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by Michael Moore Stupid White Men by Michael Moore, ReganBooks, 277 pages, $24.95 
Michael Moore is an all-American phenomenon, a down-to-earth, plain-speaking, baseball-cap-wearing good guy. When he sees a spade, as does Cecily in The Importance of Being Earnest, he calls it a spade. He doesn't care if he gets pooh-poohed for keeping the welfare of the average working stiff in mind. He's direct, sassy, and, as I once put it in an early GayToday essay, he's "the world's funniest political pundit."
Of late, my bedside bookstand has been piled high with titles reflecting on America's dilemma since the Bush family's crude theft of Election 2000. Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Noam Chomsky's 9-11, Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Waldo Frank's prophetic 1927 classic, The Re-Discovery of America, have lately been my reading fare. But none of these other books has the spunk, clarity and good humor that are the hallmark of Stupid White Men, Moore's new bestseller. Moore has managed to pack the pages of this book with the most damning of facts about Dubya and his buddies, making their treachery crystal clear for those in need of quick references. Chapter Two, for instance, contains five pages that list the vile atrocities ("brutally impressive") that have already been committed by the Bushites in the year leading up to 9-11.
Chapter One in Stupid White Men provides a clear-cut case for treasonous charges against the Bush machine in Florida, explaining how the wanna-be Prez, with the illegal help of his brother Jeb, Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris, and daddy's right-wing pals on the U.S. Supreme Court, turned a state that had actually voted for Gore into a Bush win, thus propelling the seedy imposter into the White House. Stupid White Men was written prior to the tragic events of 9-11, but the force of its arguments appear to me as far more significant in the attack's aftermath. Yes, there were those of us who'd wondered-prior to 9-11-if the Bushes might not try to arrange a national security emergency, demanding, as Senator Byrd notes, "obedient approval, without question, without debate, and without opposition." Now, we see, we weren't being in the least paranoid. Moore marshals a multitude of miserable facts about the American Dream that, unfortunately, have a nightmarish quality. To his credit, however, he doesn't simply carp. His is a call to action, complete with lists of what to do and who to contact.
The good news is that Stupid White Men has been among the New York Times' 3 top best sellers during this past month. It deserves such status. Michael Moore is the Thomas Paine of our day, andStupid White Men is our modern equivalent of Paine's Common Sense. If you're alarmed, as I am, about the state of the nation, read this book pronto and pass the knowledge it imparts to others. Granted, the premises on which Michael Moore rests his case are scary indeed. But luckily, he isn't without genuine hope for change or a plan showing how we can polish our shoes after stepping in all the Bushit. That, perhaps, is what makes him so quintessentially American. Jack Nichols, GayToday's senior editor, is the author of The Gay Agenda: Talking Back to the Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books.) www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com/jackbio.htm |
The 'Idiot-in-Chief' as Moore calls George W.