Posted by
Michael Goodell on Tuesday, June 02, 2009 2:50:03 PM
Michael Moore has done a good thing with the Traverse City Film Festival. An annual selection of worthwhile films new and old, it has boosted the local economy and allowed the region to show off its natural beauty, great restaurants and quality resorts to a new group of visitors. Perhaps the best thing about the Film Festival is the lack of Michael Moore documentaries.
Moore’s first big impact on the cinematic world came with “Roger and Me,” a humorous depiction of his struggle to make then General Motors CEO Roger Smith pay attention to him. It was with this film that Moore developed his technique of presenting misinformation and downright lies as truth, as well as his cruelly mocking unwitting participants. His treatment of Flint, his ostensibly beloved hometown, was vicious to say the least. He made the city a laughingstock solely to dramatize his assertion that GM is a bad company.
So it was with little surprise that I read his gleeful reaction to GM’s bankruptcy announcement yesterday on the Huffing-andPuffington Post. Emblematic of Moore’s pernicious mendacity was the manner in which he couched his contempt in terms of compassion. GM is dead, he crowed, and the nation is the better for it. He begged the company’s new boss to stop building cars, to retool its factories to build high speed trains and energy-efficient buses. The old way of American transport is dead, he declared. Government Motors can return to profitability by turning one hundred percent green.
Of course, there is the little matter of how economically viable Moore’s new GM would be. Having spent $50 billion to buy 70% of a company with a net worth of negative $90 billion, Moore thinks it would be a good deal for the American taxpayer for the company to produce products which only the government would buy. Yes, that’s right, the same government which overspent by $140 billion, would be the only customer of Moore’s dream company.
Fortunately, even Barack Obama’s financial advisors are more economically sophisticated than America’s most slovenly film maker. Still, the point isn’t Moore’s fiscal ineptitude, but the delight with which he has greeted GM’s demise. Perhaps in part responsible for America’s contempt for what was once its greatest corporation, to a greater extent the Bard of Flint is a reflection of that national attitude.
There are many reasons for GM’s collapse, including its reluctance to confront an avaricious union during good times, and its blithe compliance with the UAW’s demands that it become the world’s largest privately owned socialist state. Beyond that, two decades of shabby design and construction, and a refusal to listen to its customers born of the arrogant assumption that the status quo would never change, contributed to a growing popular disdain, which continued unabated even after the company started delivering a better product.
Somewhere along the line, that disdain became ingrained and chronic. Even while the company remained the largest car manufacturer in the world, an ever larger proportion of the American public was leaving it behind.
Two months ago, I struck up a conversation with the man behind me in the line boarding a flight to Tucson. I mentioned that I had the worst seat on the plane (window seat in the last row of an MD-80, right next to the engine). He glanced at his ticket and announced he had the second worst seat, right next to me. Little did he know then that on any airplane the worst seat on the plane is right next to me, though he did come to understand it as I spent the next two-and-a-half hours explaining the world to him.
My seat mate was a 30-year veteran of the US Air Force who had built a nice life for himself upon retirement. He was on the road a lot in his new career, and mentioned how much he enjoyed driving his GMC Yukon. “It’s big enough for me, the seats are comfortable, and the ride is great. I can drive 400 miles and feel great when I get out of it.” Then he shook his head, and said, ruefully, abashedly, “I know I’m not supposed to buy an American car, but I like it,” in the same tone he might have used if he had said, “I know I’m not supposed to drive drunk.”
I was awestruck by his comment. How did we get to the point where buying an American car was viewed as iniquity? After all, this wasn’t an anticapitalist Monkey Wrench crusader, this was a veteran, a patriot, a proud American. Yet he was ashamed to buy a vehicle which he enjoyed, and which gave him good value for money, simply because it was made by an American car maker.
There seems to be some vital disconnect between the public’s view of American industry and its reality. Isn’t it arguable that the facile deceptions promulgated by the likes of Michael Moore have contributed to this situation? Will Obama’s stewardship of General Motors help them turn the corner? Will forcing them to build uncomfortable, unsafe cars which no one really wants to drive inspire people to buy them solely because they are made by a new American car company?
The answer, no doubt, will be found in a forthcoming Michael Moore documentary.