JAY AMBROSE: How Michael Moore got Bush elected
Copyright © 2004 Nando Media
Copyright © 2004 Scripps Howard News Service
Scripps Howard News Service
(November 4, 10:41 am AST) - George W. Bush received more votes in Tuesday's election than any presidential contender in the history of the United States, and I would like to believe Michael Moore was partly responsible.
Here, after all, was not simply a film director whose "Fahrenheit 9/11" emitted a vile propagandistic stink, indicating something contemptible in the mindset of its creator, but someone who went trotting about Europe telling the adulatory press that Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet."
While some Europeans may still be slapping their thighs at such cleverness, it should not be surprising that some Americans may have taken offense. They may have figured, for starters, that they have the mental edge over someone whose anti-Bush film neglected to distinguish facts from malicious fantasy, but there is a much bigger point.
It is that literally millions of the hard-working, responsible, decent citizens of this nation just may have had it up to their eyebrows with those Hollywood types and others who disdain their intelligence, mock their religion, dismiss their values, deprecate their lifestyles and disparage their social contributions.
These citizens may suppose their lives add up to at least as much as the lives of celebrities taking time from their divorce schedules to issue morally superior pronouncements about issues they don't understand.
They may further suppose they have a better grasp of everyday political truths than the ultra-privileged who don't have to deal with such problems as how to pay their monthly bills when unexpected expenses leap out of nowhere and grab their wallets.
Yes, yes, celebrities have every right in the world to be active in politics, and even should be: Leave politics to the politicians and democracy will race from the room. And no, no, not every celebrity can be squeezed into some narrowly conceived stereotype; many are thoughtful, respectful and humble, I would guess, and I would also guess that many are as far from debauched as the average denizen of small-town America.
What I would like to stress is that a certain belittling, Hollywood-fostered stereotype of small-town, rural and suburban Americans - and especially the stereotype of religious Southern and Midwestern Americans of a conservative disposition - is itself an absurdity overlooking the strength they lend this country.
These Americans are a mix of many things, of course, and I don't want to replace one stereotype of small-mindedness and dim-witted intolerance with another that overreaches and is too sweeping; any large grouping will include some number of the stupid and the morally careless, even the downright criminal, along with the brilliant and morally upright, even the downright saintly.
It seems to me, however, a safe, supportable generalization to say that these Americans mainly do a good job of raising their children, that they are mostly productive in their jobs, that they are by and large generous in their giving to charity, that their word is reliable and that they are more often than not kind to those they encounter.
I take particular umbrage at the caricature some paint of the religious. When you listen to someone like the TV comedian Bill Maher ridicule Christianity, for instance, you wonder whether he has any notion at all of tenets residing at the heart of the faith: that we can experience forgiveness if we ourselves first forgive, that we can find redemption even when our lives are in tatters, that nothing less is demanded of us in our dealings with others than sacrificial love. This is the stuff of satire?
Another proposition of the faith is that confession is good for the soul, and I have to confess that I am not in a very forgiving mood. It delights me to suppose that Bush-despising Hollywood lefties may actually have aided his cause in their excessive rhetoric (check out actor Richard Dreyfus's speeches someday) or their middle class-alienating vulgarities (see comedienne Whoopi Goldberg's jokes about the president).
I get special joy - I must get over this - in contemplating the hell Michael Moore might go through if he dwelled on the possibility that he contributed to the Bush victory by so unmistakably signaling his elitist attitudes.
Jay Ambrose is director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard Newspapers and can be reached at
AmbroseJ@shns.com
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