Michael Moore was wrong. When Glenn Beck mused at length on TV about whether or not to murder him, finally asking himself WWJD,? when Bill O’Reilly considered the topic as well, and when Bill Kemmer posed this directly to Moore, live, on TV, at the 2004 Democratic convention, “I’ve heard people say they wish Michael Moore were dead,.” Michael should have understood they were just expressing their opinion. Not setting off loons in TV ville.

. The picture of Michael Moore as a toddler, on the cover, under the title, of HERE COMES TROUBLE is perfect. You should have learned better by now, young man.. After a time, he should have known what to say to Kurt Vonnegut when Vonnegut, who befriended him, wrote Moore was his “hero” and when John Lennon talked to him offering to help.. “You guys are passé. That stuff is gone, that part of my life is over. The ideals of America, the integrity of a person. Forget it. Believing if you are kind to someone they’ll be kind to you, that you should be honest and willing to hear the other person. That they should do the same. That you should ask questions, especially the ones they don’t want you to ask, see what’s happening around you and write it down, read, all of this should have ended when you closed your dorm door for the last time and walked out into the world.”

He and a friend who needed to move on and let bygones be bygones should not have demonstrated at Bitburg when Reagan visited the Nazi graves. He should not have created a crisis line because of the horrors happening to his friends. When a man came in with a shot gun one night threatening to blow his own head off when Michael Moore was alone there, he should not have treated him like a hurt human being. He shouldn’t have saved the guy’s life. The guy , like Moore, was a coward. Let him die if he wants to. What would Beck have done if confronted with that?

Michael Moore has caused trouble for himself all his life. It was his parents’ fault. They were on his side all the way. Imagine. How could he not know this? To become a member of the school board when he was 18 all because he refused to take a vicious paddling is so sadly disrespectful. Of course, if he had listened to people all around him, if he had let others define him, when he received the Oscar for FAHRENHEIT 9/11, all those boos and curse words thrown at him by so much of Hollywood would not have happened..

No one would have keyed his Oscar. Of course he never would have won that Oscar. His film would not have been personally screened by the Bushes. He never would have made a difference in this country by somehow in his soft voice, with logic on his side, won so many millions over to him. He would not have had to hire ex-Navy SEALS to protect him, and they did, such a danger he, defending all those nefarious minorities, and seeing the irony and hypocrisy.

But if he had not caused trouble by holding fast to what we all say we believe., this gentle compassionate, decent man would not have been able to touch the human heart as widely as he does. Read Michael Moore’s book, read all of them, and learn how humanity connects us all whether we like it or not.

It’s filled with history, personal and of this country. Somehow he is able to be honest with himself and to metaphorically put his arm around a person’s shoulder and say somehow we’ll work it out..
My phone conversation with an ex-friend:
“Don’t go see that movie.”
“Movie, you mean GODZILLA?” That’s what we were talking about, with the bad special effects wasn’t it?
“No, that movie by that guy, you know.”
“You mean FAHRENHEIT 9/11.”
“Stay home and vote your conscience.”
I’d had enough of pretending, of keeping quiet. I had done that all my life. So I took a huge breath and said.
“No, I’m going to see that movie. His name is Michael Moore. Not only do I like his movies, I like his books and TV programs, and him.”

The friendship, a good one, though we tried hard to save it, ended when I stopped agreeing with everything said. After that conversation, I cried. Like Michael Moore, like my friend, like me, like everybody in this country, we love America. If only we could see we disagree for the exact same reasons. Oddly enough, I said that to my friend one night, and we agreed. I think that is exactly what Moore is saying.

Michael Moore is the man who believes what they taught us in third grade. After all, if you’ve got to be wrong, this is a pretty good way to do it. And btw he has an infectious laugh that makes you feel good too. This is also a very funny book. He is such a graceful writer. Kurt Vonnegut said to him “ít has become impossible to write fiction and make it believable.”. As Moore said at the Oscars, we live in fictitious times. The stories in this book are real and very personal to him. He tells you about a gay kid in school and what happened, or a Jewish man in pain of history, or a girl he knew who died of a botched abortion and he has to at least touch our collective souls. I think we still have one.
Peace.