H
HagiaSophia
Guest
Someone has done it in print…a profile of Michael Moore - illuminating…
"…So who is Michael Moore, this multi-millionaire filmmaker and author of several books, who has been called “the Left’s only well-known shock jock,” compared by Christopher Hitchens to socialist Adolf Hitler’s film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl?
Michael Moore is his own fictional character, a self-written being who soon will require another rewrite if his lucrative fantasy career is to survive.
Moore’s production company, aptly named, is Dog Eat Dog Films. His agent Ariel “Ari” Emanuel is brother of Congressman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a former White House operative for President Bill Clinton.
"…After eighth grade Moore enrolled in a Catholic pre-seminary. “He admired the Berrigan brothers [radical anti-Vietnam War Catholic priests] and thought that the priesthood was the way to effect social change,” wrote The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar in February 2004. “This resolve lasted only through his first year, though, after the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series for the first time in Moore’s life, and the seminary wouldn’t allow him to watch the games.”
Returning to school, at age 16, Moore gave a speech in a local contest in which he condemned the Elks Club for barring blacks. He won not only the contest prize but also a first intoxicating, glory-addicting taste of fame as media reported his fledgling political activism. CBS called to ask about his views…"
At age 17, he saw what remains Moore’s favorite film, “A Clockwork Orange,” a depiction of futuristic street bully “ultraviolence,” rape and brainwashing, by Moore’s still-favorite director, Stanley Kubrick.
At 18, Moore ran for city school board on a simple platform: “Fire the Principal.” He won…"
Moore began studies at the local campus of the University of Michigan but soon dropped out. He was given a job on the GM assembly line but “called in sick the first day and never went back,” which is the closest Moore ever came to being part of the working class.
He became a local hippie, host of a Sunday morning radio show he called “Radio Free Flint,” and honed his skills at getting on local TV news by staging whatever protests would attract the media attention he craved.
In 1976, at age 22, Moore created a small leftist newspaper, the Flint Voice (later called the Michigan Voice), which he edited for 10 years. This position gave him access to left-wing activists, fund-raisers like singer Harry “Cat’s in the Cradle” Chapin, and the opportunity to do occasional commentaries for the National Public Radio (NPR) show “All Things Considered…”
"…Moore remained involved in leftist politics at the University of Michigan and elsewhere in the state. “Moore was interested in the usual lefty international issues of the time,” wrote MacFarquhar. “He travelled to Nicaragua in 1983 to check out the Sandinistas.”
In 1986, because of his growing reputation as a hotshot left-wing journalist, Moore was hired as editor of the San Francisco-based socialist magazine Mother Jones, beating out its Managing Editor David Talbot (who later founded and continues to edit the left-wing webzine Salon.com). Four months later, the magazine fired Moore. Adam Hochschild, chairman of the foundation that owns Mother Jones, described Moore as “arbitrary; he was suspicious; he was unavailable.”
Moore’s high-handed bullying and authoritarian arrogance had alienated most staff members. And Moore had refused to publish a piece by veteran leftist writer Paul Berman because it mildly criticized the human rights record of Nicaragua’s Fidel Castro-allied Communist Sandinistas. One of America’s farthest Left magazines fired Michael Moore because, among other reasons, he was too far-Left for it.
Moore, using what have become his familiar tactics, responded by staging a media-grabbing public demonstration, by going on a Bay Area radio show to accuse Berman (as MacFarquhar described) “of being a traitor to the left and giving aid and comfort to [President Ronald] Reagan,” and by suing Mother Jones for $2 million. Moore eventually pocketed $58,000 from its tax-exempt Foundation for National Progress, which became seed money for his first “documentary.” Roger & Me, an agitprop assault on General Motors, its chief executive Roger Smith and its recent worker layoffs in Flint, launched Moore into stardom.
newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/2/2/163629.shtml
"…So who is Michael Moore, this multi-millionaire filmmaker and author of several books, who has been called “the Left’s only well-known shock jock,” compared by Christopher Hitchens to socialist Adolf Hitler’s film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl?
Michael Moore is his own fictional character, a self-written being who soon will require another rewrite if his lucrative fantasy career is to survive.
Moore’s production company, aptly named, is Dog Eat Dog Films. His agent Ariel “Ari” Emanuel is brother of Congressman Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a former White House operative for President Bill Clinton.
"…After eighth grade Moore enrolled in a Catholic pre-seminary. “He admired the Berrigan brothers [radical anti-Vietnam War Catholic priests] and thought that the priesthood was the way to effect social change,” wrote The New Yorker’s Larissa MacFarquhar in February 2004. “This resolve lasted only through his first year, though, after the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series for the first time in Moore’s life, and the seminary wouldn’t allow him to watch the games.”
Returning to school, at age 16, Moore gave a speech in a local contest in which he condemned the Elks Club for barring blacks. He won not only the contest prize but also a first intoxicating, glory-addicting taste of fame as media reported his fledgling political activism. CBS called to ask about his views…"
At age 17, he saw what remains Moore’s favorite film, “A Clockwork Orange,” a depiction of futuristic street bully “ultraviolence,” rape and brainwashing, by Moore’s still-favorite director, Stanley Kubrick.
At 18, Moore ran for city school board on a simple platform: “Fire the Principal.” He won…"
Moore began studies at the local campus of the University of Michigan but soon dropped out. He was given a job on the GM assembly line but “called in sick the first day and never went back,” which is the closest Moore ever came to being part of the working class.
He became a local hippie, host of a Sunday morning radio show he called “Radio Free Flint,” and honed his skills at getting on local TV news by staging whatever protests would attract the media attention he craved.
In 1976, at age 22, Moore created a small leftist newspaper, the Flint Voice (later called the Michigan Voice), which he edited for 10 years. This position gave him access to left-wing activists, fund-raisers like singer Harry “Cat’s in the Cradle” Chapin, and the opportunity to do occasional commentaries for the National Public Radio (NPR) show “All Things Considered…”
"…Moore remained involved in leftist politics at the University of Michigan and elsewhere in the state. “Moore was interested in the usual lefty international issues of the time,” wrote MacFarquhar. “He travelled to Nicaragua in 1983 to check out the Sandinistas.”
In 1986, because of his growing reputation as a hotshot left-wing journalist, Moore was hired as editor of the San Francisco-based socialist magazine Mother Jones, beating out its Managing Editor David Talbot (who later founded and continues to edit the left-wing webzine Salon.com). Four months later, the magazine fired Moore. Adam Hochschild, chairman of the foundation that owns Mother Jones, described Moore as “arbitrary; he was suspicious; he was unavailable.”
Moore’s high-handed bullying and authoritarian arrogance had alienated most staff members. And Moore had refused to publish a piece by veteran leftist writer Paul Berman because it mildly criticized the human rights record of Nicaragua’s Fidel Castro-allied Communist Sandinistas. One of America’s farthest Left magazines fired Michael Moore because, among other reasons, he was too far-Left for it.
Moore, using what have become his familiar tactics, responded by staging a media-grabbing public demonstration, by going on a Bay Area radio show to accuse Berman (as MacFarquhar described) “of being a traitor to the left and giving aid and comfort to [President Ronald] Reagan,” and by suing Mother Jones for $2 million. Moore eventually pocketed $58,000 from its tax-exempt Foundation for National Progress, which became seed money for his first “documentary.” Roger & Me, an agitprop assault on General Motors, its chief executive Roger Smith and its recent worker layoffs in Flint, launched Moore into stardom.
newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/2/2/163629.shtml