www.moorelies.com This is good and Democrats would do well to take his advice.
America has spoken.
And Michael Moore's mentality, his movement, his message, and his movie have all been soundly, embarrassingly, decisively defeated. Remember this day folks: He lost, and he lost real bad.
Stepping back for a second: My sincere congratulations go out to Senator John Kerry for fighting his way through to the end of a difficult, perpetually intense campaign. I wish the Kerrys and the Edwards' all the best in their respective future efforts. Heck, I wouldn't mind seeing either one or both of them serve in the Bush administration in some capacity. After all, it is finally over, and I honestly believe it's now time for people of character to come together and prove yet again that those of the angry lunatic fringe movement have no place whatsoever when people of meaningful purpose-- from both sides of the aisle-- are working to ensure the safety and future of our nation.
While Kerry flirted at times with the end of the lunatic fringe that Moore so proudly represents, you'll notice one significant difference between the two men today. I believe that difference will materialize-- even through all the passionate rhetoric of this campaign season-- as Kerry officially and gracefully concedes the election and then quickly gets back to the business of actually working on the future of our country, whether you agree with his ideas or not.
Michael Moore, in contrast, will not concede an inch today. He will not concede tomorrow, nor the next day. If history is any guide, (and with Moore, it's nearly clairvoyant), he will only become angrier, more distant, and further marginalized in the views of a majority of Americans.
So, while I agree for the most part with Jeff Jarvis' pledge, I also believe that with all due graciousness towards Senators Kerry and Edwards comes a measure of equally due gloating towards Michael Moore.
To that end, it's worth taking just a few minutes to compare and contrast Michael Moore's vision of America as he's laid it out over the past year with what the American people said last night:
The popular vote and legitimacy
Moore said: Throughout the past few years, and on several occasions during this campaign, Michael Moore claimed that a "majority" of Americans disagree with President Bush's policies and beliefs. Last night's vote proved Moore wrong in a big, big way:
America voted: President Bush won a clear majority of the popular vote. In fact, he won more votes than any other presidential candidate in American history. He also garnered increased support from African American and Latino voters and several other voting blocs, according to exit polling.
The electoral college and voter fraud
Moore said: Throughout the fall, Michael Moore threatened to land in Florida to heroically document incidents of voter fraud. Further, he tried to marshall an army of videographers to monitor (or disrupt?) polling places nationwide. How did Moore's scare tactics over the electoral vote affect the election?
America voted: President Bush won a clear majority of the electoral college vote. He also came away successful in several other telling statistical areas. While sporadic problems were reported, sanity was, by and large, returned to the voting process this time around, seriously damaging any credence given to Moore's planned claims of a "stolen" election. In fact, things went so smoothly in Florida, Michael Moore packed up his intimidation crew early and went elsewhere hoping trouble would brew.
Vote or Die? and the 'Slacker Uprising'
Moore said: Michael Moore's 'Slacker Uprising' tour -- really a promotional jaunt designed to sell Moore's DVD, two books, and two soundtracks -- was one of a few left-leaning voter outreach initiatives driving the mainstream media's endless predictions of a huge increase in young (18-29) voter turnout. While some groups used scare tactics to turn the youth vote towards Kerry, Moore accepted an almost $2 million dollar payday from America's colleges and college students, and then returned the favor by handing out free underwear, endorsing a candidate he said he wouldn't endorse, and rankling quite a few feathers with his highly questionable, potentially-illegal activities.
America voted: The massive youth turnout expected simply did not happen. Although voter turnout on the whole was gratefully larger than 2000, the percentage of youth who voted remained the same as last time: around 17% of all eligble voters age 18-29 cast ballots, or about 6.8 million of the estimated 40 million that P. Diddy hoped would kick "Bush's ass out of office." In that respect, Michael Moore's "Slacker Uprising Tour" was a complete and utter failure. Or was it all just 'fictition' to begin with?
The resounding failure of Moore's tour doesn't mean that youth weren't motivated though-- far from it. The real story is how college-age voters organized and rallied again and again and again (and again) against Moore's message throughout his 60-city promotional tour.
