Michael Moore landed in Ypsi on Halloween night as he made the last stop on a nationwide tour to promote his best-selling book, Dude, Where’s my Country? What should be frightening, at least if you are a supporter of the beady-eyed gent sitting in the Oval Office, is that more than 6,000 people ventured to Eastern Michigan University’s Convocation Center to see the author and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker.
Part stand-up comedian, part political scientist and 100 percent provocateur, Moore hammered home the point that Americans have become the victims of their own ignorance. Taking note of a recent survey of American 18-25-year-olds, Moore relayed that 85 percent of them couldn’t find Iraq on a map. “If a country’s going to bomb another country, they should know where it’s at on the map,” chided Moore.
What should be of concern to the Bushites (and, oh, how it pains us to think of our beloved president’s simian brow furrowed in consternation) is that (a) a far-left rabble-rouser like Moore is attracting 6,000 folks a pop and (b) this is the same man who was one of the leading voices supporting the third party candidacy of Greenie Ralph Nader last time out. Moore is now urging his “militia” to unite behind a Dem because the continued occupancy of the White House by Baby Bush is just too heinous a thought, with even a nation of ignorami deserving better.
If the public’s reading habits are any indicator, things may be going the left’s way. Moore’s book holds down the No. 1 spot on the New York Times’ current nonfiction best-seller list. At No. 2 is satirist Al Franken’s Lies (and The Lying Liars Who Tell Them). That book provides a scathing critique of right-wing pundits and pols. At No. 6 is Bushwhacked, by Texas journalists Molly Ivans and Lou Dubose, who take a rhetorical Bowie knife to our commander in chief. Add in a volume of essays from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, one of the most prominent left-leaning voices occupying a place in the mainstream media, and the memoirs of former Clinton Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who respectively hold down the No. 7 and 8 spots, and there’s certainly room to be encouraged. Granted, right-wing propagandist Bill O’Reilly of Fox has a book in the No. 3 spot and dittohead David Limbaugh, brother of rehab Rush, has a tome in the No. 9 slot that argues liberals are waging war on Christianity.
But even a president who looks at hard numbers and sees fuzzy math might want to try to read the writing on the wall. (Hey, if he can mangle the mother tongue every time he opens his mouth, we should be able to mix a metaphor or two.)
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