It’s one thing that his last two films (“Capitalism: A Love Story” and “Slacker Uprising”) failed to haul in big bucks or the critical raves usually afforded his propaganda films. Some critics even started to call him out on his shaky grasp of reality – better late than never, gang!

Now, it appears Moore will say just about anything to generate press – assuming it will get him back in the public eye.

This week on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Moore told the HBO show’s crowd that the McDonald’s restaurant near Ground Zero had killed more people than the 9/11 terrorists who brought down the World Trade Center.

Did he really say something that stupid? Yawn.

The filmmaker also went on record recently in support of the mosque planned for a site two blocks from Ground Zero. Moore would rather the mosque be built ON Ground Zero. Nothing else will do for him, and the failure to build said mosque means America as he knows it is no more. He even offered to put up as much as $10,000 of his own money to support the mosque project.

So, not only is Moore’s “vision” in sharp contrast with most of the country, he’s a cheapskate, too. Surely, he has more “Fahrenheit 9/11″ money to throw toward a cherished cause, right?

Once upon a short time ago such comments would have inspired headlines, op-eds and other cries of outrage. Instead, hearing another moronic Moore diatribe is like Lady Gaga tugging on an outrageous new hat. Been there, seen it, move on.

The filmmaker’s plight isn’t all his doing. The country has shifted, dramatically, to the right over the last two years after seeing the fruits of a liberal government in action. And having a far left Democrat in the Oval Office hurts Moore’s Everyman shtick. It’s hard to fight the Power when the Power’s ideology aligns closely to yours. President George W. Bush was a Godsend to Moore, the perfect “villain” for him to target. President Barack Obama, with his soak the rich tax strategies, class warfare broadsides and inability to speak of America without apologizing for its actions, sounds like a trailer for Moore’s next film.

Truly gifted people don’t need obvious adversaries.

Consider Rush Limbaugh. The righty talker is on a serious roll these days with Obama in office, but Limbaugh’s broadcasts were just as barbed before Obama’s ascendancy. The conventional wisdom suggested Limbaugh’s allure would fade after President Bush’s narrow election victory in 2001, but nothing of the sort occurred. In fact, the talker signed a massive new radio contract in 2008 while Bush still called The White House home.

So expect more outrageous comments from Moore in the days and weeks to come. Just don’t hold your breath waiting for said comments to spark much attention.

Moore’s impact on film – and our culture – is in serious decline.

Take a look-see, for yourself, see.

Yes, the AP headline reads: “NY car bomb suspect cooperates, but motive mystery.”

Yeah it’s only a mystery if you’re in the media, and really stupid. Everyone else pretty much understands why the terrorist left a fuel bomb in an area filled with families.

He hates us. He hate our country, our culture. He wants you dead.

But the media – an entity full of fragile egos and bubble-encased boobs – just can’t see that. In fact, it’s kinda awesome how huge and gaping their blind spot toward radical Islamic fundamentalism is. If only there could be other motives for the mayhem, so they’d never having to place blame on anything (except America, of course).

So I thought I’d help them out, and find motives the media could be comfortable with.

So why did Faisal Shahzad try to blow up Time Square?

-Obviously, Global Warming. The increasing temperature forced him to jog at night, and he found the sunlight oppressive. Plus, it made his beard itch.

-Wall Street greed. Faisal had just seen “Capitalism: A Love Story,” became enraged, but got lost and ended up in the theater district. Better luck next time.

-Bill Ayers never returned his sweatpants after that weekend in Catalina. Sure, it was a great time, but those sweatpants had sentimental value.

-Lenscrafters was completely out of the Rachel Maddow collection. So he had to settle for a David Shuster knockoff.

-The latest incarnation of “The Lion King” was unoriginal and passionless. Worse, it didn’t reflect the damage George Bush did to the world the way “American Idiot” did.

-They’re building a Wal-Mart down the road, and their affordable prices deeply offended his “mom and pop” sensibilities.

-Norman Mailer doesn’t blog nearly as much on the Huffington Post as he used to.

-The electrolysis didn’t work on his pubes.

