OF POLITICS AND BIG, SWEATY DUDES

Michael Moore has been all over the place lately promoting his new film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Atrios has posted this partial transcript of Moore's interview with Katie Couric. Here's Christopher Hitchens beating Moore with a stick (while keeping hold of his martini and lit cigarette, of course).

I have mixed feelings about Michael Moore. On the one hand, I probably agree with many of his general political principles, he seems a solid liberal armed with healthy skepticism, and he knows how to talk trash. On the other hand, I disapprove of a lot the methods he uses to advocate those principles. For example, I agree with the general thesis of Moore's film Bowling for Columbine, that America has a serious gun problem, but I think Moore seriously undercuts his own credibility with some of the rhetorical flim-flam and editing tricks used in the film to create false impressions.

From Moore's statements about the war on terror, it seems obvious to me that he simply doesn't comprehend the nature of this conflict. To put it charitably, Moore's view of the world is cartoonish. In his view, Bush and Ashcroft are the real enemy, multinational corporations, with the aid of the Republican Party and weak, traitor Democrats, are engaged in a SPECTRE-like plan to rule the world and make everybody wear Gap clothes and eat at McDonald's, and Osama bin Laden and the jihadists are the anti-colonial resistance (Moore once compared the Iraqi insurgents to the American Minutemen, this several days after the insurgents had blown up a van full of children.)

That said, there are far too few like Moore on the left (by that I mean loudmouthed bomb-throwers) whereas the right churns them out as if they were being grown in a lab (in the 7th level sub-basement of AEI, no doubt). As bad as is some of the stuff Michael Moore has said, on his worst days he doesn't come close to the hateful, divisive, bigoted, factless effluvia that regularly spews from the cake-holes of Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and the rest.

I think it's instructive to note how the right treats its firebreathers and how the left treats its own. No matter how foul the conservative bloviaters get, the worst they can expect from their right-wing brethren is a Christopher Robin-esque "tut-tut," whereas Michael Moore is regularly criticized by the mainstream left for his excesses. Rush Limbaugh can refer to the Abu Ghraib torture as a "frat prank," and still be hailed as a GOP hero. Ann Coulter can refer to Katie Couric as "Eva Braun" and still be welcomed at the buffets and bars of various right-wing think tanks. The mainstream right embraces their extremists in a way that the mainstream left just doesn't, because the right seems to understand, as the left has forgotten, the usefulness of political radicals.

The function of political radicals is to broaden the parameters of debate, to create space for new thinking which might formerly have been considered "off limits," so that moderates can then move into that space and create policy based upon that new thinking. Rush Limbaugh is a perfect example. He's made "stark-raving asshole" an acceptable political position. Hence, Tom DeLay. You've got Limbaugh and his clones constantly pushing the envelope of acceptable rhetoric and policy, and then you have various politicians filling in the space which Limbaugh has created.

The left could do this a little better with Michael Moore. We don't have to embrace his positions, but we can occupy some of the space which his radicalism has opened up, pushing to political center back towards the left. Unfortunately, sometimes it seems like we're afraid of being impolite. Some say that liberals are better than that, and we shouldn't sink to that level. In response I say: A) Yes, we are better than that, and B) fuck that shit. What does it matter what your level if your methods are simply ineffective? You have to fight the fight that's being brung. And this is the fight the right is bringing.

So, I still disapprove of many of Moore's methods and much of his hyperbole, and I think he could ideally be a much better and more responsible voice for the left, but the bottom line is that the left needs to learn to use him more effectively as he is, to fold him into a broader, cohesive strategy as the right seems to have done so well with their blowhards.