Stupid Whitemen...reviewed by John Nixon

Consider this book as a mirror of what is yet to come. When you're finished put it down again and commit to root out every stupid white guy from every position of power.

Michael Moore

Readers are lucky to have this book available to them given that the publishers Regan Books, i.e. HarperCollins, i.e. Rupert Murdoch demanded that 50% of it be changed and when refused demanded payment of $50, 000 for promising to reduce 50,000 printed copies to pulp. That's American capitalism … something for nothing and money for Godsake. Penguin books showed enterprise and came to the rescue. The rest they say is literary history.

Stupid White Men has sold more copies than any other non-fiction book in the USA. Michael Moore whose origins stem back to Cork and Tipperary and like our own Brending Beh-hing gained fame and notoriety in equal dosage when he became the best ‘banned’ (author) in the land of the semi-free. All this in the wake of Nine Eleven and amidst the paranoia, anger and seething vengeance against all who would dare oppose or criticise the American dream-cum-nightmare. But as Moore observes 'In this new era of repression words are now considered as dangerous as terrorists.' Nothing new to us in Ireland who know all about suppression of expression and political opinion.

You won't need a spin doctorate to read through the lines in this book. The author can be both funny and furious in one sentence. Moore has laid bare the harsh, undeniable realities of a society that is controlled via state and corporate police, via subliminal and overt media influences, through legislative and attitudinal discrimination and all done in the name of justice, freedom and opportunity. This is privileged America; warts and WASPs and all. A land where every poor man (and woman) still carries the stupid rich white man's burdens. Corrupt politicians who sell political privilege for money. Brown envelopes are big in America and the great and the good are so corrupted by the blood dimmed tide of greed, affluence and ambition ...they can do no other.

Moore clinically unravels America's darkened soul and calls on his readers to commit themselves to purging those who would deny the awful truth that is the reality of 21st century America. This is Bush's America. Ever ready for war, determined to exact vengeance and desperate for oil. This is the America of classroom massacres and gaols bulging with black people. It is the land of greed and money that spawns creatures like Michael Jackson and Eminem.

This is America where the Civil War hasn’t gone away you know. A land of de-franchised coloured people. A population of 200 million where 154 million did NOT vote for Bush. But Moore isn't whinging about the state of America while exposing its dark underbelly. In Stupid White Men he offers a valuable blueprint for a better future for all. He explains how it can be achieved. He urges action and he advocates people self-empowerment. He is constructively radical.

His book should be adapted to British and Irish situations bought and distributed by the powers that be and given free of charge to all able-minded and right thinking citizens. It's no alternative for revolution but the way things are going, who knows, it might prevent one.