Michael Moore’s TV Nation (man I wish this theme capitalised words in the post title’s)
I’ll admit straight off the bat that I like Michael Moore - I know all the points for claiming that he gets in the way of his own story, that his portrayal of the facts in question has been called to account and so on. And yet, despite this I find that his targets often deserve a lot of whats coming to them so….
Strangely after reading this book seems I have to say that while this book does not lack a lot of these flaws (in my humble opinion) its not as bad, maybe because its from somewhat before Moore became the household name he is today. The book covers a number of the various segments that Moore did on the show ‘TV Nation’ along with a bit of the story behind the book and some parts about the show after it finished. If your in any way familiar with Moore’s style the content of this wont be that surprising - the basic strategy is ”absurdity + corporate jerks/injustice = mockery and entertainment”. Though to be fair, that’s not all of what this show was about and its a bit unfair to label it as such.
Some of the segments cover small things - like how the residents of Greenwich used the fact that they were rich to get away with closing a public beach for their own private use or setting off car alarms outside the car alarm company’s CEO’s house. Others, despite their absurdity have a much more serious point - Crackers, the Corporate Crime-Fighting Chicken is a ridiculous concept yet the stuff he fought against in the show - unsafe baby-walkers, lead pollution and the use of ’scab’ labour are all serious issues and their being addressed was worthy of note. Among my personal favorites in the book were the visit to the former USSR to try and buy the nuclear missile that was aimed at Detroit and the ‘health care Olympics in which Moore compares the health care systems of Cuba, Canada and America - Cuba wins but the network changes it to Canada. All of which makes you wonder how many other news/documentary pieces are changed because ‘we can’t say that (for political reasons) on TV’. You also see the genesis of ‘Sicko’ in that particular piece btw.
The final chapter on the show itself covers the censored episodes - one about extreme anti-abortionists (as an aside Louis Theroux of the ‘weird weekends’ fame was the reporter who covered that segment) and again just referencing the ‘health care Olympics’ again, part of the reason that clip was censored was no advertiser wished for the piece to air near their ads. The ’savings and loan scandal’ - where they find out that nearly none of the men who had robbed all the money suffered for it at all and a few other clips.
The last bit I want to quickly talk about is the TV Nation opinion polls - which are vaugely absurd alright but do give you an insight into many Americans mindset - such as not wanting Puerto Rico to become a state becuase it would ‘mess with the flag’ to the fact that 15% of Prozac users wanted Dan Quale back because ‘Al Gore wasn’t funny enough and that while only 16% of Americans believe that ‘people are out to get them’, 46% of those own guns.
On a final note regarding the ‘fact checks’ heres a rebuttal to the ‘fact checks’ done by CNN lately…