The Public Interest Forum takes on themes in Moore’s “Stupid White Men.”
By Joyce White
Special to the Sun Journal

NORWAY – Last week’s Public Interest Forum at Norway Memorial Library used Michael Moore’s book, “Stupid White Men,” as the basis for a discussion of what they call nationwide injustices and abuses of power.

Panel member Gary Hicks, a Boston peace activist, observed that Moore expresses moral indignation in ways that evoke laughter to keep us from crying.

Moore writes in the introduction that prior to 2000, “life seemed to be getting a whole lot better” with a “cash surplus large enough to fix every road, bridge and tooth in America.” Then things began to unravel. Now, he says, NOTHING seems to be working. “You want to talk to a real human being in customer service? HA HA HA. Press 4 and kiss the rest of your day goodbye.”

Freedom of choice? A thing of the past, he writes. Anything you’ll ever need is at Wal-Mart, and the two political parties “sound alike, vote alike and are funded by the same wealthy donors.”

And it has all happened, he writes, because of “stupid white men” and their policies.

Panel moderator Ken Carstens said people need to face the fact we are confronting grave problems and Moore reminds us of some of them.

Panelists discussed some of the problems.

Tilla Durr said the events of Sept. 11, 2001, hadn’t happened when he wrote the book, and Moore had no idea of the evidence of corporate malfeasance, like the Enron scandal, that has since been uncovered.

“Things simply are not working. More and more people are becoming aware something is wrong in the corporate culture,” she said.

She said we can’t blame only white men, that the whole system of exploitation and greed can’t be overlooked. She also asked how American capitalism came to be called democracy, with the two terms used interchangeably.

Pat Fogg described Moore as an unlikely hero whom you can’t help respecting. Fogg said she grew up believing Democrats were always good, noble humanitarians saving the planet. It was a rude awakening for her, she said, to realize Democratic as well as Republican administrations had supported foreign leaders who terrorized their own people, that all administrations are captive to special interests.

Peter Lenz discussed the abuses of power in the educational system from Moore’s point of view, saying we’re a nation that not only turns out illiterates, but places a higher priority on building bombers than educating kids.

Lenz didn’t disagree with the author but pointed out that Moore doesn’t address the problems he sees in the schools, propaganda and the perpetuation of lies about our history and policies. Kids get no praise for doing their own thinking, he asserted, and dissent is “quieted.”

In his discussion of prisons, Carstens mentioned Moore’s comparison of the imbalance between the justice meted out to drug users compared with that of corporate wrongdoers, citing the 200-year sentence of the Koch brothers for drug use, not pushing.

That’s just one example, Carstens said.

Hicks said white men running the country are not really stupid, that they hold interests that are opposed by the values of the poor, and they know how to enforce the system they’ve set up to benefit themselves.

Carstens agreed that white men are smart in looking after their own interests but truly stupid in not seeing the bigger picture, that they and their policies are driving the world and the planet into oblivion.

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