self socially “liberal”, yet economically “conservative”, though it pains me to label these things.

    Truthfully, these view are more in line with Libertarianism, which I consider myself.

  • ajay
    September 3, 2004 at 2:16 pm

    Of course. What’s so unlikely about it? Or is this just a “Michael Moore is incapable of writing anything true” post?
    If you think the conversation is highly improbable, presumably it is because you think that no Republican would ever have answered that way: that every R voter would have said something like:

    I asked one man who told me he was a “proud Republican,” “Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?”
    “Hell, no,” he said. “Why would we need that?”
    I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.
    “Absolutely not,” he replied. “Men should get more pay.”
    “Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?”
    “Sure. I hate them.”

    Do you really believe a) every Republican in New York would have answered that way and b) any Republican would have answered that way to Michael Moore?

  • Perry de Havilland
    September 3, 2004 at 2:42 pm

    What I would have liked them to answer would be…

    I asked one man who told me he was a “proud Republican,” “Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?”
    “Hell, no,” he said. “let the market take care of it by making private property rights actually count for something!”

    I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.
    “It is not a matter for the state to decide who gets paid what,” he replied. “that is an entirely private matter to be handled by social exchange.”

    “Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?”
    “Should you? No. Should you be allowed to by the state? Hell yes. Your house, your rules.”

    In reality, most Republicans (and Dems) vote on the basis of tribal attachment, not ideology, so they could well have answered the way His Proletarian Flatulence said they did.

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