Watch: Michael Moore Tells 'Angry White Guys' to 'Give It Up,' Seth Meyers Agrees
Perhaps it’s just that I occasionally commute to reality, but when I hear a story about the words “give it up” used in conjunction with Michael Moore, I just assume we’re talking about his career. There’s plenty of evidence that America agrees with him; the latest masterpiece from the Leni Riefenstahl of Flint, Michigan — “Fahrenheit 11/9” — has grossed $8.4 million so far. To use an insider term that Hollywood types use to describe that kind of box office performance, that’s “really, really bad.”
But, no — this being America’s favorite self-delusional schlub, he wasn’t talking about the performance of his latest movie. Instead, he was talking about those perfidious “angry white guys” who are doing so much damage to his not-really-beloved country.
And yes, we know that Michael Moore is an “angry white guy.” But he’s the good kind of angry white guy, so check your privilege. But he says all angry white guys need to give up power so that women could make the shots for the next few centuries.
Moore made this brilliant pronouncement on “The Late Show With Seth Meyers,” which I’m guessing is having booking problems. He says that he’s uniquely qualified to make this dictum because he’s one of the president’s base.
“I’m really Trump’s demographic,” Moore said. “I’m an angry white guy over 50 with a high school education.”
Yes, an angry white guy over 50 with a high school education … who’s worth over $50 million and is privileged enough to be invited on talk shows (yeah, I know Seth Meyers isn’t a real talk show host but play along here) to pontificate on his political opinions despite no actual credentials or insight — which makes him uniquely qualified to speak about anything except how to get a political documentary made despite the fact you have no actual credentials or insight.
He then had some words for his fellow “angry, white, American guys.”
“Dudes, give it up! We’ve been running the show for 10,000 years,” Moore said.
“Let the majority gender run the show. What are you scared of?”
Here’s the full interview, just in case you hate yourself:
It’s interesting that I know a rather hefty assemblage of white, male Trump supporters — and plenty of non-white, non-male Trump supporters at that, but let’s stick with the Caucasian males for a second — and none of them are as angry (or as stereotypically white, quite frankly) as Michael Moore is. By his logic, if you want to stick it to angry white males, elect Trump again.
That doesn’t make any sense, mind you, but neither does Moore. Yet, as you can see, Seth Meyers totally agrees with this drivel.
For that matter, I’d like to wonder: when have working-class white males been running the show, at least for 10,000 years?
I don’t think Moses became the leader of the Jews because blue collar voters tipped Wisconsin his way, leaving Aaron complaining bitterly that two million more people voted for him to lead the Exodus (I mean, if he hadn’t died beforehand) and that the Electoral College ought to be abolished.
I don’t particularly remember artisans and merchants being the ones who presented the Magna Carta to King John at Runnymeade. If we want to take this all the way back, I’m pretty sure the caveman election of 7,996 B.C. between Oog and Og wasn’t decided by members of the club-makers union.
In fact, inasmuch as “white men” have been running the show, they generally aren’t the “angry white guy over 50 with a high school education” but instead are exactly the kind of person who makes snide remarks about the “angry white guy over 50 with a high school education” at their Yale reunion.
All of a sudden Trump gets elected and this is apparently reason enough to turn everything over to women and let them make all of the decisions because, uh. Well, this is the part in Moore’s movies where logic runs out and he just shows some woman clubbing rabbits to death because that’s a metaphor for capitalism and class or whatever.
So, how is this supposed to engender equality? How is letting one class have power over another class — because that class apparently had power over the other class — going to solve inequality? It’s not, but it feels good to liberals and it’s the kind of stuff that gets votes in this identity politics age.
Seth Meyers may be desperate enough to bring this man on to babble about this kind of nonsense, but that doesn’t mean we have to listen to it.
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