-The lack of diversity in the workplace is disgusting – well, except for MSNBC. They get a pass because their hearts are in the right place.

-That same sex marriage won’t lead to the option of marrying a goat.

- That George Clooney didn’t find anyone at the end of “Up in the Air.” Although I suppose – he did find himself.

And..

-Those evil tea partiers made of mockery of Islam with their delightful bacon and egg salad sandwiches.

I’ll stop there, because it really is the tea partier’s fault–for they created the climate of hate that only encouraged Shazhad’s actions In fact – I’d say the car bomb was a direct result of the tea partiers, the new Arizona immigration bill, Rush Limbaugh, offshore drilling, and of course, Fox News.

Because all that stuff is evil. Unlike, you know, real evil.

Should be a delightful showcase of intelligent talent on this here show!

We’ve got..

comedian Joe Devito

all around entertainer Steven Crowder!

the delightful and beautiful Brooke Goldstein

and finally, Gail Lebowitz, from Sunset Daze!

In Capitalism: A Love Story, Moore describes America has having been founded on genocide and having gotten rich on the backs of slaves. This is egregiously false. Ayn Rand explained the truth: “Capitalism cannot work with slave labor. It was the agrarian, feudal South that maintained slavery. It was the industrial, capitalistic North that wiped it out—as capitalism wiped out slavery and serfdom in the whole civilized world of the nineteenth century.” 

Moore kicks off his movie equating America to ancient Rome, running stock footage of Rome from bad B-movies, and draws all the wrong conclusions. Rome grew its greatest in its period of freedom as a republic, and collapsed after it morphed into an empire with the uncontrolled growth of government controls, including welfare state measures – bread and circuses. 

The growth of taxation and government control destroyed the Roman economy and caused the collapse of Rome – yet more taxes and government control are the very things that this fat bastard is advocating. He mocks America’s predominance in the auto industry by saying that we eliminated our competition, Germany and Japan, when in fact we saved the world from Germany and Japan not in order to destroy their auto industry but to protect the world from the tyranny and darkness they represented. Moore mentions that we destroyed Japan and Germany and claims that that’s why our auto industry became number one, but he neglects to explain why we destroyed Japan and Germany. And he says nothing about how we rebuilt Japan and Germany. In fact, we made it safe for Germany and Japan to dominate the auto industry. 

He holds Jimmy Carter up as the ideal president and holds Ronald Reagan responsible for our economic woes. Yes, the Jimmy Carter era of runaway inflation, 21% interest rates (up from the decades-long standard of low single-digit rates) is Moore’s idea of heaven. Worse still, he runs footage of Carter admonishing the American people for being too materialistic. I kid you not. 

It’s obvious that Michael Moore believes he is talking to idiots who have absolutely no concept of history or of reality. His entire movie is so fundamentally flawed that I actually thought that perhaps it was one big satirical piece, an outrageous parody. 

Moore devotes a large portion of the film to a group of protesters that won’t leave a factory that was closed. He has the audacity to bark about people power, and about how people power is all that really counts, while simultaneously millions (literally) are taking to the streets in the form of tea parties and town hall meetings in protest against big government, but about that he says nothing at all. He praises a member of Congress for encouraging open rebellion on the floor of the House against the Bush bailout. Would he encourage the same under Obama? 

There is absolutely nothing about individual responsibility in Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore tells tale after tale about this fellow being evicted from his home – a sad story, no doubt, but who put the gun to this man’s head to sign the adjustable rate mortgage? When I was mortgage shopping, I refused to sign an adjustable rate mortgage. They scared me. And while I agree with Moore that the banks are wielding an enormous amount of corrupt power hand-in-hand with the feds, the answer isn’t more government. The answer is complete deregulation. Period. No Fed. Just free men, free trade. Of course, the government regulatory apparatus that is currently in place would take years and years to disassemble. You can’t do it overnight, because everything would spin out of control. 

But ultimately, that’s the answer. The problem is government, not the rich. The answer is not more government, the answer is the individual.

