Respect Authority

If there’s one person who could ruin America’s fairly universal loathing of Wall Street executives right now, it’s Michael Moore.

The fat activist (fativist), behind movies that include Bowling for Columbine and, more recently, Sicko, is putting out a call for people in the banking, brokerage and insurance industries to give him the inside scoop on the nation’s latest abysmal failure: Wall Street. 

“I am in the middle of shooting my next movie and I am looking for a few brave people who work on Wall Street or in the financial industry to come forward and share with me what they know,” Mr. Moore wrote on his Web site this week. “Based on those who have already contacted me, I believe there are a number of you who know ‘the real deal’ about the abuses that have been happening. You have information that the American people need to hear.”

Thanks, but no thanks. First of all, no one is more capable of destroying liberal thinking by shoving it aggressively down people’s throats than Moore. No matter how much I’ve agreed with his political and social positions in the past, I cringe when I see him on camera: a 683-pound representation of how Americans that benefit the most from this country (freedom of speech, capitalism, cheeseburgers) are those who appreciate it the least. I believe in gun control too, and universal health care, and preventing future terrorist attacks by having at least a marginally less sketchy government - but when Moore exploited a teen crippled by gunfire to picket the offices of gun-selling K-Mart, well I mostly just believed in using guns to kill annoying fat people.

Moreover, Moore’s movies are designed to “expose” facets of America - or at least remind viewers of things they choose to ignore. Wall Street, particularly Wall Street in 2009, is hardly in need of further exposure, and is definitely not being ignored. Between SEC documents, daily news coverage, Congressional hearings and near-hourly calls for justice, what’s left to reveal? The bottom line is we all knew what was going on - Michael Lewis wrote about it almost 20 years ago in Liar’s Poker.  James B. Stewart wrote about it in Den of Thieves (1992). Bryan Burrough and John Helyar wrote about it in Barbarians at the Gate (2008). The information - that the country was getting rich on the backs of a handful of greedy and risk-inclined executives has been available for decades. It just didn’t seem important until it cost us our house. And job. 

So here’s my advice to you Michael Moore: find something else. Jumping on the financial-fury bandwagon now comes across as little more than a filmmaker’s own self-righteous greed —  for recognition, respect, and a lifetime supply of hot dogs.