MEDIA
WATCH SPECIAL REPORT/ FEBRUARY 22, 2002
THE
DAILY SHOW WITH GUEST MICHAEL MOORE
Thursday, February 21, 2002
I’m not going to get involved in any
arguments about what Michael Moore should or shouldn’t have
done during the 2000 Presidential Campaign. Let’s just
say that I’ve always been a fan of Moore’s and after
having read that his interview with O’Reilly was scrubbed
from the FOX News site today, it made me even more determined to
watch him on The Daily Show discussing his new book, “Stupid
White Men.”
I was even more interested to see the
approach Jon Stewart would take. Jon has occasionally been
a little too fawning over the likes of Peggy Noonan and CBS’s
Leslie Stahl as they’ve spread the message from the Bush
propaganda ministry. And he didn’t exactly throw any
challenging questions to Ralph Nader when he appeared recently.
So I was anxious to see if Stewart and Moore would waste precious
airtime dissing Democrats and Al Gore, in particular, and let
Bush get off easy.
I don’t know whether Moore is feeling
guilty for his election position, is incensed about having to
wage a fight against his publisher’s attempt to censor this
book, or whether the subject matter itself has him all riled up.
Maybe it’s all of the above. In any event, Moore
simply ripped into the Bush/Enron ties and managed to deliver a
laundry list of accusations that had the audience audibly
groaning at one point.
But before Moore came on, Lauren Weedman did
a scathing segment on how corporations were finally “coming
back” after years of harassment by activists armed with
“large puppets and signs.” One poor woman “activist”
who has been fighting a corporate-run hog farm that has been
built next to her house related how her medications have gone
from 3 prescriptions up to 14 daily; if she leaves her house she
has life-threatening asthma attacks. Milloy’s comments
that pesticides, PCB’s, genetically engineered foods, smoke
have never been proven to have harmful effects drew snickers from
the audience. Milloy claimed that activist groups were all
“in business” and as proof, said that one (the American
Lung Association) even placed a “no smoking” ad during
the Super Bowl (!). Weedman also “singled out”
Greenpeace’s vast “fleet of rubber dinghy’s”
as being an especially dangerous threat to corporate interests.
Weedman’s segment was a perfect setup
for Moore. Jon started off by commenting, “It’s a
shame you’ve got no material to work with these days!!
It’s so prescient, so prescient.”
Moore said he had started writing “Stupid
White Men” a year ago after he saw a newspaper item about
Ken Lay and how Bush had given him his own desk in the White
House to use when he was in town. Moore then ran down
several of the “handpicked” appointments named by Lay,
including the White House Counsel who worked for Enron and the
Secretary of the Army.Jon said he hadn’t heard about any of
this and was genuinely taken aback. “To hear Bush talk
about it,” he said, ”he met Lay at a masquerade party
and never talked to him.”
Moore then got to the Enron jet Bush used
during the campaign and told the story about how Bush flew to
opening day at Enron Stadium, not to throw out the first ball,
but to watch “Kenny Boy” throw it because Bush “just
had to be there to watch.”
Jon then said that “In general, Dick
Cheney is seen as the dark lord of energy” and uttered the
word “Halliburton” which prompted Moore to state,
“That one stinks even worse.”
Moore started on the Dick Cheney
stonewalling situation. “It’s not the minutes of
the meetings about screwing California. It’s the
meetings about the oil pipeline tjey had with the Taliban…this
was going on last August…”
Then Moore cited the New Yorker article
which questioned “why George Bush allowed the private Saudi
jet to fly to 5 American cities to pick up 20 bin Laden family
members” while no one else could fly for 3 days and how the
FBI was upset because they couldn’t interrogate any of them.
Then, a week later, the New York Times reported on the Carlyle
Group and the ties to the bin Laden’s and how they put up
the money for Bush’s first company, Arbusto.”
At this point there was rippling groan from
the audience and Moore was nearly hyperventilating.Jon finished
off the interview by saying $55 million was spent on a blowjob,
which gave Moore the chance to chime in that 200 FBI agents were
involved in the Clinton investigation and to speculate that maybe
a lot of what has happened wouldn’t have occurred “if
they had been doing their job.” Moore had smoke coming
out of his ears as he demanded accountability and said that he
wanted anyone involved in all this REMOVED.
By the way, while Moore was slamming the
Administration, Primetime on ABC was doing another “investigative”
report on the false claims heard at cosmetic counters, a topic
which has been done at least several times before to my knowledge
and isn’t exactly “breaking news.”
I don’t know how Moore is faring on
other talk shows, but he sure put on a bravura performance
tonight… OK, I have to say it: I sure wish he had used
his considerable talents differently in 2000. At least he’s
putting out some useful commentary in time for 2002. I’m
keeping my fingers crossed for 2004…
Copyright 2002, Gloria R. Lalumia
More Stuff at:
http://www.zianet.com/insightanalytical