Michael Moore, who has gotten rich in America attacking capitalism and America, is not only a liar; he’s also a hypocrite. Peter Schweizer, author of Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy, said this about Moore in National Review Online: “Moore professes to hate capitalism (‘the last evil empire’), but practices it in spades. Moore condemns people for their racism and claims to support and practice affirmative action, but has a lousy record of hiring minorities. He outsources post-production film work to Canada so he can pay non-union wages. I could go on and on. I would ask his fans: is this really a sincere person?”

Moore isn’t. And he isn’t the first. Ayn Rand said it decades ago: “The flood of misinformation, misrepresentation, distortion, and outright falsehood about capitalism is such that the young people of today have no idea (and virtually no way of discovering any idea) of its actual nature.” And she explained: “Capitalism has created the highest standard of living ever known on earth. The evidence is incontrovertible. The contrast between West and East Berlin, North Korea and South Korea is the latest demonstration, like a laboratory experiment for all to see. Yet those who are loudest in proclaiming their desire to eliminate poverty are loudest in denouncing capitalism. Man’s well-being is not their goal.”

Nor is man’s well-being the goal of Michael Moore. 

It seems fitting, poetic justice if you will, that Capitalism: A Love Story grossed a measly $14 million at the box office. You have to love the invisible hand of those pesky free markets.

My questions were prompted after a “letter from Michael Moore” popped into my inbox.  It was promoting the DVD launch of his documentary Capitalism – A Love Story.

Mr. Moore acknowledges that some may not have watched it in the movie theater because they were working too hard but then blames poor ticket sales on the behaviour of the very workers he pretends to defend in his documentaries.

He seems to detest working people and how he thinks they behave in the movie theater.

But for those of you who didn’t get to the theater, what’s your excuse? Didn’t want to sit through 20 minutes of TV ads up on the screen before the movie started? Don’t like sitting next to people who have 6 important cell calls to make during the film? Feet get stuck to the floor after two hours of people spilling their 164 oz. sodas, thus preventing you from getting up when the film’s over?

So in Mooreland the workers of the world are boorish, inconsiderate slobs who eat and drink to excess and mess up their theaters.

It is clear Michael Moore despises his audience, but perhaps even more tellingly, he does not even seem to know how they live or even what the inside of a movie theater looks like these days.

For one, I travel a lot across America and in the movie theaters I go to most people seem to enjoy the trailers.

Honestly, when was the last time people made a phone call, never mind six, in the theater beside you? It simply doesn’t happen anymore (if it ever really did).

And feet stuck to the floor?  In most movie theaters nowadays you could eat your dinner of the floor.  Michael Moore likes to portray workers in some kind of Dickensian nightmare struggling against uncaring bosses who will work them to death in hellish conditions. In Mooreland there are no air conditioned offices and factories or on-the-job trainings and promotions.

And in Mooreland, the movie theaters are thirty-year-old caricatures that were inaccurate even then.

So I beg the question: Does Michael Moore actually know any working people and how they behave? Or does he just despise them and their habits from so far away that he doesn’t even know what their habits are?  And given his strange assumptions about the interior of movie theaters, it seems fair to ask, does Michael Moore even go to the movies any more?

Oh, you can be certain Moore’s fellow travellers in the entertainment media will try: “It’s the 5th highest grossing political documentary of all time!” But that’s like saying , “This is the fifth best car accident I’ve had this month!” A good rule of thumb is that after theaters take their cut, 55% of ticket sales make it back to the studio, and there’s no way $8 million is anything more than a sea of red.

After peaking with a near $120 million domestic take for “Fahrenheit 9/11″ in 2004, Moore’s subsequent fall from box-office grace has been sharp. 2007’s “Sicko” cleared a disappointing but respectable $24.5 million, “Captain Mike Across America” was so sure to lose money Moore ended up distributing his ego trip for free under the guise of a populist giveaway, and now “Capitalism” — which was about as timely as one could hope — makes about two-thirds of what ”Sicko” did and is unlikely to do very well in foreign markets.

