Making Fun of Michael Moore vs Actually Fixing Our Problems

When I'm tired of playing fetch with the dog, I'll begin to pretend I've thrown the ball. You know - fake a hard toss to the other room, then sit back and chuckle as the dog searches high and low for the missing orb.

Good times.

In listening to reviews of Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, I'm getting the idea that most reviewers are picking apart Moore's film rather than debating the key points he's trying to make on-screen. For example:

"The explosive Capitalism: A Love Story is Moore's call to arms against the robber barons who shamelessly empty our pockets while we do nothing about it. Why? Because we want to get in the pants of the upper one percent and rub up against expensive stuff just like they do. Some love story!" - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

"Surely what spun out of control because of government indulgence and indolence needs to be repaired by government regulation and ingenuity. Squatting in your repossessed home won't get the trillions back. In "Capitalism: A Love Story," Moore has cogently and passionately diagnosed the disease. But for a cure, instead of emergency surgery, he prescribes Happy Meals." - Richard Corliss, writing at money.cnn.com

"The biggest strike...with this film is its hypocrisy. Here's a man taking shots at capitalism, and he's the biggest capitalist in Hollywood." - Kevin Carr, 7M Pictures

"While it’s amusing to watch Moore on camera plaster the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange with crime-scene tape, when Moore goes through his customary security-guard harassment in another segment, it’s hard not to think: Here we go again." - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

As Matt Taibbi points out in his True/Slant posting:

The reaction to Michael Moore’s new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, reinforces a suspicion I started having a few years back: that most of us Americans are much better at being movie and TV critics than we are at being political organizers. When we come out of a film like this, we find ourselves focusing on the flaws in Moore’s moviemaking and not on the film’s content, which just happens to be the reality of our own day-to-day political existences.

We’re not thinking about how to fix our lives, in other words, but how to fix the movie about our lives.

Taibbi is spot-on with that observation. People, how hard is it to keep your eye on the ball, here? The fundamental issue is not whether you approve of Moore's approach to film making, or the routines he uses to make messages clear. It's a continuation of his never-ending story of power and greed that dates back to Roger & Me.

The rapid coagulation of wealth among an increasingly smaller segment of our population is a horrifying tale, and a system rigged to ensure the survival of the very framework that rewards perilous risk-taking by the few to the detriment of the many could not be any more frightening if the main characters appeared on screen, dancing with Michael Jackson and the rest of the undead.

The decomposing corpse of fairness and equity is on full display in Capitalism: A Love Story. I only hope that more people can look past the screen.