Tendentious

My defining Michael Moore moment was once on the now-mercifully-forgotten Politically Incorrect program on ABC where he was one of the guests along with some hapless Republican who happened to mention in passing that Bill Clinton had fired all the U.S. Attorneys in the country when he took office. This was perfectly true,--Janet Reno fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys upon taking office as Attorney General--but Moore had apparently never heard of this, so his reaction was to guffaw loudly and lead Bill Maher and the audience in ridiculing the person who could make such a hilarious statement. This gave me a permanent personal and career insight into Moore. The personal one is fairly obvious: The pudgy, bullied kid who becomes a bully the first chance he gets. The career insight is more telling, and more relevant today, as Moore basks in the applause for his (per critics who should know better) "powerful," "compelling" movie Fahrenheit 911. The career insight from that moment on PI is that Moore ridicules when confronted by the truth, and that lies are always more "powerful" and "compelling" to the simpleminded.