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"Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore |
Of all the problems surfacing in the new millennium, one sticks out as the largest threat to the United States: stupid white men.
At least that’s what "Stupid White Men" author Michael Moore proclaims.
Perhaps the main reason that these so-called stupid white men are such a danger is that, in Moore’s view, they are the cause of virtually every major crisis brewing inside the nation’s borders. Moore specifically targets the Bush administration – a cluster of government officials operating under a man who evidently has no right to lead the United States, he says.
According to Moore, President George W. Bush cheated his way through the 2000 presidential election – a process ignited by the actions of Katherine Harris, his campaign co-chairperson. Harris, also the Florida Secretary of State in charge of elections, received approval from George W. Bush’s brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush, to have Database Technologies rid Florida’s voter lists of anyone suspected of being a former felon.
Harris told Database Technologies to exclude people with names, birth dates and/or Social Security numbers similar to those of known felons. Because an 80 percent match of relevant information was sufficient enough, thousands of eligible voters were removed from the lists, in addition to the thousands of felons legitimately eliminated by this filtering process.
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"Stupid White Men" by Michael Moore |
Eight thousand more Florida residents were denied their voting privileges due to a list identifying alleged felons who had recently moved to the state. However, these ex-offenders had actually served their time and were allowed to vote.
Furthermore, according to Moore, Republicans began accepting overseas ballots signed and postmarked after Election Day in an effort to pull Bush into the lead. The Fox News Channel – under the orders of John Ellis, Bush’s first cousin – formally declared Bush the winner before the election had finished. And the final boost came from the Supreme Court itself when the judges suddenly halted the vote recount in Florida, citing the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
"There was a lot of controversy surrounding the election," says photography major James Schwartz of Ypsilanti. "There should’ve been more of an investigation afterwards. I heard a lot of suspicious things about Bush. I think a lot of it was forgotten after the events of Sept. 11, but I’m sure everyone will pay closer attention to the next presidential election to avoid the chaos of the last one."
Although he was too young to vote at the time, 18-year-old Schwartz assures that the 2000 election definitely influenced how he’ll look at the next one.
"I’m sure we’ll all be looking for any signs of deceit," Schwartz says.
Bush now resides in the White House, presiding over what Moore calls "a very American coup." Many of his Cabinet members have shown highly favorable behavior toward those who aid them financially. For example, Secretary of the Treasury Paul O’Neill served as president and CEO of Alcoa, the world’s largest aluminum manufacturer – a company allowed to emit 60,000 tons of sulfur dioxide each year.
Additionally, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham has voted against increasing fuel-efficiency requirements for SUVs. One of his largest contributors was DaimerChrysler, an automaker trying to stop the increase in fuel-economy standards.
"These connections obviously aren’t coincidences," says hotel employee Michael Rader, 23, of Grand Rapids. "Politicians always reward their supporters and, quite often, that means providing some sort of loophole so these companies can get away with almost anything. It’s pretty unfair to the rest of us."
In "Stupid White Men," the incompetent males Moore blames extend beyond the team at the White House to individuals in the criminal- justice system.
In 1993, 27-year-old schizophrenic Kerry Sanders was arrested in California for trespassing. When police discovered that Kerry shared a birthday and the same last name as escaped criminal Robert Sanders, they sent him to New York to serve out Robert’s sentence. They failed to examine many blunt indications that he was not the criminal they sought.
Kerry Sanders remained in prison for two years until Robert Sanders was arrested in Cleveland.
Incidences like this are not uncommon, Moore emphasizes. His own sister worked as a public defender in a county office that allowed only one felony client out of nearly 900 defendants to have a jury trial.
One of Moore’s most prominent prison concerns is that of the death penalty. He references a study of over 4,500 cases between 1973 and 1995 which showed "that the courts found serious, reversible error in nearly seven out of every ten capital-sentence cases that were fully reviewed during the period. The overall prejudicial review error rate was 68 percent."
"DNA tests are proving prisoners’ innocence more and more these days," says Mike Kleeman, a 20-year-old engineering major at the University of Michigan. "I think there’s a lot more error in the criminal-justice system than we’re exposed to, and if more people were aware of things like unjust sentences, the use of the death penalty would be severely questioned."
Examining the issue of capital punishment even further, Moore notes that the United States is the only country other than Somalia that has not signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. He suggests that this is because it contains a provision prohibiting the execution of children under the age of 18 – a procedure permitted in the states. However, no other industrialized nation executes its children.
"It’s sickening that our leaders won’t agree to sign for the rights of our children," says Carrie Tavemaro, a 19-year-old elementary-education major from Canton. "It makes us look extremely insensitive, if not downright brutal."
In "Stupid White Men," Moore also recognizes multitudes of other national – even worldwide – threats: corporate America, conflicts in areas such as the Middle East, global warming and other environmental dilemmas, ongoing discrimination and the Democratic Party.
A native of Flint, Mich., Moore originally worked for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader before producing films such as "Roger & Me," "The Big One" and "Canadian Bacon."
In addition to writing the book "Downsize This: Random Threats from an Unarmed American," he has worked with Kathleen Glynn to create two Emmy-nominated shows, "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth."