Audiences
Audiences in 2011
Background information
Origin	Chicago, IL
Genres	Indie rock, alternative, pop, folk rock
Website	http://www.audiencesmusic.com
Members
Billy Jesus Brian Suarez Stephen Kraniotis Bobby Is

Audiences is an indie rock band based in Chicago, Illinois.

The band has been described to have musical elements similar to bands like Polaris, Vampire Weekend, and MGMT.^[1]

The Otterarium is home to Audiences practice space and members Billy Jesus and Cardigan, located in Lakeview, Chicago it is also where the band self-released their first live album; 'Live at The Otterarium'.

Audiences is currently recording their first LP.

Singles[link]

• Ghosts - (April 2012)
• Mountainesque - (March 2011)

Live Albums[link]

• Live at The Otterarium (February 2011)
• Live at Lincoln Hall (March 2011)

References[link]

This article may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding references. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. More details may be available on the talk page. (April 2011)

Michael Parenti
Michael Parenti
Born	1933 New York City
Occupation	political scientist, historian, and media critic
Nationality	American
Education	City College of New York, B.A. Brown University, M.A. Yale University, Ph.D.
Subjects	History, Politics, Economics
Children	Christian Parenti
www.michaelparenti.org

Michael Parenti is an American political writer, historian, and culture critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at American and international universities and has been a guest lecturer before campus and community audiences.^[1][2] He has played an activist role in political struggles, and in various anti-war movements.

Background[link]

Parenti received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He is the author of twenty four books and many more articles. His works have been translated into at least eighteen languages.^[3] Parenti lectures frequently throughout the United States and abroad. He wrote The Assassination of Julius Caesar,^[4] He is the father of Christian Parenti, an author and contributor to The Nation magazine.

Parenti's writings cover a wide range of subjects: U.S. politics, culture, ideology, political economy, imperialism, fascism, communism, democratic socialism, free-market orthodoxies, conservative judicial activism, religion, ancient history, modern history, historiography, repression in academia, news and entertainment media, technology, environmentalism, sexism, racism, homophobia, Venezuela, the wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia, ethnicity, and his own early life.^[5][6][7] Perhaps his most influential book is Democracy for the Few,^[8] now in its ninth edition, a critical analysis of U.S. society, economy, and political institutions^[9] and a college-level political science textbook published by Wadsworth Publishing.^[10] In recent years he has addressed such subjects as "Empires: Past and Present," "US Interventionism: the Case of Iraq," "Race, Gender, and Class Power," "Ideology and History," "The Collapse of Communism," and "Terrorism and Globalization."^[3]

Michael Parenti was raised in an Italian-American working-class family and neighborhood in New York City about which he has written.^[11] For many years Parenti taught political and social science at various institutions of higher learning. Eventually he devoted himself full-time to writing, public speaking, and political activism.^[12]

In 1974, Parenti ran in Vermont on the Liberty Union Party ticket for U.S. Congress and received 7% of the vote.^[13]

In Washington, D.C., in 2003, the Caucus for a New Political Science gave him a Career Achievement Award. In 2007, he received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from U.S. Representative Barbara Lee and an award from New Jersey Peace Action. In the 1980s, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.

He served for some 12 years as a judge for Project Censored. He also is on the advisory boards of Independent Progressive Politics Network, and Education Without Borders; as well as the advisory editorial boards of New Political Science and Nature, Society and Thought.^[14]

Social and political analyses[link]

Parenti has covered many subjects in 45 years of teaching, writing, and speaking. The broad outlines of some of these are summarized below.

Racism[link]

Parenti argues that western racism is systemic and historical in nature and should be regarded as more than just an attitudinal problem^[15]. He identifies the origins of western racism in imperialism and slavery: To justify the colonial plunder of another nation or entire continent (as in the case of Africa) as well as the enslavement of conquered populations, imperialists and/or slave traffickers dehumanize their victims and define them as moral inferiors and subhuman.

