Documentarian Michael Moore’s first film, Roger & Me, opens in theaters on December 20, 1989. The film follows the economic impact of GM shutting down several auto factories in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan.
Though Moore leavened his depressing movie with goofy anecdotes and absurdist set-pieces, the humor did not disguise his rage at what had been done to Flint, a city that had once (thanks to GM) been so thriving that people came from all over the country in hopes of landing one of its thousands of blue-collar jobs that paid a middle-class wage.
By the end of the 1980s, however, Flint was falling apart–in part because of mismanagement at GM and in part because of forces beyond the company’s immediate control, like deindustrialization and globalization. Abandoned factories dotted the landscape, houses fell down and displaced auto workers did anything they could to make ends meet. At the end of the 1980s, “Money” magazine called Flint “the worst place to live in America.”
In the late 1970s, GM plants employed almost 100,000 people in Flint; today, they employ fewer than 7,000. Roger Smith, who never bothered to see Moore’s film–“I’m not much for sick humor,” he said, “and I don’t like things that take advantage of poor people”–died in 2007.
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Michael Moore’s “schlockumentaries” are anything but honest and are based on half-truths and outright lies.
In “Roger and Me” Moore claimed that GM CEO Roger Smith refused to meet with him and dodged every attempt to meet with him. In fact, Roger Smith offered Moore an interview, but was promptly rebuffed. This meeting would have destroyed the whole premise of the movie.
In “Bowling for Columbine”, Moore’s flawed premise was that the free, unrestricted commerce in lawful firearms was responsible for that deadly event. He brings up one bank’s successful marketing of its services by insisting that firearms were being given out to depositors in an indiscriminate fashion. Once again, Moore failed to note that every firearms transfer was done in a lawful manner, with federally-mandated “background checks” being performed in every case.
In “Sicko”, his “schlockumentary” on the American health-care system, he used Cuba as a prime example of a good health care system. What he failed to mention was that the average Cuban citizen has little access to high-tech health care, but is relegated to a lower tier of service. The high tech health care services are available only to foreigners and communist party officials–not the average Cuban citizen.
All of Michael Moore’s “schlockumentaries” are “full of holes”, lies and fabrications.
Michael Moore is not to be trusted.
The only thing you left out is that he’s a big hypocrite promoting the cause of the common man against the powerful rich while himself living a lavish lifestyle on the $millions his enthusiastic self-promotion has gained him.
“It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a ‘dismal science.’ But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance.” – Murray Rothbard
Moore suffers from economic ignorance as well as ignorance regarding property rights, and self-ownership. ALL of his movies reflect this. He had a great opportunity to tell a much bigger picture regarding GM, but that would have involved exposing the destructive power of government at all levels, and he is just too beholden to have ever done that. 911 is another great example of that.
Full disclosure, I did actually see Roger and Me on TV I think, but have never actually contributed a dime to this loser by seeing any of his others.
Nowhere is the word union, democrat, or one of the many words for those swarthy folks from over the ocean below the equator in the reasons for the downfall. I wonder why?
I didn’t give a flying fuck back then about that fat bastard Moore’s delusions & still dont.