In his own words, Michael Moore spells T-R-O-U-B-L-E to authority, especially when that authority tries to enforce what is W-R-O-N-G. For nearly three hours Sunday night, I sat in a room packed with hundreds of Michael Moore's newest best friends at the Miami Book Fair, laughing so hard and long, my abs won't need another work out for months. He was here to talk to us about his latest book, Here Comes Trouble.
This is a book of 24 short stories -- but they are all nonfiction. From a chance encounter at the age of 11 with Bobby Kennedy to a tense moment in Virginia outside a rest room door marked "Colored"; from the gay kid in the neighborhood who was beaten to a pulp to the night some in my church cheered the news of the death of Martin Luther King; from a ruckus I raised at 17 that helped end a form of racial discrimination nationwide to becoming one of the first 18-year olds in the U.S. elected to public office; from planning my escape to Canada during the Vietnam War to having my newspaper raided by the local police; from confronting Reagan in a German cemetery as he laid a wreath on the graves of Nazi soldiers to surviving a terrorist massacre by showing up 20 minutes late -- this was my life before I even thought of putting the first roll of film inside a camera.
If you didn't watch the live event on C-Span 2 Sunday, set your DVR or TiVo tonight when all programs will re-air after 2 AM. Additionally, you can go to www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary and see the many MBFI events archived there.
But who couldn't love hearing all about Michael Moore's run-ins with people in power? Apparently Glenn Beck can't to the extent that he wants MM assassinated. Since he broadcast that sentiment, people have tried. Moore and his family survived an assassination attempt when a plot by one man to blow up his house was stymied when neighbors reported hearing someone firing what sounded like an AK-47 into somebody's house. Now, wherever he goes, he goes in the company of bodyguards.
Two unsmiling and unblinking men, former special forces troops, stood without moving at the front of the auditorium, eyes unceasingly searching the crowd. I observed them from the 6th row center, and swear to you that neither of them ever blinked all the while they surveyed the gathering during the 180 minutes of the presentation. Not once.
What kind of person would want to eliminate such a likable and funny guy who wears a perpetual smile, does fantastic impressions of lily-livered liberals and foaming-at-the-mouth conservatives, and brings the pleasure of laughter to so many, just by walking into the room?
Without further ado, the night. NOTE: This is a fair transcription which I've edited, omitting some of the talk and keeping paraphrase to a minimum.
Even the introducer felt the electric anticipation of the assembled, waiting to hear MM talk about his book. "Just the feel of this, the atmosphere -- we're about to start a rock concert!"
Enter Michael Moore to cheers.
"I was here a couple of years ago, actually, to attend Jonathan Franzen's presentation in this very room. I sat in the last row.
"Sorry about the late start, Jim Lehrer was here just before me, and he can be pretty wild. He took his shirt off. Someone started his music. And he showed us a few of his dance moves." [Author's Note: I was present at Jim Lehrer's talk and I can attest that while he was "pretty wild," he did NONE of those things.]
After offering kudos to Mitch Kaplan, MBFI founder, owner of the independent bookstore, Books & Books, and recipient of the 2011 National Book Awards lifetime achievement Literarian Award, MM launched into his topic.
"I want to say a few words about what's going on in the country right now. When I made the film Roger and Me [watch free online], it was just Flint, Michigan. Now it's [unemployment] spread far and wide.
"The last official haircut I got was in Miami several years ago. But I got one today from a nice African-American woman who told me how she grew up an Army brat, moved to Georgia, but wanted to come here. While she agreed that living here is like being in Paradise, she added, 'It's very hard to get by. I read in the Miami Herald that those who can afford the Miami lifestyle as it's portrayed is only 3% of the population. Everyone else is trying to figure out how to make ends meet. My generation, just to buy groceries and pay the bills, we keep racking up credit card debt.'
As we learned this weekend, 1 out of 3 Americans either live in poverty or just above it, poised to plunge into poverty at any calamity such as an auto accident, illness, or major home repair. "That's 100,000,000 of us who have to live with a sense of constant fear," said Moore.
"Almost feels like an Evil Genius plot -- the only way to keep people from rising up against our good thing is to keep them so busy struggling, living hand-to-mouth, that they don't have time to protest and resist.
"I was down at OWS last night to help them write the goals for the movement. Yes, we're gonna do it! Young people know they're being screwed, Baby Boomers can't pass along the tradition to their kids of doing better than their parents. Not only that, they'll have to pay off our debt.
"Every movement has to start with the first ridiculous act, the first weird thing. Someone had to burn the first bra. Someone had to burn the first draft card. Suffragettes knew they had to get legislation passed that they couldn't even vote for.
"400 Americans have more wealth than 150 million Americans. Our goal should be to get every American a fair slice of the pie, not an equal share, but, put another way, a seat at the table. We're hanging onto what's left of our democracy by a mere thread. OWS is about deciding what we can do to stop the inequity.
We're going to have goals/demands. Here are a few I want:
*1) Reinstate Glass-Steagall
*2) Get money out of elections
*3) Remove Bush tax cuts
*4) Fund SS through 2075 by making those who earn $100,000 and more to pay the same flat tax of 7% as the 'poor schmucks'
"OWS has the support of 59% of Americans. It has changed the debate in this country from the false one about the debt ceiling to the real one about jobs, taxes, and student loans.
