Michael Moore's Decline

From Michael Moore’s latest screed against Americans in Germany’s Die Zeit: (Via Jeff Jarvis.)

Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don’t even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English (and we don’t even speak that very well.) …
Ok, come on you Germans, you really know better!

Michael Moore fashions himself a defender of the common man and woman against the elites. So far, so good. But surely his snarling condescension toward “such an ignorant people” isn’t targetted at the elite.
He doesn’t understand the Internet. Articles in German magazines get translated these days, and they get linked on blogs. Consider yourself busted, Mikey, for trash-talking your people, not only your countrymen but also who is supposed to be your fan base.
He wants to know how “such an ignorant people” came to “lead the world” in the first place. Apparently he’s a part of the “ignorant” masses himself.
America leads the world because it is the only world power left standing at the end of the 20th Century. Germany (which supposedly “knows better” and is where his article is published) turned Europe into a smouldering crater. It’s hard to lead the world from beneath a pile of wreckage. Japan was a world power, too, but it went on one wicked rampage too many. Belgium and France had power, but their vicious imperialism in Asia and Africa led to a long-overdue ass-whooping. The last world power, the Soviet Union, imploded in a spasm of idiocy and evil of its own making.
America did none of that. We skipped the whole communist/fascist/imperialist thing. So here we are. The only world power, aside from Britain, that didn’t chew off its own leg.
Why do so many Americans have no passport? Because we don’t need one to travel anywhere on this continent. Mexico and Canada don’t ask for one. North America is huge and travelling farther away is expensive. Michael Moore is trash-talking the little guy (whom he supposedly champions) because the little guy doesn’t make enough money to travel to Paris and Rio every year.
And what’s this about us not being able to speak English well? Puh-leeze. He’s just insulting America in Germany because it pays well. He wouldn’t bad-mouth our English in Michigan where he grew up.
Last year I discovered that my wife didn’t know who Michael Moore was. So we rented his first movie Roger and Me and we both loved it. I still like that movie, but I feel bad now that I introduced my wife to an assclown. She can consider this post a product recall.
Conservatives never liked Michael Moore, but there really was a time when he was a reasonable guy, when he had a sense of humor, when he made decent movies. Not any more.
And it isn’t just disgruntled liberals who are sick of him. The leftists at Dissent don’t have much time for him either.
Meanwhile, go read Armed Liberal’s superb essay about patriotic liberalism. Michael Moore, you had better take notes.