Random Michael Moore Deceits [#48]

Moore's Bogus Biography

"Michael Moore was born and raised in the prosperous suburban community of Davison, Michigan. He attended Davison High School. Although there is no law preventing black people from owning a home in Davison, the town's African-Americans are only one half of one percent of its population. Davison is a haven for management types, not laborers. You'll never hear any of these truths from Michael Moore.

Moore's website, his speaker's bureau and his film Roger & Me have all pounded out the fiction that Michael Moore is a native of Flint, "where his father and most of his relatives worked in the automobile factories" according to his production company's website. In an interview with the People's Weekly World Moore explored the wellspring of his special empathy with the working man: "I think it's just a function of growing up in Flint, Michigan." His empathy is just another dimension of Michael Moore's total proletarian public-image package: the four-day facial stubble, the plaid shirts, the sprung belly and the baseball cap. It's all a costume affected by a working-man wannabee. In truth Michael Moore is a socially maladroit middle class white guy with an eating disorder who got filthy rich by exploiting a few cinematic gimmicks and by ignoring the truth. When he's not denouncing the wealthy in speeches for which he charges thirty to forty thousand dollars a pop, he's dividing his leisure time between his $1.9 million home in New York City and his $1.2 million vacation retreat in Michigan. It's tough being a working-guy wannabee."

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"Mrs. Lipscomb is from Flint, Michigan, which Moore calls "my hometown." In fact, Moore grew up in Davison, Michigan, a suburb of Flint. Davison is much wealthier than Flint. According to the Census Bureau, 6 percent of children in the Davison public schools are from families living in poverty, whereas in Flint, 31 percent of children are. Calling Flint your "hometown" when you really grew up in Davison is like calling the Bronx "my hometown" when you really grew up in Westchester County.

"Flint is working class, industrial, down-at-heel, where the majority of the population is black or Latino. It's where the factories are.

Davison, where Moore grew up and attended Davison High School, is comfortable middle class, suburban, and white. Overwhelmingly white. It's where the managers and professionals live. While many of the children of Flint go on to work at the factories...the normal trajectory for the children of Davison is university. Michael Moore went to university (though didn't stick long). Unusually, he also went to Flint and tried his hand on the blue-collar front line with a job on the Buick assembly line for General Motors. He found the conditions under which the working class actually worked so appalling he quit the job after one day."

"Less is Moore," Sydney Morning Herald, July 10, 2004."

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