DUDE, WHERE'S MY COUNTRY?
by Michael Moore
Allen Lane £17.99 pp249

Gone are the days when the British broadcaster Gilbert Harding could safely satirise the asinine question on the United States visa card that asks whether the visitor intends to overthrow the government of the republic. “Sole purpose of visit,” was Harding’s merry reply. The same answer today might earn the joker a one-way ticket to Guantanamo Bay.

Yet it is possible to disagree with George W Bush’s approach to international affairs and the extreme nature of the Patriot Acts and still find Michael Moore’s arguments in this anti-Bush polemic unconvincing and jejune. Moore is no comic genius, although he is certainly a master of the cheap shot. He characterises Bush (the “advanced simian”) and his crew as liars, yet Moore, too, is a Moloch of misrepresentation. His bestselling book, Stupid White Men, and his entertaining documentary, Bowling for Columbine, have been exposed as fundamentally flawed. There are even several websites devoted to laying bare his perceived chicanery (moorelies.com, moorewatch.com and spinsanity.com) and no, they aren’t just the work of right-wing nuts: Moore has a distinctly on-off relationship with the truth.

Take his sinister-sounding story that members of the Bin Laden family (a family with business connections to the Bushes, Sr and Jr) were flown out of America in the days after September 11. “So while thousands were stranded and could not fly,” says Moore, “if you could prove you were a close relative of the biggest mass murderer in US history, you got a free trip to gay Paree!”

BACKGROUND

• Sicko review

• Weinstein braces for backlash

• Moore is wrong about the NHS

• Ministering to the Sicko

BACKGROUND

• Moore in hot water for Cuba trip

• Citizen Moore

• Moore's ill wind blows over political agenda

• Review: America: Dude, Where's My Country by Michael Moore

• Tables turned on Fahrenheit 9/11’s maker

Just how good is Mr Good Guy?

Michael Moore is misleading, vain, irritating, greedy, hypocritical, pointless and ineffective. Or is he?

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But it just ain’t true: the Bin Ladens were flown out a couple of days after the FAA lifted its ban on air travel. Yes, there is something faintly absurd about the Bush administration claiming such statelets as Palau and Micronesia among the Coalition of the Willing, but Moore puzzlingly describes three members of the coalition — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — as Nazi collaborators (even today?), although he does not hold this against the French, let alone the Germans. It is the many tiny distortions such as these that ultimately cheapen his discourse.

The best chapter in the book (A Liberal Paradise) ingeniously argues that on the basis of polling evidence America is essentially a liberal country in every key aspect. Accordingly, Moore identifies a new category of American that he calls “Republicans in name only” (Rinos), who are more liberal than they realise. These creatures, he believes, can be weaned from their pernicious creed by stealthy and persuasive engagement. His ideal candidate to stand against Bush next year would be Oprah Winfrey, but he also likes the sound of the Democratic hopeful, General Wesley Clark.

As a carnival turn playing to the leftist gallery, Moore has established a secure niche. However, as a polemicist he falls woefully short. Oh, and by the way, there aren’t enough good jokes to let this qualify as a humour title.

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