Via Big Hollywood.

Revolting revolutionary.

The Guardian (U.K.) interviewed Pizza the Hutt. The Hutt was in rare, self-aggrandizing form:

My films don’t have instant impact because they’re dense with ideas that people have not thought about.

I already suspected that Michael Moore never reads, possesses no historical curiosity and indulges in sheer intellectual sloth, but now he seems determined to prove it. These are ideas that “people have not thought about”? Nonspecific collectivism? Vague platitudes about equality and democracy?

Here, again Michael Moore giddily imagines he is leading some kind of radical vanguard:

“Wow, they’re afraid of this movie [Sicko], they believe it can actually create a revolution.” The idea that cinema can be dangerous is a great idea.

I think Joseph Goebbels might take exception to the Hutt’s belief that he is a trailblazer in producing political films that promote “dangerous” ideas.

As I have written here before, Michael Moore’s radicalism is just a sloppier and more Twitter-friendly iteration of a collectivist impulse that dates back to antiquity.

(One more thing. The Guardian does not allow comments on their articles and I was not able to find a way to contact the author. I simply wanted to tell them they had mistaken the name of the insurance company whose former executive appeared on Bill Moyers. It is CIGNA, not Sigma. But that took about 20 seconds of Internet sleuthing, and I couldn’t reasonably expect the storied Guardian to do such a thing.)

via NewsBusters.

However, I find this nuanced and painstakingly well-researched piece on American gun culture much more convincing (courtesy of Pizza The Hutt):

Bill Whittle praises President Obama’s long-awaited decision to send more troops to Afghanistan in the face of opposition from left-wing media stars such as Chris Matthews, Michael Moore, and Keith Olbermann. (Afterburner with Bill Whittle)

http://www.pjtv.com/v/2784. (PJTV still won’t let you embed videos.)

What about the little guy? Doesn’t he benefit under benign socialist control? Of course not. He never has, anywhere on Earth, during the many times collective governments have gained power. The common man might realize some short-term gains when the socialist government marches into power – wow, free health care! It never lasts. It can’t. Socialist control destroys the very mechanisms of prosperity it needs to pay off on its promises.

Would that Doctor Zero (or Doctor Zaius, for that matter– anyone with a greater intellectual range than Sean Hannity) had interviewed Michael Moore last night. Hannity sought, like Wolf Blitzer on CNN, to emphasize Moore’s hypocrisy for campaigning against capitalism while unashamedly indulging in its benefits. Moore is not an idiot, and he has learned to dodge and deflect these kinds of attacks, or misdirect with mock bonhomie.

The interview that I want to see is somebody confronting Moore with the mountains of evidence that a) his ideas are not new, but rather a sloppier and more Twitter-friendly iteration of a collectivist impulse that dates back to antiquity; and b) these ideas are responsible for more death, misery and brutality than any other single idea for organizing society in the history of the world.

But again, Moore is not an idiot, and he’d never agree to that interview.

surprising that a face like that would have smugness in its repertoire of expressions

A film review from Kenneth Turan writing for the LA Times:

Say what you like about Michael Moore, he certainly knows how to pick his subjects. “Fahrenheit 9/11″ was so au courant about the invasion of Iraq it won the 2004 Palme d’Or at Cannes, and 2007′s “Sicko” got the jump on the current healthcare imbroglio. Now, barely a year after the Wall Street meltdown, “Capitalism: A Love Story” examines, in typical love-it-or-leave-it Moore fashion, the causes of the collapse of the century.

In a nonscientific poll* conducted by Missourah.com, it was discovered that 95% of the LA Times’ remaining 200 readers get a tingly sensation running up their legs when they read words like “au courant” and “imbroglio”, and hear any reference to the Palme d’Or award.  The remaining 5% clearly did not go to Columbia.  Maybe Brown, or…a state school.  If those people can even read…

*Note:  no one at Missourah.com actually wasted their time polling LA Times readers

Twenty years after “Roger & Me” introduced Michael Moore to the world as a politically engaged documentary maker with a strong knack for showmanship, “Capitalism: A Love Story” sums up his disgust with corporate America and its devastating effect on the lives of ordinary people.

The title is great and the balance of this Reuters article is reasonably well-balanced, but “[corporate America's] devastating effect on the lives of ordinary people?”

That seems awfully strong. Corporate America is responsible for the $1 double cheeseburger that I saw on a Burger King billboard today. I am pretty ordinary and I don’t think that’s devastating. But then again, that is just anecdotal, and wouldn’t hold up to the rigorous standard of circumspection and adherence to facts that Michael Moore continues to set.