Like DVD sales, Moore’s stock is plummeting. In a 50/50 country conservatives and we Red State Rubes aren’t necessary for box office success. Two million is a generous estimate of “Capitalism” ticket buyers, which means that less than 3% of the 66.8 million who voted for Barack Obama bothered.  

Like most everything political that comes out of Leftist Hollywood these days, even Leftists aren’t interested. No one enjoys propaganda or being spoon-fed dishonesty. Just because they vote for hollow slogans, empty promises and class warfare doesn’t mean they want to spend an evening with it. 

With his cherry-picked ”facts,” absurd arguments, and heavy reliance on emotional appeals and absurd stunts, Moore’s greatest achievement might be in exposing the only real way a Leftist can argue their case, but the fifty-five year old progressive muckraker appears to have lost his mojo … even with his base. Which only goes to prove that…

Capitalism works.

Ann Althouse:

“The most striking thing in the movie was the religion. I think Moore is seriously motivated by Christianity. He says he is (and has been since he was a boy). And he presented various priests, Biblical quotations, and movie footage from “Jesus of Nazareth” to make the argument that Christianity requires socialism. With this theme, I found it unsettling that in attacking the banking system, Moore presented quite a parade of Jewish names and faces. He never says the word “Jewish,” but I think the anti-Semitic theme is there. We receive long lectures about how capitalism is inconsistent with Christianity, followed a heavy-handed array of — it’s up to you to see that they are — Jewish villains.
“Am I wrong to see Moore as an anti-Semite? I don’t know, but the movie worked as anti-Semitic propaganda. I had to struggle to fight off the idea the movie seemed to want to plant in my head.”

Read the pull piece here.

Tough times for leftie Hollywood. Nothing’s gone right this week. None of this is their fault, of course. In order to understand that it might not be a good idea to rally around a child rapist, bash religion in a religious country or trash capitalism in a capitalist country you have to live in the real world…

Steve Mason:

Michael Moore’s CAPITALISM tanks!

Ricky Gervais has launched his second consecutive box office bomb as The Invention of Lying (Warner Bros) only mustered $2.2M or so to start the 3-day. The comedy should finish #5 with approximately $6.5M for the weekend. …

[B]ut the biggest disappointment of the weekend is Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A Love Story (Overture). After a $57K per theatre average on 4 screens last weekend, the picture broke to a wider 962 locations with terrible results. The “documentary” only sold an estimated $1.3M in tickets to start the weekend, and it will finish at about $3.9M for a PTA of less than $4,000. That soft opening will almost certainly make Capitalism Moore’s weakest-grossing movie since 2002’s Bowling for Columbine ($21.5M domestic gross).

As if all this isn’t enough for our friends on the left to take in, you have $800 billion spent to get us to 9.8% unemployment, the *poof* of the public option, and a nine-month World Apology Tour resulting in Rio getting the Olympics.

And what can we expect as a result of these “teachable moments?”

What’s that phrase again…? Oh, yeah: More Of The Same.

A.O. Scott raved about the movie, and I agree on one hand that Michael Moore has finally chosen the most logical topic for his kind of film. At least Michael Moore has the nerve to finally say it: he doesn’t like capitalism. It’s absurd, it’s ridiculous, it’s akin to Lieutenant Kaffee rising and sleeping under the very blanket of freedom that Colonel Jessep provides, then questioning the manner in which he, Colonel Jessup, provides it.  I’m sure Goldman Sachs would rather Mikey just thank them and go on his way… but I digress…

Scott said something at the end of his review that made me mutter “typical liberal.” To paraphrase, he said that we should all see this movie even if we disagree with Moore. Again, I don’t know if he’s a liberal. He did say he wasn’t sure if he agreed with Moore or not.

My problem with this sentiment, even from someone who’s unsure of whether they agree with Moore or not, is that it fails to acknowledge that Moore’s work is propaganda. Furthermore, why do I need to see it? It’s just a movie. No one ever gets real serious and says to a liberal, “Even if you disagree with Ann Coulter, you should read her latest column.” And that’s what Moore’s movies are, commentary, the cinematic equivalent of a column.

Roger Ebert prefaced his latest Michael Moore interview with a similar disclaimer: “Whether or not you agree with Michael Moore, he has one piece of invaluable advice in his new film…” Moore goes on to explain derivatives and the stock market crash, and included in the interview is this non-sequitur:

One guy comes to the table and takes nine slices of the pie and everybody else at the table has to split the last slice. That’s not democracy; that’s not what Jesus said. All the great religions actually say the same thing, they all have the same basic beliefs about how to treat the poor and how the rich are not to suck everything up and make life miserable for everybody else.

There’s no real preface to this illustration, but a couple of things stand out to me. One, the illustration has nothing to do with Democracy. He’s confusing his targets here, and we’re not a Democracy, anyway. Two, he brings up Jesus. How come he gets away with that, and conservatives don’t?

My real problem with liberal attacks on capitalism, and I don’t need to see Moore’s MOVIE to know this, is that they’re not really attacking capitalism. They’re attacking greed. They say they want to regulate Wall Street, but they really think we can get rid of greed. This is, at best, naïve. Let’s regulate and eliminate lust, sloth, envy, pride, wrath, and gluttony while we’re at it. I know, Mike. That last one hurts, huh?

“Moore takes us into the homes of ordinary people whose lives have been turned upside down; and he goes looking for explanations in Washington, DC and elsewhere. What he finds are the all-too-familiar symptoms of a love affair gone astray: lies, abuse, betrayal and 14,000 jobs being lost every day. Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore’s ultimate quest to answer the question he’s posed throughout his illustrious filmmaking career: Who are we and why do we behave the way that we do?” 

Considering Moore was going to be there for a Q&A after (moderated by Arianna Huffington), I quickly signed on. Now before painting a picture of Moore’s new film, let me be honest: my belief set is essentially libertarian (“Government out of my bedroom and my pocketbook”). Not only do government solutions not excite me, they scare the living blank out of me. Remember when George Bush declared, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system to make sure the economy doesn’t collapse”? He might as well of said, “Hide your money, kids — ’cause I’m coming to take it!” 

Oh sure, in theory I would like to see everyone with their own homestead, money in their pocket for regular shopping frenzies, and no health worries despite eating at Burger King 24/7, but arriving at those goals is not exactly doable unless government robs Peter to pay Paul and/or starts up the printing press. 

And that view of course puts me in opposition to Moore since he has no problem with government as his and our father figure. That is his utopia. He truly believes that warehouses of federal workers, in Washington, D.C., remotely running our lives is the optimal plan. He is an unapologetic socialist who really doesn’t care why the poor are poor or the rich are rich, he just wants it fixed. So not surprisingly — and with some generalization as I proffer this — Democrats like Moore and Republicans don’t. 

However, I was excited to see a “mainstream” film that was backed by big Hollywood bucks conclude capitalism is “evil.” Arguably the most successful documentarian ever — a man who has made untold millions of dollars — was going to legitimately make the case that there was an alternative to capitalism. I sat down in a packed Mann’s Bruin Theatre in Westwood, California, eager to see how his vision could possibly flesh out. 

Moore is a rather simple guy. He is likable. He sees the world as good guys (people with no money) and bad guys (people with money). His Flint, Michigan, union-worker upbringing is his worldview. If you did not have that upbringing or if your life started less severe than his, you are an evil capitalist. If, on the other hand, you are a laid-off factory worker with a sixth-grade education, you are a true hero. 

I don’t care one way or the other that he has that view and I am not knocking union workers, but Moore sees the world through a class warfare lens resulting in a certain agenda: force wealth to be spread amongst everyone regardless of effort. 

Within minutes it was clear where Capitalism: A Love Story was headed. 

We listen to heartbreaking stories of foreclosed families across America — but we don’t learn why the foreclosures happened. Did these people treat their homes as piggy banks? Was there refinancing on top of refinancing just to keep buying mall trinkets and other goodies with no respect to risk or logic? We don’t find out. 

We meet one family that is so desperate for money that they were willing to accept $1,000 for cleaning out the house that they were just evicted from. Was it sad? Yes. But should we end capitalism due to this one family in Peoria, IL? 

