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11-11-2004, 02:25 PM
<div align="center"><table border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" bordercolor="#111111" bgcolor="#C9C0A7" width="414" height="66"><tr><td background="http://somd.com/news/inmyopinion/little_back.gif" width="56"><img src="http://somd.com/news/inmyopinion/trr.gif" width="56" height="56"></td><td width="358"><font face="Impact" color="#000000" size="6">In My Opinion</font><font face="Arial" color="#000000" size="3"><i><br><b> by Trevor Bothwell</b></i></td></tr></table></div>
If you haven’t yet heard, Michael Moore has offered his humble entreaty to fellow lefties in the wake of last week’s Republican electoral sweep. Or so it seems.
In a column titled, “<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-11-05">17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists</a>,” Moore encourages liberals to remain optimistic about their future. However, what purports to be an expression of moral victory in defeat reads more like a catalog of justifications to continue pumping out anti-Bush documentaries.
In other words, I have little doubt that Michael Moore hates President Bush or that he voted for John Kerry; but I have even less doubt that the charlatan is positively giddy at the potential of raking in millions more at Bush’s expense for the next four years.
I’ll spare the reader the banality of challenging Moore’s every statement in his commentary. After all, I kind of have a rule not to take the man seriously. And if I felt like compiling a list, I’d just compose my own “17 Reasons” conservatives can keep their own razors sheathed. A little sample: “1.) John Kerry lost; 2.) John Kerry lost; 3.) John Kerry lost…” You get the idea.
I’ll concede that Moore’s column arguably is meant to be humorous (which, if you agree, doesn’t exactly bolster claims that he’s torn up over Bush’s victory). For example, see reason number 9: “Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on [Election Day], cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.” Or number 12: “Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.”
But where Moore attempts to be taken seriously he fails tremendously. He claims, “Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.” Moore obviously is unfamiliar with the story behind “<a href="http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h898.html">Dewey Defeats Truman</a>” in 1948. [emphasis original]
And despite the fact that young voter turnout didn’t even come close to living up to the media hype, Moore states, “The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.”
We’ll disregard that positive message to kids for the time being. Apparently, Michael Moore is the only person in the country who’s actually surprised young voters preferred Kerry to Bush. Considering liberals try so hard to get young people to the polls precisely because they tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, wiser souls might be concerned that Kerry could only top Bush by 10 points in this demographic.
It would be entertaining to casually dismiss Michael Moore’s opinions if his antics weren’t so devastatingly harmful to Coalition lives overseas. To be sure, through his propagandistic displays of anti-Americanism across the globe, Moore bears no shortage of responsibility for fomenting the hatred that encourages our enemies to attack and kill American troops (which, I add, tends to cause the collateral damage that can injure Iraqi children, whose hospital photos he loves to slap on the home page of his website).
If in all their corny “self-introspection” bewildered Democrats really want to know why they were dumped like a broke prom date last week, they need look no further than Moore’s final and “most ” comment, which is that, “…over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed ‘The #1 Liberal in the Senate.’” (A title the Kerry camp denied constantly, you’ll recall.)
Indeed. Democrats decided early on in 2004 to go hard left. And when they made Michael Moore their poster boy for the party by giving him a seat next to Jimmy Carter at their convention, they neatly framed for all “ordinary” Americans a snapshot of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party: The fusion of today’s current vulgarity and contempt for American traditions and values, and yesterday’s misery and despair personified by timidity in the face of foreign threats.
The irony here is that in their conniving ambitions to simply win at any cost, Democrats are mesmerized by a man who exploits and benefits financially from their shared hatred for George W. Bush. But they obviously can’t understand that it’s Moore’s arrogance, vitriol, and incessant dishonesty that Americans consequently associate with their party.
There truly are “Two Americas” today, but the concept has precious little to do with one’s income level. We are divided by two ideologies at war with one another: One is present in conservatives who believe in the inherent good of America, where economic, spiritual, and moral freedoms are valued; the other is personified by clove cigarette-huffing, appletini-sipping liberals who believe that America is inherently flawed, and therefore value the ascension of the state as a means to impose elitist politically correct limitations on everyone else.
Thankfully, we know which ideology currently <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/2004_County_Results_Final.html">prevails</a> across the country. But so does Michael Moore, who must right now be rejoicing not only because he knows he can torment America for the foreseeable future, but also because Democrats are still too ignorant to realize the platform they provide for his success is also the principal cause of their demise.
CORRECTION: In my previous column, “The liberal art of public education,” I cited a report by WABC news that stated Shiba Pillai-Diaz, a middle school teacher at Crossroads South Middle School in Monmouth Junction, N.J., was ordered out of her school by her principal for hanging a photo of President and Mrs. Bush on a bulletin board next to other U.S. presidents. The <a href="http://www.sbschools.org/">South Brunswick Public Schools</a> denies this, claiming that Ms. Pillai-Diaz left her school voluntarily.
[i]Trevor Bothwell is editor of <a href="http://www.therightreport.com/">The Right Report</a>, and he is also a Townhall.com book reviewer. He can be contacted at bothwell@therightreport.com.
