Like Mike

It occurred to me yesterday that Michael Moore movies actually have a lot in common with Tyler Perry movies. Both lure the viewer in with the expectation of some comedically righteous outbursts from a funny fat person, in order to ease you into a far more depressing story about suffering people, with the end goal being to convert you to the director’s philosophy — Christianity in Perry’s case, populist liberal activism in Moore’s.

So it probably comes as no surprise that, as predictably as Madea yelling, “I KNOW you did not just say that to me!”, CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY has the familiar greatest hits: Moore and camera crew trying to get into GM corporate headquarters and others, a routine by now so familiar that the security guards are all prepared for him, and he knows they know. There is the inevitable visit back to Flint, Michigan, where Moore and his dad look at the land where the GM factory once stood. And just as in ROGER & ME 20 years ago, Moore focuses on the way a bad economy leads to evictions and foreclosures. It isn’t until later in the film that he explains just why these people are being kicked out of their houses, by which point he has sufficiently undermined a skeptical viewer’s cynicism. In most cases, it seems that these people used their homes as equity, unaware of all the hidden fees involved in such loans. Granted, you could say it’s their responsibility to read up on that stuff first. But does the lending company have no responsibility whatsoever to ensure the buyer knows about the risks, or to not arbitrarily jack up the rates?

Moore sees such things as endemic to capitalism, and part of the case for eliminating it altogether. In some ways, this is his most bipartisan film yet — Bush Junior and Reagan take their lumps, but Democrat Chris Dodd probably gets it the worst for his hypocrisy in “regulating” companies that give him sweetheart deals. And lest we forget, the movie reminds us that the stimulus/bailout that has all the teabaggers mad at Obama was begun under Bush, though I note with some amusement that a new meme with righty bloggers who once supported W in lockstep is that he was never truly conservative and they actually didn’t agree with him much at all! Obama doesn’t get a ton of grief here, but seems to be mostly because the film had to end sometime.

But even if you are relatively alert to all things political, there is useful information here that you probably didn’t know, most notably the existence of “Dead Peasants” insurance policies — life insurance secretly taken out by big corporations on their more vulnerable employees in the hopes they will die and pay out big for the bosses. Wal-Mart can thus make hundreds of thousands off somebody’s death, and not have to pay the family one cent for the funeral (Wal-Mart recently gave up this practice, according to the end credits). These policies are perfectly legal, even though, unlike most insurance, they are given to people who have a vested interest in cashing in.

Trotting out various Catholic priests to say that capitalism is evil isn’t necessarily persuasive, but does make the case that Christianity isn’t all that compatible with mass profits; for cheap laughs, Moore redubs scenes from JESUS OF NAZARETH with right-wing talking points, a joke shamelessly cribbed from Al Franken’s book “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell them.”

A major goal seems to be to try to explain economic theory in terms that won’t bore people to death; to this end, Moore tries to get various bankers to explain, in simple English, what derivatives are, and none of them can. Now, could he have found someone who could? Perhaps. But even if these people are the only ones making a living from derivatives who cannot explain them, the point is still made.

There’s thankfully little obvious grandstanding — I happen to think the Cuba section of SICKO vastly undercut the seriousness of the valid points it was previously making. Of course patients will be treated well in Cuba while the cameras are rolling, and I’ll bet they’d have gotten great treatment in an American hospital as well if the same cameras were at hand. You can disagree with Moore and still find material in CAPITALISM that’s thought-provoking.

And the part where I can’t quite go is the step from “capitalism is an easily abused system” to “capitalism must be entirely abolished.” Moore’s proffered solution is democracy, but even if the workers own their own factory, they’re still going to want and need to make some sort of profit, no? Regardless, in a media world in which moderate Democrats like Al Franken are presented as fairness and balance to far-right whackjobs like Glenn Beck on the talk shows, it’s good to see an actual far-left — i.e. left of the Democratic party — voice get out there into mainstream discourse. Real balance isn’t Hannity and Colmes, it’s Hannity and Moore.

Agree or not — and in the interests of full disclosure, I’ll note that I agree more than I disagree — Moore’s voice broadens the debate in a vital way. And the long-lost archival footage of FDR that gives the movie its climactic punch indicates that we came oh so close to having all that stuff like health care that we still have to fight for today. Moore claims this may be his last documentary…if so, he’s going out on top.