Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Liking Moore says a lot about you

Jonah Goldberg:

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Which brings me to Michael Moore. He has officially become one of those rare figures who simply by his existence illuminates a great deal about politics. I don't need to know very much about you or your ideas to know that if you think Michael Moore is just great, a truth-teller and a much-needed tonic for everything that is wrong in American life, you are not someone to take seriously about anything of political consequence, or you are French. But I repeat myself.

Now that is not to say that if you think Moore is useful or coming from the "right direction" or some such that you aren't a serious person. One liberal friend (a prominent journalist) who went to the premiere noted that while Moore is for the most part a fraud and a hack, he serves the "cause" by pulling the debate back toward the left; he keeps people on their toes; he raises useful issues, etc. After all, Moore was the one who reintroduced the whole Bush-is-a-deserter canard, which may have torpedoed Wesley Clark's already sinking ship but buoyed the Democrats generally. I have some sincere problems with this sort of "side of the angels" argument — one that is frequently heard on the right about some of our own embarrassments, by the way. But it's certainly true that you can be intellectually honest and serious and hold such opinions. (See David Edelstein's review in Slate for an example.)

But the fact remains that the more you think Michael Moore is an insightful and honest person the less reason there is for the rest of us to pay attention when your lips are moving.

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What's worse is that most conservatives, including myself, do not think Limbaugh is a brazen liar. Most of the Washington liberals celebrating Moore — outside the DNC where he is simply a hero — concede that Moore is a liar, a propagandist, a crafty fool. Moreover, Limbaugh can answer a question about what he believes without changing the subject or reaching down his pants for a fistful of red-herrings. Moore cannot. Indeed, Moore's contempt for the press and fact-checking is greater than anything that ever came out of Ari Fleisher's mouth, and yet his fans do not care. After his bitchy speech at the Academy Awards, Moore insisted he wasn't booed by anybody, or the booing was artificially amplified by conspirators, or the booers were actually being booed because everyone likes Mike. But the one thing he was sure of was that the press shouldn't tell the truth. "Now do your job," he instructed reporters. "Don't report it was a divided house. Only five loud people were booing." What else do you expect from a guy whose response to questions about his accuracy are met with threats of lawsuits?

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Moore grabs at your base passions to power through his narrative. Which brings me back where I started. The one genre that has mastered the stringing together of unrelated or barely related scenes and facts without much care for the coherence of the narrative solely for the purpose of a visceral response in the audience is, in fact, pornography and Moore is the master of the masturbatory craft.