If you haven’t yet heard, Michael Moore has offered his humble entreaty to fellow lefties in the wake of last week’s Republican electoral sweep. Or so it seems.
In a column titled, “<a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?messageDate=2004-11-05">17 Reasons Not to Slit Your Wrists</a>,” Moore encourages liberals to remain optimistic about their future. However, what purports to be an expression of moral victory in defeat reads more like a catalog of justifications to continue pumping out anti-Bush documentaries.
In other words, I have little doubt that Michael Moore hates President Bush or that he voted for John Kerry; but I have even less doubt that the charlatan is positively giddy at the potential of raking in millions more at Bush’s expense for the next four years.
I’ll spare the reader the banality of challenging Moore’s every statement in his commentary. After all, I kind of have a rule not to take the man seriously. And if I felt like compiling a list, I’d just compose my own “17 Reasons” conservatives can keep their own razors sheathed. A little sample: “1.) John Kerry lost; 2.) John Kerry lost; 3.) John Kerry lost…” You get the idea.
I’ll concede that Moore’s column arguably is meant to be humorous (which, if you agree, doesn’t exactly bolster claims that he’s torn up over Bush’s victory). For example, see reason number 9: “Gays, thanks to the ballot measures passed on [Election Day], cannot get married in 11 new states. Thank God. Just think of all those wedding gifts we won't have to buy now.” Or number 12: “Admit it: We like the Bush twins and we don't want them to go away.”
But where Moore attempts to be taken seriously he fails tremendously. He claims, “Bush's victory was the NARROWEST win for a sitting president since Woodrow Wilson in 1916.” Moore obviously is unfamiliar with the story behind “<a href="http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h898.html">Dewey Defeats Truman</a>” in 1948. [emphasis original]
And despite the fact that young voter turnout didn’t even come close to living up to the media hype, Moore states, “The only age group in which the majority voted for Kerry was young adults (Kerry: 54%, Bush: 44%), proving once again that your parents are always wrong and you should never listen to them.”
We’ll disregard that positive message to kids for the time being. Apparently, Michael Moore is the only person in the country who’s actually surprised young voters preferred Kerry to Bush. Considering liberals try so hard to get young people to the polls precisely because they tend to vote overwhelmingly Democratic, wiser souls might be concerned that Kerry could only top Bush by 10 points in this demographic.
It would be entertaining to casually dismiss Michael Moore’s opinions if his antics weren’t so devastatingly harmful to Coalition lives overseas. To be sure, through his propagandistic displays of anti-Americanism across the globe, Moore bears no shortage of responsibility for fomenting the hatred that encourages our enemies to attack and kill American troops (which, I add, tends to cause the collateral damage that can injure Iraqi children, whose hospital photos he loves to slap on the home page of his website).
If in all their corny “self-introspection” bewildered Democrats really want to know why they were dumped like a broke prom date last week, they need look no further than Moore’s final and “most ” comment, which is that, “…over 55 million Americans voted for the candidate dubbed ‘The #1 Liberal in the Senate.’” (A title the Kerry camp denied constantly, you’ll recall.)
Indeed. Democrats decided early on in 2004 to go hard left. And when they made Michael Moore their poster boy for the party by giving him a seat next to Jimmy Carter at their convention, they neatly framed for all “ordinary” Americans a snapshot of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party: The fusion of today’s current vulgarity and contempt for American traditions and values, and yesterday’s misery and despair personified by timidity in the face of foreign threats.
The irony here is that in their conniving ambitions to simply win at any cost, Democrats are mesmerized by a man who exploits and benefits financially from their shared hatred for George W. Bush. But they obviously can’t understand that it’s Moore’s arrogance, vitriol, and incessant dishonesty that Americans consequently associate with their party.
There truly are “Two Americas” today, but the concept has precious little to do with one’s income level. We are divided by two ideologies at war with one another: One is present in conservatives who believe in the inherent good of America, where economic, spiritual, and moral freedoms are valued; the other is personified by clove cigarette-huffing, appletini-sipping liberals who believe that America is inherently flawed, and therefore value the ascension of the state as a means to impose elitist politically correct limitations on everyone else.
Thankfully, we know which ideology currently <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presidential_04/2004_County_Results_Final.html">prevails</a> across the country. But so does Michael Moore, who must right now be rejoicing not only because he knows he can torment America for the foreseeable future, but also because Democrats are still too ignorant to realize the platform they provide for his success is also the principal cause of their demise.
CORRECTION: In my previous column, “The liberal art of public education,” I cited a report by WABC news that stated Shiba Pillai-Diaz, a middle school teacher at Crossroads South Middle School in Monmouth Junction, N.J., was ordered out of her school by her principal for hanging a photo of President and Mrs. Bush on a bulletin board next to other U.S. presidents. The <a href="http://www.sbschools.org/">South Brunswick Public Schools</a> denies this, claiming that Ms. Pillai-Diaz left her school voluntarily.
[i]Trevor Bothwell is editor of <a href="http://www.therightreport.com/">The Right Report</a>, and he is also a Townhall.com book reviewer. He can be contacted at bothwell@therightreport.com.