Parenti maintains that racism serves several functions for ruling interests in the United States:^[16]

1. It divides the working class against each other.
2. It creates a "super-exploited" group of people who are forced to work at below scale wages thereby depressing wage levels for the entire workforce.
3. It distracts the (United States) white population from its own legitimate grievances by providing an irrelevant scapegoat in the form of minority populations

Culture and social structure[link]

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, becoming increasingly critical of the existing socio-economic system, Parenti argued that images of the United States as a pluralistic, democratic society were more ideological than accurate. He did not deny the existence of a vast plurality of social, ethnic, and regional groups in America, but he felt that this group pluralism did not translate into a democratic pluralism in political life. Only limited portions of the political process are accessed by the general populace. Power in America is not broadly distributed, according to Parenti, but is highly concentrated in a social structure dominated by corporate moneyed interests, whose influence predominates in most mainstream institutions and major policy areas.^[8] Parenti maintains that the resources of power are lodged in the social structure itself, the culture, institutions, and established social roles, and that ruling elements maintain their dominant positions not only by raw economic power but by attaining “cultural hegemony,” a concept formulated earlier by Antonio Gramsci (whom Parenti cites).^[17]

Role of US media[link]

With respect to the US media Parenti has maintained that, while news coverage can be marred by problems of deadlines, space, and ordinary human error, much of the misleading coverage is the result of carefully honed ideological production. Reporters, he says, often exercise much skill to avoid the more important points of a story or news analysis so as not to offend anyone who wields substantial political and economic power, including their own bosses and corporate advertisers. Parenti concludes that their goal is to avoid fishing too deeply into troubled waters thereby maintaining an appearance of objectivity and moderation. Their careers, he suggests, depend in part upon their ability to equate centrist views with “objectivity,” and to stay within the prevailing ideological orthodoxy.^[18]

Parenti’s treatment of entertainment media (movies and television) continues the argument that the media are not neutral and favor elitist interests. Exploring a wide range of films and programs, he has attempted to demonstrate that the entertainment media do more than entertain; they indoctrinate by propagating values in keeping with their corporate ownership and corporate advertisers.^[19] Most recently, he wrote the foreword to Matthew Alford's Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy (Pluto Press, 2010).

Parenti often attacks specific examples of the misleading coverage provided by the US media. In Blackshirts and Reds^[20] he cites historian J. Arch Getty's figures to demonstrate the exaggeration elsewhere in the US media of the executions effected by Joseph Stalin in the Great Purge. Parenti critically reviews Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia^[21] in "The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic"^[22] and To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia ,^[23] finding similar exaggeration of war crimes in the breakup of the second Yugoslavia. In "Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth"^[24] he observes, "western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La" then goes on to detail what he feels were its negative aspects.

Culture across the globe[link]

Parenti maintains that, far from being neutral, culture is often ideologically driven in a highly skewed system of social power, benefiting some groups at the expense of others. “Growing portions of our culture are increasingly commodified and mass marketed.” “So we buy more and more of our culture and create less and less of it.” Rather than being accepted at face value, Parenti says that all cultures should be subjected to critical investigation to be judged by “universal human rights standards” and by the criticisms voiced by those who are victimized within the various cultures of the world. Parenti gives extensive attention to those who are regularly victimized by their own cultures, providing examples in chapters entitled “Custom Against Women,” “The Global Rape Culture,” and “Racist Myths.”^[16]

Role of voting fraud in US elections[link]

Parenti is among those who have cited a variety of studies claiming that the 2004 presidential election was fraudulent. In an essay entitled "The Stolen Election of 2004"^[25] he argued that modern voting technology allowed powerful corporations to manipulate the electoral results. He concluded the article by observing, about the forthcoming US election, "Given this situation, it is not likely that the GOP will lose control of Congress come November 2006. The two-party monopoly threatens to become an even worse one-party tyranny." In an updated analysis of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, he adds a postscript explaining why—despite the massive crossover reported in the polls away from the GOP-—the Democrats won only a slim victory in the Congressional 2006 elections.”^[26]

Class and class power[link]

Parenti stresses the role of class in all societies, particularly the purportedly classless US one. He extends the definition of class as a demographic trait relating to status, education, lifestyle, and income level to include the effects of social interrelationships. He observes that there can be no rich slaveholders without poor slaves, no powerful feudal lords without serfs, no corporate bosses without workers. The interrelationship is highly asymmetrical. It centers on the organized wealth of the society.^[8]

Parenti also believes that there is a third factor involved in class relationships, specifically the productive resources (land, agriculture, herds, natural resources, factories, technology, etc.). The dominant group in class relationships owns or controls these economic resources. The weaker class historically has had only its labor to sell. Hence the “dominant money classes” exercise a preponderant influence over workforces, markets, major investments, consumption patterns, media, and public policies. Parenti concludes that when discussing class, class power—how it is used, for whose interests, and at whose expense—must also be discussed.^[27]

US downplay of class[link]

