The "Times" reviews an author you would enjoy. They will cover Moore, but they have "spiked" Miniter's book. Shame on them.
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BOOKS OF THE TIMES | 'DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY?'
Man With a Mission: Regime Change
By JANET MASLIN
In his latest book, Michael Moore reveals the identity of his favorite political candidate: someone who bracingly advocates "a free country, a safe country, a peaceful country that genuinely shares its riches with the less fortunate around the world, a country that believes in everyone getting a fair shake, and where fear is seen as the only thing we need to fear." Oh, wait a minute — he's talking about himself.
When "we, the people" enters the vocabulary of someone who likes to give marching orders, watch out. Our self-appointed spokesman may have an agenda of his own. At the end of "Bowling for Columbine," Mr. Moore almost ruined an otherwise terrific documentary by grandstanding with Charlton Heston and a photograph of a dead child. As someone with a penchant for demagoguery, someone who thinks that the present political structure needs "to be brought down and removed and replaced with a whole new system that we control," Mr. Moore plays to the camera even when he's doing it on the page.
Mr. Moore's previous book, "Stupid White Men," was such a hit that it was last year's best-selling nonfiction book. It was in its 52nd printing when he completed the very timely "Dude, Where's My Country?," a book eager to mention its author's accomplishments. Mr. Moore's antiwar outcry at last year's Academy Awards presentation is also immortalized, supposedly mentioned to him by a great-granddaughter named Anne Coulter Moore: "Mom said you were once famous for a few minutes for yelling about something during one of the oil wars. Now all we have is this old photo of you with your mouth open and pointing at something." That sounds about right.
"Dude, Where's My Country?" includes one chapter in which Mr. Moore adopts the voice of God — only playfully, of course. In another chapter he invites you, the reader, to join what he calls Mike's Militia. And then he gives out instructions, "as your commander in chief." The smart, subversive sense of humor that brings one million visitors a day (another number trumpeted here) to Mr. Moore's Web site (where they can relive his speeches and take more of his instructions) is seriously strained by the burden of so much self-promotion.
When "Stupid White Men" appeared, its brand of name-calling was more of a novelty on the best-seller list. Now it is luxuriantly in flower. Mr. Moore will no doubt share a readership with Al Franken's "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" (which is funnier), Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose's "Bushwhacked" (which is better informed) and Joe Conason's "Big Lies" (also better informed), if not with Bill O'Reilly's "Who's Looking Out for You?" (politically opposite, but no less self-serving). But Mr. Moore, through real conviction along with showboating personality, does make himself the most galvanizing and accessible of the lot.
With any such book, you — or "the American people," as Mr. Moore repeatedly speechifies it — can expect a certain amount of over-the-top invective. As he draws on earlier books, notably Robert Baer's "Sleeping With the Devil," to identify connections between the Bush family and Saudi Arabian royalty, Mr. Moore exhorts: "George, is this good for our national security, our homeland security? Who is it good for? You? Pops?"
But at the same time Mr. Moore is rounding off sums of Saudi money to the nearest trillion, he is being more precise in other areas. For instance, he identifies such members of the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq as Palau, a group of North Pacific islands, with a population smaller than the audience at many rock concerts. Palau has "yummy tapioca and succulent coconut but, unfortunately, no troops."
This isn't new information, but it is deployed effectively here. So is a demonstration of how unreadable the text of the U.S.A. Patriot Act is, and the fact that the Internal Revenue Service has a specific form for tax refunds of $1 million or more. (It is reprinted here.) And so is Mr. Moore's digging into underpublicized news events like a Taliban visit to Texas, for oil-related reasons, in 1997. He wonders why 20-year-old video images of Donald Rumsfeld embracing Saddam Hussein have been broadcast only by Oprah Winfrey. She, incidentally, is his draft pick for president in 2004 — though he also sees Wesley Clark "or any one of the Dixie Chicks" as possibilities.
"Dude, Where's My Country?" is much sharper about election strategy than it is about uncovering the Bush administration's transgressions. One chapter here, entitled "Bush Removal and Other Spring Cleaning Chores," presents ways for Mike's Militia to get out the vote. ("We've got the people on our side.") However outnumbered the left may feel ("go crawl into that phone booth with the Noam Chomsky fan club, you miserable loser!"), Mr. Moore devotes a chapter to arguing that American voters are more liberal than they know.
In "How to Talk to Your Conservative Brother-in-Law," Mr. Moore has some specific hints. He recommends agreeing that men and women are different, that animals don't have rights, that granola is fattening and that a little sunlight is actually good for your health. "We have a namby-pamby way of saying things," he writes, along with "a hoity-toity view of religion." He asks readers to recognize that "this arrogance is a big reason the lower classes will always side with the Republicans."
Mr. Moore has marshaled all of his impassioned, populist bluster to effecting that change. That makes "Dude, Where's My Country?" a bumper sticker that doubles as a book.
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