Michael Moore: Wal-Mart Proves Its Own Evil By… Selling My DVDs

I’ll bet all of you have been thinking to yourselves lately, “Hey, I wonder what Michael Moore’s been up to? He was so much fun back in the day—lying about the country in the midst of a war for her survival, rooting for the people trying to kill American soldiers, and lamenting that the wrong people got killed on 9/11—that he surely has valuable things to say about today’s political landscape!”

Well, okay, none of you were thinking that. I wasn’t thinking that. But unfortunately, he’s back anyway, shilling his latest crock-umentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, on the Daily Beast.  Moore writes to explain why the evil Wal-Mart is more than willing to sell his DVDs, despite how they expose the evils of capitalism:

The corporate coup is complete. Corporations like Wal-Mart now call all the shots, write all the laws, pay off almost all the congressmen and essentially (along with the other Fortune 500 companies and Wall Street) rule the nation. They’ve helped to eliminate consumer choice and the free market while convincing you they are all for “free enterprise” and the “U.S.A.”

More importantly, they’ve snuffed out any criticism or opposition. They’ve even co-opted liberals, like the people who made the wonderful documentary, Food, Inc. The last half-hour of this movie includes—I kid you not—an homage to Wal-Mart as the filmmakers swoon over this kinder, gentler company that has decided to—bless them! —put an organic food counter in their stores! Thank you, Wal-Mart! Kumbaya! (And hey, granolaheads, don’t forget to flash a smile on the way out of the store at the “greeter” who can’t afford to see a doctor.)

Yes, Wal-Mart, by selling Capitalism, is saying to me: “Go ahead Mike and expose us all you want! Hahahhaha! We’re so convinced that the public has either been dumbed down or made numb enough to not give a lick about whatever it is you’re saying about us and capitalism. We can sell a million of these and it won’t make a damn bit of difference about our ability to rule the world. So knock yourself out, big guy! Hehehehehehe. Go ahead and put your little movie on our shelves. It will never start a revolution.”

Putting aside the jarring fact that the company supposedly “snuff[ing] out any criticism or opposition” is selling DVDs of “criticism or opposition” (did I miss the part where Wal-Mart started controlling airwaves and shutting down chat rooms?), I’ll agree that Wal-Mart doesn’t see Moore as much of a threat, but not because the fix is in—but because they probably haven’t analyzed him to the degree he wishes they had. I hate to break it to ya, Mike, but the selection at any place that sells movies is going to be predominantly left-wing. Your baby, sorry to say, is just another disc on the rack.

For another thing, his reputation is such a complete trainwreck among all but the most hardcore leftists that nothing he says can be taken seriously any more.  Gun control, Election 2000, President George W. Bush, the Iraq War, Cuban healthcare…he’s willfully and demonstrably lied about it all.  His self-image as a man of the common folk doesn’t square with the profits he’s made off the Americans he considers “the dumbest people on the planet” or off of Halliburton stocks, or the fact that he doesn’t bat an eye at taking advantage of capitalism or corporate handouts, no matter how many times he complains about either.

That alone should be more than enough to dissuade anyone from loving this Love Story, but for good measure, let’s take a look at the claim from the film that Moore highlights here:

…a movie that specifically exposes Wal-Mart’s past practice of taking out secret “dead peasant” life-insurance policies on its employees and naming itself as the lone beneficiary should the employee meet an “untimely” early death…

Note the phrase “past practice.” That’s because Wal-Mart only took out such policies between 1993 and 1995, and canceled all of them way back in 2000—a fact that you won’t learn from the movie, unless you sit through the credits for the fine print.

Michael Moore’s socialist fantasies and bloated sense of self-importance might lead him to think otherwise, but there’s no conspiracy behind Corporate America’s reaction to his movie’s DVD release.  He thinks of the American people as gullible, but the truth is that we know a fraud when we see one.

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Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College.  He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.