Parenti has repeatedly criticized the tendency among many who profess to be progressive to downplay the importance of class and class power as a formative force as compared to race, gender, and culture. He allows that each of these other categories of social experience have imperatives that are distinctly their own, sometimes of a life-and-death urgency. Still they should not be seen as being mutually exclusive of, or in competition with, considerations of class power in society, he argues, and should not be used as a means of evading class analysis.^[28]

Democracy and capitalism[link]

From the late 60s well into the 80s, Parenti was one of many radicals and socialists who questioned the validity and value of what they called “bourgeois democracy,” seeing it more as a charade to mislead the people into thinking that they were free and self-governing. By the late 80s, however, he noticeably modified his position, arguing that democracy should not be thought of as merely a subterfuge or cloak created by ruling elites, although it certainly can serve that purpose. More often, Parenti claimed, whatever modicum of democracy the people attain in any society is usually the outcome of genuine struggle for a more equitable politico-economic order. He asks why the corporate class should be credited with giving people a “bourgeois democracy,” when in fact the ruling plutocrats furiously opposed most democratic advances in U.S. history, such as the extension of the franchise or the struggle for ethnic and gender equality, more direct forms of representation, more room for dissent and free speech, greater accountability of elected officials, and more equitable socio-economic domestic programs.^[8]

According to Parenti, reacting to mainstream commentators who turn every systemic vice and deficiency into a virtue, leftist critics of the status quo, seeing no real victories or progress in the centuries of popular struggle, have felt compelled to turn every virtue into a vice. To counter this trend, he says, people should recognize that real gains have been made, democracy refuses to die, and both at home and abroad popular forces, continue the democratic struggle, even against great odds.^[29]

For Parenti, democracy has two basic dimensions, the procedural and the substantive, both of which are equally important. Procedural democracy consists of the basic political forms: free speech and assembly, the right to dissent, accountability of officeholders, the right to vote in regular and honest elections, etc. Substantive democracy consists of egalitarian socio-economic outputs that advance the well-being of the populace, protect the environment, and curb the abuses and often untrammeled powers of great wealth. Parenti quotes the German sociologist Max Weber who remarked almost a century earlier that it remains to be seen whether democracy and freedom can exist under the dominion of a highly developed capitalism.^[8]

Parenti concludes that “there is no one grand, secret, power elite governing this country, but numerous coteries of corporate and governmental elites that communicate and coordinate across various policy realms. Behind their special interests are the common overall interests of the moneyed class,” which is not to say that differences never arise among these elites.

Technology, money, and deficit spending[link]

Parenti believes that people's thinking about past and present developments needs to be contextualized, that is seen in a social context of power and ideology. He gives the examples of technology and money. Both are seen as neutral entities that are inherently neither good nor bad. This may be true hypothetically, he writes, but, in reality, both technology and money have been developed within specific historical contexts by powerful interests that gained great advantage from their development. Almost all technology, he argues, is devoted to advancing the interests of higher circles, maximizing profits and corporate production, or in the case of government, maximizing surveillance, communication, and military striking power. New advances in technology are not neutral things. They impact upon us and our environment in ways that can advantage some and hurt others, according to Parenti. He writes similarly about money: "Like technology, money has a feedback effect of its own, advantaging the already advantaged", liquefying wealth, making it easier to mobilize and accumulate. With the growth of moneyed wealth comes a greater concentration and command over technology by the moneyed class.^[30]

Few phenomena in the social order can operate with neutral effect even if supposedly pursued with neutral intent, according to Parenti. The national debt is a good example. Considered merely as a “problem” of excessive government spending, the national debt in fact works well for certain interests, specifically the moneyed class, Parenti claims. By 1977,he noted how the national debt brought a transfer of income from the taxpayers to the wealthy creditors, the holders of government bonds. The greater the debt, the greater the upward transfer, as the government continues to borrow money from those they should be taxing (the big money interests). Parenti concludes it is no accident that the biggest deficit spenders have been conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan and both George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The national debt is in effect a way of privatizing public spending and defunding the federal budget, Parenti argues. The bigger the debt, the less money available for domestic programs, and the more money that goes from the pockets of ordinary taxpayers to rich creditors.^[8]

Fascism[link]

Parenti’s treatment of fascism differs from that of the many writers who stress the irrational features of fascism: its state idolatry, nationalistic atavism, and leadership cult. While not denying that these are key components in the propagation of fascism’s appeal, he invites us not to overlook the “rational politico economic functions” that fascism performed. “Much of politics is the rational manipulation of irrational symbols,” he claims. The emotive appeals of fascist ideology have served a class-control function, “distracting the populace from their legitimate grievances and directing their frustrations at various scapegoats.”

Most of the immense literature on the subject of fascism and Nazism focuses on who supported Hitler’s rise to power. Relatively little, Parenti writes, is said about whom the Nazis supported when they came to power. In both fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, he points out, wages were cut drastically, domestic programs were rolled back, huge subsidies were given to heavy industry, labor unions were broken, taxes on the very rich were greatly reduced or eliminated altogether, and workplace safety regulations were ignored or abolished. Fascism, he concludes, has a much overlooked politico- economic agenda; it involves something more than just goose stepping.^[31]

Empire[link]

U.S. foreign policy is neither confused nor bungling, according to Parenti. It is quite consistently directed toward certain goals, and is largely successful. For the most part, U.S. leaders have maintained friendly relations with those governments that have opened up their countries to Western corporate investors, and have shown hostility toward those countries that have tried to use their land, labor, natural resources, and markets for their own self-development, Parenti believes. Iraq was targeted for “having committed economic nationalism,” with a state-run economy that pretty much shut out Western investors. The same holds true for Yugoslavia, he claims. Both countries were bombed and invaded, and their public economies were shattered. Parenti believes that Yugoslavia was transformed from a viable social democracy to a cluster of little right-wing mini-republics.

Parenti's beliefs led him to become head of the United States chapter of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević,^[32] in which capacity he added to the criticisms of bias in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia^[33][34]

Parenti also maintains that the U.S. empire feeds off the U.S. republic. The empire’s expansion abroad entails increasing costs for the republic. Ventures that are profitable for military contractors and overseas investors have to be paid in blood and taxes by the American populace. The many third world countries that are the targets of colonial intervention pay the highest price, he writes. They suffer not from underdevelopment, but from “maldevelopment,” a result of generations of overexploitation.^[35]

Communism[link]

Many on the left continue to deliver impassioned and blanket condemnations of deceased communist countries, Parenti states. “Those of us who refused to join in the Soviet bashing were branded by left anti-communists as ‘Soviet apologists’ and ‘Stalinists,’ even if we disliked Stalin and his autocratic system of rule and believed there were things seriously wrong with existing Soviet society.”^[20]

Parenti did in fact make a number of criticisms of the Soviet Union. In 1986 he wrote: "In the USSR there exist serious problems of labor productivity, industrialization, urbanization, bureaucracy, corruption, and alcoholism. There are production and distribution bottlenecks, plan failures, consumer scarcities, criminal abuses of power, suppression of dissidents, and expressions of alienation among some of the population."^[36]

More recently he wrote that the state-owned economies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union suffered “fatal distortions in their development” because of the years of “embargo, invasion, devastating wars, and costly arms buildup; excessive bureaucratization and poor incentive systems; lack of administrative initiative and technological innovation; and a repressive political rule that allowed little critical expression and feedback while fostering stagnation and elitism.”^[6] Some on the left heavily criticized Parenti for what they saw as his defense of such regimes, however, in his book Blackshirt and Reds.

Parenti argues that “despite the well-publicized deficiencies, crimes, and injustices, there were positive features about existing communist systems that were worth preserving, such as the free medical care and human services; affordable food, fuel, transportation, and housing; universal literacy; gains in women’s rights; free education to the highest level of one’s ability; a guaranteed right to a job; free cultural and sporting events, and the like.”^[6] He supported Gorbachev’s campaign of perestroika and glasnost until 1990 when it became evident to him that the Gorbachev reforms were leading to the implantation of free-market capitalism and were, as he saw it, bringing hardships to the common people.^[37]

Social democracy[link]

Parenti maintains that the structural problems of free-market transnational capitalism will only worsen the living standards of people in the United States and abroad, while deepening the environmental crises. He advocates a greater measure of public ownership in the USA. Parenti asks “can socialism work? ... Is it not just a dream in theory and a nightmare in practice? Can the government produce anything of worth?”^[8] He goes on to point out that it already does, citing publicly owned transportation systems, utilities, banking, education, and health services that are run efficiently by the governments of the USA and various social democracies and at a far lesser cost than their private counterparts.

Ecology[link]

Parenti points to the increasingly catastrophic droughts, storms, floods, and abnormally high temperatures in many parts of the world to justify a hypothesis that the widely discussed ecological crisis of global warming will not be upon us “by the end of the century” or “in the lives of our grandchildren,” but is already happening today. He builds on this in an essay, "Why the Corporate Rich Oppose Environmentalism,"^[6] to argue that immediate and immense profits that come at a cost to the environment are of more concern to corporate investors than the diffuse and long-run damage done to the global ecology.

