On Michael Moore, and Using Your Voice
Originally posted October 10, 2003:
I have been trying for two days to make a livejournal post on Michael Moore, Flint Michigan, and passion in politics. Today I had the whole thing written out and the entire network crashed on campus, and I lost every bit of it. Last night I had most of it written out, but I got distracted by this woman who saw me reading his latest book
Dude, Where's My Country? and began a discussion that pretty much took up the next two hours straight, so I was unable to post it then.
As you probably know, the book came out Tuesday; I bought my copy last night before shift, and I've been really amazed-- all over Bloomington I've been toting this book around and people, especially students, have been dying to see it. Everybody's been asking me how it is. I tell them it's more of the same brand of investigative, sarcastic journalism we got in Stupid White Men, only up to date and with more serious, perhaps more urgent, a voice.
Michael Moore's voice is a funny thing. By many accounts he may in fact be a belligerent asshole--but if he is I have to say it doesn't matter much to me, because he's also one of the most sincere, most determined, passionate voices for political change and reform I've ever seen. His voice is the single most important thing the liberal left has going for it. His voice is a populist voice--in touch with the people that the republicans are shunning and the democrats have forgotten about, strong, loud, obnoxious, and tireless. It's the kind of voice that gets heard above the crowd, and it
is being heard.
I went off yesterday on the poor gentleman who took issue with my tone and style of voice in my last post. I thought his main gripe was because I was, according to him, being "perfervid" and getting lost in grand hyperbole instead of utilizing reasoned rhetoric. This really pissed me off, and
I told him why.
Ever since then I've been thinking about what passion is—what it does when it's channelled correctly, and what breeds it.
Particularly, I've been thinking about Michael Moore's brand of passion. I think it's because he came from Flint, the city with the highest crime and highest unemployment of its kind in the nation, the city that was devastated when GM shut down and laid off 60 thousand people in the 80's. I think it's because he had to watch that happen, because he grew steadily more and more outraged and fed up until he reached the point where he just ceased to give a fuck about tact, about discretion, about politeness, and just began to focus on getting the word out, about making people aware, about getting people to listen and getting them to act.
He's like Moses, in a way.
ca. 2000 B.C.:
Moses to Pharoah: Let My People Go!
Pharoah: *yawn*
Moses: *kills firstborn*
ca. 2000 A.D.:
MM to GM: Give My People Jobs!
GM: yawn.
MM: *Roger And Me*
It's all about using your voice. Okay, technically Moses used Aaron's voice. And Mike Moore uses a camera crew. But close enough. Mike Moore's voice is one of the most important voices in America right now, because it's starting to reach people who have never really been exposed to leftist or populist thinking before. If Mike Moore were any less impassioned, any more reasonable and tactful, America wouldn't be listening.
A while back I talked about a university professor who posted blatantly homophobic statements on his blog, which was hosted on a university-sponsored web page?. My comments appeared in the opinion forum of the student newspaper the next day. Yesterday, out of the blue, a journalist from the
Chronicle of Higher Education emailed me. He was writing an article about the controversy over the blog, and wanted to know if I would grant him an interview. When I called him back today he said that he’d been looking through the op-ed pages, and wanted to talk with people “who had something to say.”
It was pure coincidence that I happened to pick up the school paper that morning and read the front page headline. When I fired off that letter to the editor, I wasn’t thinking about anything other than that this was an outrage and I had to say something about it. My comments were sandwiched in with a bunch of other comments on the back page of the paper, it’s not like it was a big deal. But instead I was interviewed by a reporter from a prestigious academic journal. Now there’s a chance that people all over the country might read what I have to say.
People are listening. There are people who want to hear what you have to say. All you have to do is speak out. Trust your voice. Because dude, you never know.
The last day I was at the 2003 Harry Potter Convention, I decided to sit next to a group of ladies I had never met before, because I thought it would be interesting. One of those ladies was Eliza Dreseng, the chairwoman of the Newberry Committee—the people that decide the Newberry Medal. Before she was on the Newberry Committee, she was on the Caldecott Committee. She had been attending the convention as part of the panel of librarians, along with ALA director Judith Klug.
Somehow, during the course of the conversation I wound up telling one of the other ladies there at the table with me about fan fiction. The lady was polite, but hostile to the idea of fan fiction—she felt it was more about the fan fiction writers than about the source material.
I responded by basically giving her an impassioned speech about how fan fiction was the ultimate compliment to the source material, because it was about expanding upon a world that they created, about taking it further, and about building a community around what we loved.
When I was through with this speech all of the other women were pretty much staring at me, and Eliza Dreseng said in a quiet voice, “and where can I read your fan fiction?”
I blanched and then told her awkwardly that I wrote slash. I received blank looks all around. So I carefully explained what slash was.
The other woman who had been hostile about the idea of fan fiction itself made her excuses and dragged her companion away from the table. Rapidly.
So it was just me and Eliza Dresang and her daughter, and I was just abashed and still blanching.
Then Eliza Dreseng said still in that same quiet voice, “so where can I read your fan fiction?”
I will treasure that moment as long as I live.
People want to hear what you have to say. Don’t be afraid of your voice.