Michael Moore: Picking the flowers, not the weeds

I enjoyed Michael Moore's newest film Where To Invade Next as I always enjoy his films. He's funny and he's very political; he's frank and open and wears his politics on his sleeve and that's one of the things that makes him likable — even, I'm told, by people who don't agree with his politics. I do agree with his politics so that makes it doubly enjoyable for me.

The movie shows Michael being summoned to Washington, DC by the Joint Chiefs of Staff so they can ask his advice. They tell him that all their wars since World War II have been disastrous and they don't know what move to make next.

Michael responds by offering himself up as a one-man army who will “invade countries populated by Caucasians whose names I can mostly pronounce, take the things we need from them, and bring them back home to the United States of America."

So off he goes.

He visited a number of countries to look at how they manage certain social programs which are dismal failures in the US.

He goes to Italy where a very attractive fit couple talk to him about their paid vacations (eight weeks a year), maternity leave, good salary with benefits and pensions — they're unionized, or course, as are most of the workers in Italy. He talks to the bosses also.

He visits prisons in Norway to discuss their humane and rehabilitative justice system, a university in Slovenia to talk about free tuition, a police force in Portugal to learn about their drug policies, schools in Finland to learn about their well-known superior education system, and Germany where he learns about health care but also about public policy that decrees remembering and understanding the Holocaust.

He went to an elementary school in France and enjoyed a nutritious, chef-prepared lunch with the children — while receiving photos on his phone showing some of the lunches that American kids had been served the same day: French fries and an unidentifiable meat product.

He also went to Tunisia and Iceland:

In Tunisia (the only non-European and only Muslim country visited), he hears how, after the country’s 2011 revolution, the new Islamist government tried to keep a guarantee of equal rights for women out of the constitution, but bowed to include it after a massive popular uprising. And in Iceland, Moore learns that the only financial company that escaped the country’s massive financial meltdown was one founded and run by women, which leads into a discussion of the transformative benefits that have come with women gaining positions of power in government and business.

Michael acknowledges that all of these countries have some problems but he visited them to pick the flowers, not the weeds. He demonstrated very clearly that it's possible to do things differently and that Americans shouldn't be afraid of this kind of social policy.

He does, at the end, say that all these ideas originated in America and that by implementing them, the US would simply be taking back what was theirs in the beginning. I thought that was a bit of a stretch but I could see why he was doing it so I let him get away with it. He is, after all, trying to make a strong political case for all these programs.

When we were talking about the movie later, we noted that he didn't look very well. He had been hospitalized a month or two ago with congestive heart failure and he may have been over-tired and strained during the making of the film. I also said — and I felt a little guilty for saying it — that he looked particularly sloppy, even for Michael Moore. I wondered if he ever thought he should "fix himself up a bit" before he made an appearance in his movies.

As soon as I said it though, I had a hard time even picturing him "fixed up." He is who he is and it doesn't seem to affect his message.

In a completely different context, I was reading today about Michelle Obama giving a talk wearing her hair so it fell over one eye. This opened a bit of a discussion about whether she could be as effective when her hair covered her eye and whether she would be taken seriously if she was always shaking her hair back or pushing it back with one hand. In the course of this discussion, I saw an expression I'd never seen before: "gender respectability politics." The person who used this expression said this is another way of policing how women look rather than what they're saying.

"We would listen, if only she presented/sounded/looked differently — specifically, in a way that affirmed my norms rather than challenging them!" "It's her fault the way she looks won't allow me to listen to her!"

I don't think the world needs any more jargon but it happens that every day, I read another analytical piece about how Hillary Clinton talks too loud, gestures too much, doesn't smile enough. No one doubts that everything about her presentation of speeches is ripped apart and stomped on on a daily basis.

Michael Moore — except for my rather lukewarm judgment on his appearance — doesn't seem to lose any of his authority and gravitas, no matter how untidy he looks!