We are introduced to a guy whose company, called Condo Vultures, is buying and selling foreclosed properties. Since he acted like a used car salesman, the implication was that he was an evil capitalist. However, Moore doesn’t tell us if his buyers were “working-class” people making smart buying decisions after prices had dropped. 

We listen to Catholic priests who denounce capitalism as an evil to be eradicated. What would they put in its place and how would the new system work? The priests don’t tell us. 

We learn that Wal-Mart bought life insurance policies on many workers. We are then told to feel outrage when Wal-Mart receives a large payout from an employee death while the family still struggles with bills. I saw where Moore was heading here, but is this a reason to end capitalism? 

We hear a story from a commercial pilot so low on money that he has to use food stamps. Moore points out that many pilots are making less than Taco Bell managers and then attributes a recent plane crash in Buffalo to underpaid pilots. This one crash is extrapolated as yet another reason to end capitalism. 

I was pleasantly surprised at Moore’s attempt at balance. For example, he included a carpenter who, while boarding up a foreclosed home, says, “If people pay their bills, they don’t get thrown out.” 

There is also a dressing-down of Senator Chris Dodd (D) by name. Moore called out a top Democrat? He sure did. He nailed him. 

There is a lengthy dissertation on the evils of Goldman Sachs. He rips Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson big time, and I agree with him. In fact, I said to myself, “Moore, you should have done your whole film on Goldman Sachs!” 

Throughout the various stories and interviews he also weaves a conspiracy theory (all Moore films do this). The plot goes something like this: America won World War II and quickly dominated because there was no competition (Germany and Japan were destroyed). We had great postwar success where everyone lived in union-like equality. Jobs were plentiful and families were happy. However, things started to go bad in the 1970s — here Moore uses a snippet of President Carter preaching about greed. This clip was predictably building to Moore’s big reason for all of today’s problems: the Reagan Revolution. 

Moore sees Reagan entering the scene as a shill for corporate-banking interests. However, everyone is happy as the good times roll all the way through into Clinton era. Moore does take subtle shots at President Clinton, but nails his right-hand economic man, Larry Summers, directly as a primary reason for the banking collapse. While Moore sees Japan and Germany today as socialistic winners where corporations benefit workers more than shareholders, he sees America sinking fast. 

So is that it? That was the proof that capitalism is an evil to eliminate? Essentially, yes, that’s Moore’s proof. 

What is his solution? Tugging on your idealistic heartstrings of course! Moore ends his film with recently uncovered video of FDR talking to America on January 11, 1944. Looking into the camera, a weary FDR proposed what he called a second Bill of Rights — an economic Bill of Rights for all — regardless of station, race, or creed — that included: 

• the right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• the right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• the right of every family to a decent home;
• the right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• the right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• and the right to a good education. 

As FDR concluded and the film ended, I was shocked at the reaction. The theater of 400-plus spectators stood and cheered wildly at FDR’s 1944 proposal. The questions running through my head were immediate: how does one legislate words like useful, enough, recreation, adequate, decent, and good? Who decides all of this and to what degree? 

Interestingly, during the Q&A, Huffington and Moore discussed bank-failure fears during the fall of 2008. They asked for a show of hands of how many people moved money around or attempted to protect against a bank failure. I had the only hand that went up. 

FDR’s plan, hauled out by Moore six decades after it was forgotten, reminded me of another interchange — this one from the 1970s. Then talk-show master — the Oprah of his day — Phil Donahue was interviewing free-market economist Milton Friedman and wanted to know if Friedman had ever had a moment of doubt about “capitalism and whether greed’s a good idea to run on?” 

Friedman was quick in response: 

Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? … The world runs on individuals pursuing their separate interests. The great achievements of civilization have not come from government bureaus. Einstein didn’t construct his theory under order from a bureaucrat. Henry Ford didn’t revolutionize the automobile industry that way. In the only cases in which the masses have escaped from the kind of grinding poverty you’re talking about, the only cases in recorded history are where they have had capitalism and largely free trade. If you want to know where the masses are worst off, it’s exactly in the kinds of societies that depart from that. So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system. 

