"
Don't make any more movies."
-- A Wall Street professional in response to Michael
Moore's ambush-style solicitation for suggestions.
I won't go quite that far, but after wasting 120 minutes
of my weekend on Moore's new documentary,
Capitalism: A Love Story, I certainly sympathize
with the sentiments.
Traditionally, I've tolerated his carefully chosen
"evidence" and faulty leaps of logic because I've found him
thought-provoking.
No longer.
I'm tired of everyman Michael Moore, replete with ballcap
and Mom jeans, accosting various corporate headquarters with
a bullhorn full of shocking demands. Putting crime scene tape
around
AIG (NYSE: AIG) and other bailed-out
companies was clever, but
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS)
conspiracy theories, politicians' participation in
Countrywide's
"Friends of Angelo" mortgage program,
General Motors '
problems,
and the concept of
a
financial coup d'etathave all been done before ... and
better.
The rest of the movie is just a series of tangential
anecdotal evidence about the perils of capitalism:
Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and numerous banks,
taking out "dead peasant" policies that pay out when
rank-and-file employees die.
People facing foreclosure ... including one scene in
which the bank paid a family $1,000 to get their house
ready for sale.
Kids sent to a juvenile detention center on trumped-up
charges because a judge was getting kickbacks from the
private detention center.
Airline pilots getting crappy pay.
The thoughts of
this dudefrom
The Princess Bride... he is apparently a "Friend
of Michael."
Some scenes are heart-wrenching. Some made me angry. But
few make any sense. At least not as an indictment of
capitalism.
Moore plays on our emotions to hide his lack of
rationality. In a country with 300 million stories to be
told, it's easy to pick out a few that show the ugly side of
capitalism. He asserts that the U.S. should take care of all
its people by redistributing wealth. He goes on to voice
support for Franklin Roosevelt's concept of a "
Second Bill of Rights," which basically says we have the
right to live in a utopia where the security, health, and
prosperity we all strive for as humans is guaranteed. Continued... |