Stupid White Men
Michael Moore
277 pages
published in 2001

Stupid White Men might never had been published. Originally scheduled to come out in late 2001, the first copies were just coming off the printer when the September 11 attacks happened and Michael Moore's publisher got cold feet. Suddenly publishing a book that was critical, even dismissive of George Bush didn't seem smart in the new "patriotic" climate. The publisher demanded Moore rewrote the book, he refused, news leaked out and finally the book was published "as is" in February 2002.

And the moment it was published the howls of outrage started from the rightwing blogs and the rightwing media, with most of the socalled "reasonable" left joining in or offering mealy-mouthy defences. Few had read the book, but that didn't stop the critics. Most of the reaction even at the time seemed over the top and out of all proportion to the actual content; looking back at it three years later underscores how ridiculous this backlash really was.

Then again, Stupid White Men was the first book to break the post-9/11 national myth of a country united in war under their chosen leader, George W. Bush of whom criticism was not to be allowed lest it would help the enemy. It came at a time when the Democratic Party was cowed, the conservatives reigned supreme in the media as well as in blogcountry, before even Atrios got started. No wonder it got so much heat, even if the contents largely didn't deserve either the scorn or the praise heaped on it.

Reading Stupid White Men in 2004, three years after the September 11 attacks "changed everything", it's easy to see how dated this book was even at publication. It is solidly focused on domestic issues and largely ignores foreign policy. This also makes it somewhat more interesting now, if less so when it was first published. It is good to see what the common wisdom was before September 11, 2001, rather than see everything in terms of that attack and the consequences it has had.

However, I was somewhat disappointed with Stupid White Men, it lacked structure, with no real connection between the various chapters. Stupid White Men reads very quick and feels like a collection of columns. Some of the material in it is downright lazy, as in the sole chapter which deals with foreign policy, where such solutions to the trouble in Northern Ireland are given as "let them all turn Catholic"...

Much of the contents of this book are things you will already know or should already know: Bush stole the elections, the Democratic Party isn't that leftwing either and supports much of the same things people were outraged at the Republicans for, black people and women are still grossy discriminated against, without any real attempt at providing an overarching structure to put all of this in context. There is no attempt at analysing the problems afflicting the US and how they interact. What you are left with is a laundry list of seemingly unrelated complaints.

The real virtue then of Stupid White Men lies mainly with when it was published, at a time when the US desperately needed anything to break the spell of 9-11, desperately needed criticism of its leaders. This it provided and because it was so succesful, it at least paved the way for more deserving books on the subject. If you want the best of Michael Moore, go see Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11.