Donahue (and the video of this on YouTube is classic) then countered saying that capitalism doesn’t reward virtue, but instead rewards the ability to manipulate the system. Friedman was having none of it: 

And what does reward virtue? You think the communist commissar rewards virtue? … Do you think American presidents reward virtue? Do they choose their appointees on the basis of the virtue of the people appointed or on the basis of their political clout? Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? … Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us? 

Friedman’s logic was what I was remembering as a theater full of people cheered wildly for a second Bill of Rights. How did this film crowd actually think FDR’s 1944 vision could be executed? Frankly, it was clear to me at that moment that capitalism is on shaky ground. From Bush “abandoning” capitalism to bailouts for everyone, to Obama gifting away the future, we seriously might be past the point of no return toward a socialization of America. 

Figuring someone else must see the problems with this film, I started poking around the net for other views. One critic declared that the value of Capitalism: A Love Story was not in the moviemaking, but in its message that hits you in the gut and makes you angry. This film did not make me angry, but it did punch me in the gut. The people in that theater with me, including Moore, were not bad people. They just seem to all have consumed a lethal dose of Kool-Aid. 

At the end of his Q&A, Moore pushed the audience to understand that while they don’t have the money, they do have the vote. He implored them to use their vote to take money from one group to give it to another group. Did he really say that openly with no ambiguity? Yes, sadly.

Moore has made plenty of claims that “Capitalism” is the summation of two full decades of work, harking back to the 1989 release of his seminal “Roger & Me,” and that this film is lobbing bombs at the figures involved.  Yet much of the time, the film has a mournful, yearning approach in showing Moore’s desire that America return to the capitalism of the pre-Jimmy Carter years: he shows that the system’s promises worked out splendidly throughout most of the nation’s history, and in particular from the boom years after WWII all the way through Ford before the nation hit Carter’s infamous assessment of “malaise” in the late ‘70s. 

He blames Carter’s disastrous turn as president for the emergence of Ronald Reagan as a president who in his eyes was fully bought and paid for by corporate America to sell an aggressively greedy reinvention of capitalism. The allegations he presents in this segment of the film fly past fast and furious, and it appears that Moore is up to the old tricks his critics accuse him of: barraging viewers with so many claims amid other funny or heartbreaking footage that half-truths and heavy-handed interpretations slip by as facts. 

Yet this time, Moore takes almost as direct a slap at Barack Obama and the men running his economic policies. In fact, one of the film’s most damning scenes comes when Moore sends one corporate logo after another flying onto the screen, spotlighting the numerous financial investment firms and major corporations that donated millions to Obama’s campaign. His strongest attack comes when he shows that Goldman Sachs – widely criticized as the firm that made off with almost as much malfeasance as individual swindler Bernie Madoff – holds particular sway in the Obama camp. 

At another point, a source says that current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is utterly hopeless for the job, and shows that highly questionable figures from the Clinton era, including former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and former Harvard president Larry Summers, are still heavily involved in the policies of today. Yet other strong segments show companies that manage to succeed while treating workers exceptionally well, including a bread factory where even assembly-line workers make $60,000 while the company’s bottom line thrives. 

Moore is expressly not asking for socialism or communism, but rather a return to letting genuine morality and concern for others play a major part in corporate decision-making. 

However, his use of Catholic priests from his stomping grounds in Michigan and the Bishop of Detroit as stern critics of capitalism who term it as literally immoral is sure to spark extensive religious debate among the faithful. 

Mixing tragic tales of foreclosed homeowners from the heartland with his usual pranks such as storming corporate headquarters in search of their executives, much of “Capitalism: A Love Story” treads well-worn ground for Moore. But his crack team of editors are sharper than ever with their hilarious contrasts between new footage and industrial films of the 1950s, and combined with Moore’s attacking both sides of the fence and showing of fascinating long-lost footage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, make the film well worth seeing and sure to stir discussion no matter what side of the political divide you’re on.