I am so f'ing angry I could spit nickels.
I was watching "Law and Order," which tonight was obviously inspired by Bill O'Really's sexual harrassment lawsuit. (Main difference: in the TV show, the O'Rielly character gets killed by the lesbian lover of his wife. Of course, in real life, there's still time... oh, I digress.)
The show also briefly featured a character who was obviously based loosely on Michael Moore (documentarian, unkempt appearance, only this guy was skinny). Interestingly, during a commercial break, my local NBC affiliate showed a teaser for the 11 o'clock news, saying that their investigative team (ingeniously named "The Investigators") were going to "tell the truth about Michael Moore."
Instead of turning over to "The Daily Show" at 11 (rerun anyway), I stuck around on Channel 3. To their credit, they went right to the "expose" on MM, instead of making viewers wait through teaser after teaser.
What followed was a bizarre seven minute - an uniterrupted seven minute segment on a local TV news broadcast! - which supposedly will have a concluding part tomorrow night. The "report" was a pretty thin collection of "revelations" about Moore, the centerpiece being two of the people featured in Roger and Me, the man from the sheriff's department who served the eviction notices, and the woman who raised the rabbits. It seems that these two people are angry with Michael Moore because he didn't pay them or cut them in on the profits from the film. He asked them to sign waivers. (The woman was particularly upset, because she said she "couldn't read too good.")
Now, I'm a little confused - do people get paid for appearing on camera in documentaries? If so, that's news to me. Somebody tell the president - Moore must owe him a fortune. And did Moore get his cut from Michael Moore Hates America?
I hope that guy in Nanook of the North thought to ask for points.
Also, there seem to be some folks in Flint, MI who don't like the way the city was portrayed in the film. Some even implied that the massive layoffs by GM didn't really have any effect on Flint, and that GM has been a splendid corporate neighbor. Oh, and a couple of people who grew up with Michael don't like him very much.
And if that wasn't enough, it appears that Michael didn't grow up in Flint, but in a "white-collar community" a few miles outside of Flint.
The report concluded with the Aryan Youth pretty boy reporter (appropriately named Eric Flack) saying they tried to email Moore a number of times, but never heard back from him. And they went by his house (which he went to great pains to emphasize was a "multi-million dollar home"), but he wasn't home.
So, "we tried to get Michael Moore's side of the story, but he wouldn't comment." (No mention of whether they tried contacting his production company, his publicist, Columbia Pictures - you know, the avenues you usually go through when you're trying to reach someone in the movie or television business.)
After the report, the anchors did a lot of tut-tutting about how "some say he stretches the truth a bit" and the like. And I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that this local news show did seven friggin' minutes on Michael Moore, almost entirely about a movie that's sixteen years old. If this station did a grand total of seven minutes on the Bush Administration's dishonesty, it would be news to me. (No pun intended.)
So far, there's no link to the story on their website, just a nice little block ad. If/when the story becomes available online in some fashion, I'll let y'all know.
And I'll watch the segment that they're supposed to air tomorrow night, and let y'all know about that, too.
