Dissent takes down the fat white man. The article notes, rightly I think, that much of the objection to Moore on the nominal grounds of his factual inaccuracies is politically motivated more than anything else, but argues that Moore's technique lets him down nevertheless:
Some reviewers are put off by Moore's aggressiveness. But what's really shocking is how often his technique fails. Sure, in The Big One, Moore got Knight to admit he employs fourteen year olds in Indonesia, and in Bowling for Columbine, Heston mumbles something about ethnic mixing producing violence in America (though the point isn't very clear). Nonetheless, both interviews illustrate the uselessness of confrontation more than its effectiveness. Heston simply walks away from Moore's pushy questioning; Knight grows aloof. [...]
Often Moore can't get to the upper echelons of a corporation or government. Then he winds up confronting a security worker or desk clerk, as the cameras roll. In The Big One, for instance, he tried to get Payday candy bar company executives to discuss layoffs. Security guards push him out the door, and Moore gets persnickety, challenging and mocking them. And so in the name of confronting the powers that be, Moore winds up annoying underpaid security guards. The point of this, I would assume, was lost on many viewers, not just me.
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Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Excellent batch James, thanks. I am very pleased to see a political journal care more about facts than ideology - criticism from your own political camp means so much more.
2 - mike
Well, as an actually existing leftist, one who participates in demonstrations, harasses right wingers on blogs, and blames America for everything except the sack of Rome, I must report that Dissent has no credibility as a "leftist magazine."
It curries favor with the right by attacking left icons, calling itself courageous, and then basking in glowing write-ups in The New York Times and the Washington Post. Its editors, like Michael Walzer, are well known in intellectual circles as thugs and bullies. Its politics are to leftism as Cremora is to milk.
It's important to challenge leftist precepts if you're a leftist (just as it's important to challenge conservative precepts if you're a conservative). Journals like New Politics and Left Business Observer do it all the time, as did Christopher Hitchens years ago, before he became a hit man for the Pentagon.
I've read, and agree with, many left criticisms of Moore. His tactics leave a lot to be desired. But a criticism of him that appears in Dissent can be dismissed out of hand.
Dissent is the leftism of cowards.
3 - Phillip Winn
"...as did Christopher Hitchens years ago, before he became a hit man for the Pentagon"
So it's "important to challenge leftist precepts if you're a leftist," but if your challenges are too effective, well, then you're just "a hit man for the Pentagon" and nothing you say matters. If you've challenged a little too much, anything you say "can be dismissed out of hand," based on some ad hominem notion that you're just a complainer.
What was that about cowards again?
4 - mike
I knew someone was going to take the bait on Hitchens. My point about him is that he never challenges the prowars the way he challenged leftists when he himself was a leftist.
For example, when defending the Sandinistas in the 1980s, he would often express sympathy for Nicaraguan youth who were drafted to fight the contras. When defending the principles of the Cuban revolution, he would attack leftists who worshipped Castro ("I don't call him Fidel because I don't know the guy" was one of his funniest quips). And when condemning U.S. atrocities during the Cold War, he would caution leftists against the fallacy of believing in a moral equivalence between the US and the USSR. His attacks on on the double standards of much feminism still resonate today.
He would say these things in the pages of The Nation and other liberal publications and would draw the ire of the know-it-alls. That's courage.
No such nuance informs his writing now. It's all bluster and bullying, playing to the crowd. That's cowardice.