Moore Of the Same

This past Sunday I attended a panel discussion at the annual film festival in Montclair, New Jersey, about documentaries. It was hosted by noted filmmaker Michael Moore, who used the opportunity to get people interested in promoting more screenings of documentary films in movie theaters, because a documentary as a shared viewing experience, as opposed to seeing it along on TV, is a good way to encourage social change.

But not necessarily bring it about: Moore was the first to admit that his own movies, such as Bowling For Columbine (about guns), Fahrenheit 9/11 (about the Iraq War) and Sicko (about health care), didn't lead to saner gun laws, a 2004 Bush defeat, or single-payer medical insurance, respectively.  One member of the audience told Moore he found it difficult to imagine positive change ever occurring in his lifetime, and he was middle-aged. Moore said he was hopeful by seeing how American youth support the liberal agenda by popular majorities, date outside their own races, and support marriage rights for those who don't date outside their own genders. Therefore, logic follows, American civilization can't help but be better.

Right. I remember reading how music critic and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph Gleason made a similar prediction in 1970, saying that a generation turned on to the truth by Bob Dylan wouldn't be content working for large corporations and retiring with a pension like their fathers (mothers? highly implausible) did. He predicted that when Richard Nixon and his sort died off, the Baby Boomers would be in charge and everything would be better in America. It was inevitable.

Gleason, who lived long enough to see Nixon brought down by Watergate, died in 1975, and he was thus spared the knowledge that Jann Wenner, his partner in getting Rolling Stone off the ground, would boast to advertisers a decade later that the majority of his readers voted to give Ronald Reagan a second term as President. When Nixon himself died in 1994, many of those rock and roll fans from back in the seventies voted to give the Republicans full control of Congress for the first time since before rock and roll appeared on the record charts. And, when supply-side economic theory was about to expire as policy after three decades in 2010, those same Baby Boomers put the Tea Party in charge, renewing it for a fourth decade (and possibly beyond). If I may use a comparison Rolling Stone readers would recognize, the American progressive movement has had more failed comebacks than Peter Frampton.

Michael Moore had better be prepared for greater disappointment to follow.

And Ralph Gleason thought we'd all be better of just because there were lots of people who knew the words to "Maggie's Farm"?