Threedonia friend and ubiquitous net film persona Christian Toto takes on Michael Moore and the critics who love him.
By now, critics can’t simply applaud Moore and his tactics blindly. Even the least discerning film journalists understand his cut-and-paste, fast-zoom approach to visual op-eds is simply a card trick. But oh — what a game of three-card monte Moore pulls off time and again, they cry.
Entertainment scribes often do their darnedest to avoid properly labeling Moore as liberal. He’s a rabble-rouser, a populist, a muckraker — anything that neutralizes his ideological bent will do. Imagine a right-of-center documentarian getting such slack. Then again, we’re still waiting for a right-leaning documentary filmmaker to break through as successfully as Moore has. Say what you will about him, Moore has the ideological doc platform all to himself.
Toto mentions Slate’s Dana Stevens, who shows disdain for Moore’s tactics, but praises him as a “populist gadfly.” Populism serves well when it comes to Moore, yet it’s tea-bagger nuttiness when it comes from an O’Reilly or Beck. Read the whole thing.
Toto concludes with this snippet from MTV critic and non-supporter of national health care Kurt Loder.
Hateful capitalism is dead; time now for government to step in and take charge. This mad idea has worked out so badly so many times in the past (has it not been just 20 years since Soviet communism collapsed?) that one is always startled to see it exhumed as a cutting-edge nostrum.
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By the way, Steven Crowder and Chris Farley were NEVER ONCE believable as Michael Moore. They were too skinny and healthy looking.
Thanks for the link … I think some critics are getting tougher on Moore. The director’s films are always lively, but his techniques would never pass muster if his ideological compass pointed to the right.
It was nice to Kurt Loder dump on him…. I assume Loder is a left-libertarian type.
I have one complaint: we should not be referring the a propagandist like Moore as a “documentarian”. Documentaries are supposed to be based on facts, something Moore has never even tried to do.
I’m LMAO at Ebert. To him, Moore’s lack of a college education is a badge of honor that gives him legitimacy. If Moore was a right-winger his lack of a college education would be proof that he was an uncultured rube.
So lets keep count. Sarah Palin went to several colleges over six years and is considered a moron. Moore never went to college period and he’s a populist genius. Tune in, turn on, drop out?
Having had an extremeley minor website for a couple of years, it’s a great source of satisfaction to me that a few times a week, people still visit my site by searching for ’sicko analysis. If I do nothing else with my life, that’s worth it.