Stupid White Men

Stupid White Men, Michael Moore's screed against "Thief-in-Chief" George Bush's power elite, hit No. 1 at Amazon.com within days of publication. Why? It's as fulminating and crammed with infuriating facts as any right-wing bestseller, as irreverent as The Onion, and as noisily entertaining as a wrestling smackdown. Moore offers a more interesting critique of the 2000 election than Ralph Nader's Crashing the Party (he argued with Nader, his old boss, who sacked him), and he's serious when he advocates ousting Bush. But Moore's rage is outrageous, couched in shameless gags and madcap comedy: "Old white men wielding martinis and wearing dickies have occupied our nation's capital.... Launch the SCUD missiles! Bring us the head of Antonin Scalia!... We are no longer [able] to hold free and fair elections. We need UN observers, UN troops". Moore's ideas range from on-the-money (Arafat should beat Sharon with Gandhi's non-violent shame tactics) to over-the-top: blacks should put inflatable white dolls in their cars so racist cops will think they're chauffeurs; the ever-more-Republicanesque Democratic Party should be sued for fraud; "no contributions toward advancing our civilization ever came out of the South [except Faulkner, Hellman, and RJ Reynolds]," because it's too hot to think straight there; Korean dictator Kim Jong-il "has got to broaden himself beyond porn and John Wayne" by watching better movies, like Dude, Where's My Car? (which contains "all you need to know about America"). Whatever your politics, Stupid White Men should make you blow your stack. --Tim Appelo

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Very impressed - Rated
This is a good account of how messed up USA is. It is an account from an american who likes to speak his mind, on all matters. He tells of how the election was fixed and much more. After reading this book i went on to buy both his dvd's which were just as good. Very enjoyable and highly recommend.

Moore is the 21st Century Jonathan Swift - Rated
Moore is angry. Very angry. His solutions to the problems of the world may be silly or perhaps wrong (some of his assertions I take issue with but on a factual basis rather than a political one). But that is not the point. In the very same way that Swift was suggesting that the Irish should eat their children rather than starve - and was taken seriously at the time - this book is as much a modest proposal to solve the ills of the world.

Yes, the book is out of date but the central themes are not. Each chapter is a pamphlet for a particular ill. Most powerful is the chapter on the idiocy of racism. This is the one chapter I read over and over again.

The most important message of the book? Far and away the most important, I think, is that all of us *must* take part in the political process: stand for your local council. Take part in elections. Stand up and be counted. This is the only way to change the world. And he is absolutely right, so this book gets 5 stars for that argument alone.

Angry and hilarious - Rated
A book every American should be forced to read. "Stupid white men" describes the sorry state that the United States are in. As the rest of the world is worried sick by the antics of Mr. Bush, a vast proportion of the Americans don't seem to understand that he is now the biggest security risk in the world. Michael Moore, Corporate America's pain in the lower backside, describes his readers how Bush got elected, what the effects of decades of relentless conservative government are on the position of the poor, the blacks, the women and other "minority groups" (as he rightly observes, women are actually the majority group, but they never DO something with this advantage). And he tells all this in a hilarious, readable way. Sometimes the references to America's national/internal affairs are incomprehensible for a European, but the overall picture is that we Europeans are right in not trusting the US leaders and government to represent us.

funny and eye opening - Rated
A fantastic and eye opening read, which making this book hard to put this book down. Shocking facts about the USA are told in a very amusing way.

A Pre-9/11 View of the State of the Nation - Rated
After 9/11 happened, I didn't have the stomach to read (or listen to) Stupid White Men. With the fifth anniversary of 9/11 arriving today, I thought it was time to look back at how we looked before we were attacked. I have great respect for Michael Moore and had high hopes for the book.

Alas, I was very disappointed.

The book opens on its high point -- Mr. Moore's excellent characterization of how the first W. Bush "election" was stolen. In the recounting of the "accomplishments" of the administration, you'll be fascinated to know that many of the areas where spending is through the roof now were originally cut back . . . such as areas related to national security.

After that, the only other good section was the one about how racism is based on false beliefs about African Americans rather than personal experience.

For the rest of the book, Mr. Moore indulges in creating "solutions" that have a surface validity for someone who doesn't know anything about what he's describing. If it were just humor, I would laugh. But the "solutions" seem to be seriously intended. For instance, the Middle East will become peaceful if Arabs learn to emulate Gandhi and use non-violent protest methods. Really? I wonder if he even knew that there are two groups of Muslims that are routinely waging war on one another.

In other places, I think he was trying to be humorous . . . but it didn't work well enough to be funny. For instance, the book "humorously" describes the solution for creating peace in Northern Ireland as having all of the Protestants convert to Catholicism. It just didn't seem funny.

Mr. Moore also prefers to look at every issue from an economic class point of view. I felt like I was listening to neo-Marxism in places!

Unless you don't know how the first W. Bush election was "liberated" in Florida by Jeb Bush and his compadres, you can skip this book. You'll think more highly of Mr. Moore if you do.