Liberal critiques of Michael Moore

The eXile has the story:

This is pretty much the range of Left-intellectual criticism: hate him because he’s fat, aggressive, or, if you have to admit he’s good, then qualify that with lies about his ineffectiveness, which is exactly what he isn’t. This backstabbing Vichy Left attack on Michael Moore is exactly the reaction predicted in the eXile’s May 3, 2003 issue, when Dr. Dolan quoted Eileen Jones of Chapman College’s Film Department: “We’re going to see many, many reasons to repudiate Michael Moore in the coming months. He’s too bold, too outspoken, too smart, too effective — he really hits a nerve. And Lefties can’t handle it. He isn’t a statue of a long-dead Lefty saint, so he must be neutralized! Just wait’ll his next movie comes out, which is going to be a merciless, feature-length drawing-and-quartering of George W. Bush. Then we’ll see some fast and furious repudiations, lemme tell ya!” Folks, you’re supposed to prove our predictions wrong – you’re supposed to make us look like fools, not make yourselves look like predictable single-celled Left-organisms.

It has puzzled me for a long time that supposedly leftwing or liberal people would hate Michael Moore so. It’s no surprise rightwingers hate him, nor is it a surprise that socalled moderates profess to do so, desperate for a bit of rightwing credit, but why would genuine leftists or liberals do so?

Part of it must be the influence of rightwing propaganda: if every day you hear or read how big a liar Moore is, how sloppy with facts and how malicious he is, you might end up believing it yourself. Certainly that happened to me, until I saw Bowling for Columbine myself and realised the critics were all wet.

But as the eXile article in their nuanced way points out, part of it surely is jealousy. There is a liberal establishment in this country which is downright uncomfortable with anybody who threatens to upset the status quo. We saw that with Howard Dean who, if not that leftist, was at least aggressive and the
way he was treated by the Democratic Party’s powers that be. If you have a nice cosy job at a university somewhere, or working in some capacity in washington, no wonder if the very real problems America faces seem to be somewhat less than serious and anyone who draws attnetion to them seems somewhat hysterical…