Andrew Heller: Maybe it's time to hug Mike Moore

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From the Flint Journal:

Maybe it's time to hug Mike Moore
Sunday, June 13, 2004
By Andrew Heller
Journal Columnist

"Letter to the editor writer Vagios Young brought up an intriguing question last week: How long before people in Flint forgive Michael Moore?

I'd never realized it before, but Young is right. This town really doesn't embrace and celebrate his royal rumpledness. (Not that we could in the physical sense. Not alone, anyway. We'd have to form a chain or something.)

There are no statues. (Do baseball caps translate well to copper?) There have been no ticker-tape parades. (There'd certainly be no beauty queens in the car with him. Remember what he did to poor Miss America?) He's never been presented with the key to the city. (Hey, would you give Mikey the key to YOUR house?) He's never had a day named in his honor. ("It's Michael Moore Day in Flint, everybody! Grab your video cameras and go humiliate someone!")

He wasn't even invited to the first-ever Flint Film Festival last week, for crying out loud. How odd is that? I mean, this is Flint, Michigan. We don't exactly have a lot of bananas on the tree, favorite son-wise.

We have a few pro athletes, most of whom, by the way, bug out as fast as they can and never come back, except for maybe deadbeat dad hearings. And we have a couple of rap groups and rock bands that hit it big. But we're certainly not Los Angeles, where you can't swing a silicone implant without hitting someone famous.

So you'd think we would embrace our biggest, brightest star.

And he is big and bright. Moore is internationally renowned as a filmmaker, director and author, and deservedly so.

He just won top honors at the Cannes Film Festival. Can you imagine, say, Quentin Tarantino winning such a thing and his hometown pretty much saying, "Ho hum"?

Like his work or not, Moore's even enough of an icon to appear in Billy Crystal's movie spoof at the beginning of the Oscars, which is seen by billions.

And yet when people hereabouts speak of Moore, it's often in weary tones and usually after someone from elsewhere discovers we're from the Flint area and asks, "Wow, is it really that bad there?"

"Yes, we bash and eat rabbits to survive here," is my usual response. "Care to come by for dinner?"

Therein, I think, lies the rub as far as the lack of widespread, local fondness for Moore. He's made the world think this is a shameful, downtrodden place to live, and for that sin, there may be no forgiveness.

Probably this doesn't matter to Moore. He'd probably say he didn't make "Roger & Me" to get our approval and that anyone who doesn't agree with the movie can kiss his backside.

Or it could be that he's not even aware that half the people around here resent the psychological and economic impact "Roger & Me" has had. (It's an arguable point: Did the movie in part cause GM - which certainly is capable of corporate resentment - to move more jobs out of town and fewer in?)

Whatever the case, is the aforementioned letter writer right? Is it time for Flint to let bygones be bygones and embrace and, yes, even celebrate the wonderfulness that is Michael Moore?

As a sometimes Moore fan, sometimes Moore critic, I say why the heck not? What do we have to lose? Besides, it might be fun.

See you at the Rabbit-Skinning Festival."

Andrew Heller's columns can be read here.