History and historiography[link]

Much of Parenti’s work draws upon history. In his History as Mystery^[38] he takes the old adage that history is written by the victors and fleshes it out with examples drawn from ancient and modern times. In regard to early Christianity, for instance, he maintains that, contrary to popular notions, the “Jesus worshipers” did not gather most of their followers from the poor and downtrodden but from the more affluent strata. Some Christian leaders discouraged slaves from converting to Christianity. Slaves were prohibited from becoming church deacons or priests, he maintains. Contrary to conventional US notions, he argues that the Christians were not the keepers of learning and scholarship during the Dark Ages but played a relentless role in destroying all the advanced learning and all the libraries of antiquity that were in their reach.

In The Assassination of Julius Caesar,^[4] he states that many historians, both ancient and modern, have treated popular insurgencies and the common people with fear and loathing, depicting them as mindless rootless mobs of ne’er-do-wells. He also argues that Caesar and other popular reformers of the Roman Republic before him were assassinated not because they were violating the Roman constitution but because they were advocating reforms that benefited the commoners at a cost to the aristocracy. He does not draw a link between Caesarism and the eventual descent of the Republic into the despotism of the Empire.

References in popular culture[link]

• New York City based punk rock band Choking Victim use a number of samples from Michael Parenti's lectures in their album, No Gods, No Managers.

Appearances in Film and Television[link]

Apart from several recordings of some of his public speeches, Parenti has also appeared in the 1992 documentary Panama Deception and the 2004 documentary Liberty Bound as an author and social commentator.

In addition, he was interviewed for two episodes of the Showtime series Penn & Teller: Bullshit!, speaking briefly about the Dalai Lama (Episode 305 - Holier Than Thou) and patriotism (Episode 508 - Mount Rushmore).

Bibliography[link]

• The Anti-Communist Impulse, Random House, 1970.
• Trends and Tragedies in American Foreign Policy, Little, Brown, 1971.
• Ethnic and Political Attitudes, Arno, 1975. ISBN 0-405-06413-6
• Democracy for the Few, First Edition circa 1974, Eighth Edition 2007.^[8] ISBN 0-495-00744-7, ISBN 978-0-495-00744-9
• Power and the Powerless, St. Martin's Press, 1978. ISBN 0-312-63372-6, ISBN 0-312-63373-4
• Inventing Reality: the Politics of News Media. First edition 1986, Second Edition 1993. ISBN 0-312-02013-9, ISBN 0-312-08629-6
• The Sword and the Dollar: Imperialism, Revolution and the Arms Race, St. Martin's, 1989. ISBN 0-312-02295-6
• Make-Believe Media: the Politics of Entertainment, St. Martin's Press, 1992. ISBN 0-312-05603-6, ISBN 0-312-05894-2
• Land of Idols: Political Mythology in America, St. Martin's, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09497-3, ISBN 0-312-09841-3
• [1] Against Empire Published by City Lights Books, 1995, ISBN 0-87286-298-4, ISBN 978-0-87286-298-2, 217 pages
• Dirty Truths, City Lights Books, 1996. Includes some autobiographical essays. ISBN 0-87286-317-4, ISBN 0-87286-318-2
• Blackshirts & Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism, City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1997. ISBN 0-87286-329-8, ISBN 0-87286-330-1
• America Besieged, City Lights, 1998. ISBN 0-87286-338-7, ISBN 0-87286-338-7
• History as Mystery, City Lights, 1999. ISBN 0-87286-357-3, ISBN 0-87286-364-6
• To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, Verso, 2000, ISBN 1-85984-776-5
• The Terrorism Trap: September 11 and Beyond, City Lights, 2002. ISBN 0-87286-405-7
• The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People's History of Ancient Rome, The New Press, 2003. ISBN 1-56584-797-0.^[4]
• Superpatriotism, City Lights, 2004. ISBN 978-0-87286-433-7
• The Culture Struggle, Seven Stories Press, 2006. ISBN 1-58322-704-0, ISBN 978-1-58322-704-6
• Contrary Notions, City Lights Books, 2007.^[6] ISBN 0-87286-482-0, ISBN 978-0-87286-482-5
• God and His Demons, Prometheus Books, 2010
• The Face of Imperialism, (Paradigm, 2011)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Michael Parenti Political Archive maintained by Michael Parenti
• Booknotes interview with Parenti on The Assassination of Julius Caesar, September 7, 2003.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Michael Parenti

Michael Parenti's articles[link]

• GIobal Rollback: After communism
• Dubious Design (Creationism & Intelligent Design)

Audio[link]

• Talks by Michael Parenti - MP3 format.
• TUC Radio's Michael Parenti Archive - recordings available for purchase.
• Michael Parenti talks about “The Culture Struggle” May 2007 on Democracy Now radio.
• October 2006 interview on KPFA radio.