"Make no mistake, you live in a liberal country -- a center left, not a center-right country. All the polls show the majority of Americans agree with liberals on the issues. 60% oppose Bush's wars; 80% want stronger environmental laws; 72% want increased taxes on the rich; 80% believe a woman should earn as much as a man; 54% say gay marriage should be universally legal.
"But liberals run away from the label. By doing so, they made it sound like a dirty word. But the American people didn't run away from it.
"Now, I admire conservatives. They BELIEVE in their dogma. Us liberals, we're like Harry Reid."
And then you had to be there to see MM do his impression of a whiny, milquetoast who can't stand up for what he supposedly stands for, but compromises his beliefs away before fighting for them, and won't even say he's a liberal.
"Thanksgiving's only a few days away. You know the Republican in your family is gonna be there when the family gathers. He's the disciplined one, the organized one, the one who knows what he believes and fights to impose his beliefs on you. He never loses his car keys. He's got that little board with the hooks on it next to the door. "Here's my BMW keys. Here's the keys to my Hummer. Here's my Mercedes keys."
"November 2, 2008 was one of the best days of my life. Anyone get emotional that day? It was the moment I pulled the curtain at the voting booth and saw the name BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA on the ballot. My head exploded! 'Did you see his name on the ballot?!? Do NOT PUT HUSSEIN on the ballot!!! We're gonna lose in LA, VA, and NC. Really! Was that necessary? What's wrong with just Barack Obama? Why put in the HUSSEIN?'
"And Obama said, 'Because that's my name. Hussein is Arabic for kindness.'
"What courage! That's the man I want for president." Then MM screamed into the mic, "I WANT THAT OBAMA BACK -- Barrack HUSSEIN Obama!!!!"
The audience roared its agreement.
"Well, President Obama is a better man than I am. He forgives, he turns the other cheek, he extends his hand. Now we know that Boehner and McConnell met over lunch where they made a political pact to pretend the president just didn't exist; they were going to treat him like the man in Ralph Ellison's book, and make him the Invisible President. Did you see in today's paper that Michele Obama was booed at the Homestead NASCAR event today?
"It's about race.
"Now he seems to be fighting back. But to play 3 quarters of a football game running in the wrong direction makes it almost impossible to win. The president doesn't have to worry about his opponent in 2012, he needs to worry about his base that has lost its enthusiasm.
"Who believes this is a liberal country? Only Republicans do, How do I know this? Because they're afraid! They believe liberals are in charge. They are trying to pass and are passing laws to suppress voting. They're coming down hard on the poor, non-native born Americans, and kids away in college. That's another proof Republicans are afraid.
"I need everyone in this room to leave tonight knowing that you are in charge!
"As much as Republicans have reduced our democracy, it's still 'one man, one vote.' So, go out there and elect people who want to remove money from elections. We need an amendment to the Constitution that states corporations are NOT people.
"The hard work is to change someone's position, but almost two thirds of the country believes in liberal ideals already."
Once the cheering and applause died down, MM read three selections from Here Comes Trouble, reviewed here.
"This book is my favorite of all of them." He does his Harry Reid impression. "Can I say that? I don't know if I can say that." I love short stories. So I decided I'll write a book of non-fiction short stories and talk about my life before I became a filmmaker. I had sort of a Forest Gump existence with famous people coming in and out of it."
He reads a portion of the Glenn Beck quote where he says he'd like to kill MM, and then Moore describes in harrowing detail the attempt to assassinate him by blowing up his house. He tells us how that threat and the remarks he made against President George W. Bush when he won his Oscar changed his life. He follows this with a story how, after he hired the body guards that we can plainly see two of, he was walking into a Starbucks in Ft. Lauderdale when a well dressed man in a business suit removed the cover of his coffee and threw the steaming contents at his face. A bodyguard hurtled himself at the man and 'took' the near boiling liquid in his own face, sustaining second degree burns on one side.
He begins to read. "'One night in Aventura, Florida. . .' I bet that's the only short story in the world that begins with that sentence."
He digresses before reading another selection to close the loop on the story he'd told earlier about how he was booed off the stage after collecting his Oscar and issuing his indictment of George Bush as a warmonger and election stealer only to have a stage hand come up to him as soon as he got off and yell in his face, 'Asshole!'"
"I was on the Jay Leno Show a couple years ago. And after we finished taping, the boom mike operator came up to me and said, 'I'm the guy who yelled asshole at you and ruined your Oscar night. I have to tell you, you were right. And I want to apologize.' The guy was tearing up, crying. I told him, 'You don't owe me an apology. You believed your president. You're supposed to be able to believe your president. If you can't believe your president, what kind of a democracy are we?'"
MM closed out the night with two more selections from his book, the best being one titled "Boys State," which is worth the money alone for the price of the book. It's the one in which he enters a seditious essay in the Elks Club contest on the topic of "The Importance of Abraham Lincoln," and underscores the irony in a scathing attack of the Elks Club's (then) policy of "Caucasian Only" membership. It garnered him national attention at 17 and may be the act that launched MM's career and made him our nation's most valuable gadfly.
Next installment of this series of reports on the Miami Book Fair will be Jim Lehrer's discussion of his book, Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates from Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain. Hope you'll join me!