And finally: The 'Fahrenheit 911' factor
Moore said: While Moore bragged that a mysterious, unnamed pollster reported to him that 'Fahrenheit 9/11' was changing the hearts and minds of Bush supporters, much of the mainstream media followed in lockstep, with the Austin Chronicle breathlessly declaring that "Moore's film could actually prove to be the first in history to help unseat a sitting American president." Moore himself even declared as much to the International Herald Tribune, which reported that "[Moore] wants it to be remembered as the first big-audience, election-year film that helped unseat a president."
America voted: In the end, we'll never know exactly how many Americans were impacted by Fahrenheit 9/11, which, despite all the evidence to the contrary is still technically considered a "documentary" - and, to Moore's credit, the highest-grossing one of all time. We can do better than Moore though-- we can produce the results of a very public survey which showed that "...Moore's movie is mainly reaching - and reinforcing the views of - people who already dislike President Bush and his policies," and further that "While 41 percent of all respondents said the movie made them think worse of Bush, the researchers said that 60 percent of that group were already Democrats and therefore likely to vote against the president anyway."
To recap: only "41% of all respondents said the movie made them think worse of Bush..."? That's the best you got? Less than half of the folks who watched two hours of slanderous, deceitful connections and suggestions, and you still can't convince more than half of them?
And hey, we can debate the finer points of the film's impact all day long. But in the end, perhaps the only statistic the skeptic needs to raise is the one that shows George W. Bush carrying the largest count of popular votes in the history of the country.
Now that we've examined Moore's biggest losses, it's worth examining the hopeful trends emerging from his hearty rebuke:
Most Americans, despite Moore's best efforts, support President Bush's War on Terror and believe that the best way to defeat those who wish to kill us is to take the fight to them, not to espouse anger-fueled rants comparing the savage terrorists in Iraq to our own Minutemen.
Most Americans, despite Moore's best efforts, believe in coming together at the end of the day, and at the end of the election cycle, and aligning behind the President who earned a legitimate victory.
Most American youth, like every other demographic segment, are turning further and further away from Michael Moore's message of revenge, condescension, destruction, hatred, dissembling, and deceit. This trend has to be the hardest to swallow for Moore, because it, above all the others, threatens his bottom line the most. An idealogical mercinary to the end, the threats to his balance sheet at the least give even a slight hope that Moore may revise his own pitch black outlook on the future of America and our fellow citizens.
So, the four key tenets of Michael Moore's message-- and his very core-- all turned against him. Though each of the four major failures described above began several months ago, yesterday provided the final, tangible clincher. All these data points add up to one conclusion: After 15 years of consistently successful, consistently more outrageous enchroachment into the national debate, Moore has now suffered his most dramatic, most public, most humiliating defeat.
Don't cry for Mikey though. He's still got his millions and millions and millions of dollars. He's still got his massive, money-generating corporate entertainment machine, which will continue to churn profit, though it may begin a steady decline as the weeks and months wear on. He's still got his Palm d'Or, and I predict he'll have his Best Picture Oscar in a few months. It'll be Hollywood's concession to Moore, and to themselves. Let him keep it: I hear statue tastes good with crow.
In the end, Moore's still may have all of his worldly riches. But today, few can deny he's lost a considerable measure of respect and an overwhelming majority of his relevancy within the American political landscape.
The most pathetic part of this whole post-partum? Michael Moore will be return. At the latest, he'll be back in 2006, with his next crockumentary, Sicko, a look at America's health care industry. But of course we know from history that we can count on Moore to be back in America's face much sooner than that.
What else can we count on? That this site, and this one, and this one, and thousands -- millions -- of Americans will be right there, watching his every move every step of the way.
Before we carry on our collective efforts to subvert the mainstream media and present a vision of America and the world vastly different than Michael Moore's own imagination, it is worth our time to take a moment and reflect on the message that this year's presidential vote has delivered to Michael Moore: A 15-year-long free pass has been revoked today.
I am extraordinarily proud of our country for sending this message. Who knows, it may or may not be the end of an era. But one thing's for sure: Tonight, Michael Moore has to be asking himself a big question:
Dude, where's my country?