Ed Sullivan
Sullivan in 1955
Born	Edward Vincent Sullivan (1901-09-28)September 28, 1901 New York City, New York, U.S.
Died	October 13, 1974(1974-10-13) (aged 73) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Television host Writer
Years active	1932–1973
Spouse	Sylvia (m. 1930–1973)

Edward Vincent "Ed" Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host, best known as the presenter of the TV variety show The Ed Sullivan Show. The show was broadcast from 1948 to 1971 (a total of 23 years), which made it one of the longest-running variety shows in U.S. broadcast history.^[1]

In 1996, Ed Sullivan was ranked #50 on TV Guide's "50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time".^[2]

Early life and career[link]

Sullivan was born in New York City, New York, the son of Elizabeth F. (née Smith) and Peter Arthur Sullivan, a customs house employee.^[3] He was of Irish descent.^[4] A former boxer, Sullivan began his media work as a newspaper sportswriter for The New York Evening Graphic.^[5] When Walter Winchell, one of the original gossip columnists and the most powerful entertainment reporter of his day, left the newspaper for the Hearst syndicate, Sullivan took over as theatre columnist. His theatre column was later carried in The New York Daily News. His column, 'Little Old New York', concentrated on Broadway shows and gossip, as Winchell's had and, like Winchell, he also did show business news broadcasts on radio. Again echoing Winchell, Sullivan took on yet another medium in 1933 by writing and starring in the film Mr. Broadway, which has him guiding the audience around New York nightspots to meet entertainers and celebrities. Sullivan soon became a powerful starmaker in the entertainment world himself, becoming one of Winchell's main rivals, setting the El Morocco nightclub in New York as his unofficial headquarters against Winchell's seat of power at the nearby Stork Club. Sullivan continued writing for The News throughout his broadcasting career and his popularity long outlived that of Winchell.

Television[link]

Sullivan with Cole Porter on Toast of the Town in 1952.

In 1948, the CBS network hired Sullivan to do a weekly Sunday night TV variety show, Toast of the Town, which later became The Ed Sullivan Show. Debuting in June 1948, the show was broadcast from CBS Studio 50, at 1697 Broadway (at 53rd Street) in New York City, which in 1967 was renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater (and is now the home of The Late Show with David Letterman).^[6]

Television critics gave the new show and its host poor reviews.^[7] Harriet Van Horne alleged that "he got where he is not by having a personality, but by having no personality." (The host wrote to the critic, "Dear Miss Van Horne: You bitch. Sincerely, Ed Sullivan."^[8]) Sullivan had little acting ability; in 1967, 20 years after his show's debut, Time magazine asked "What exactly is Ed Sullivan's talent?"^[8] His mannerisms on camera were so awkward that some viewers believed the host suffered from Bell's palsy.^[8] Time in 1955 stated that Sullivan resembled

a cigar-store Indian, the Cardiff Giant and a stone-faced monument just off the boat from Easter Island. He moves like a sleepwalker; his smile is that of a man sucking a lemon; his speech is frequently lost in a thicket of syntax; his eyes pop from their sockets or sink so deep in their bags that they seem to be peering up at the camera from the bottom of twin wells.^[7]

The magazine concluded, however, that "Yet, instead of frightening children, Ed Sullivan charms the whole family."^[7] Sullivan appeared to the audience as an average guy who brought the great acts of show business to their home televisions. ("Ed Sullivan will last", comedian Fred Allen said, "as long as someone else has talent",^[7] and frequent guest Alan King said "Ed does nothing, but he does it better than anyone else in television."^[8]) He had a newspaperman's instinct for what the public wanted, and programmed his variety hours with remarkable balance. There was something for everyone.^[7] A typical show would feature a vaudeville act (acrobats, jugglers, magicians, etc.), one or two popular comedians, a singing star, a hot jukebox favorite, a figure from the legitimate theater, and for the kids, a visit with puppet "Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse." The bill was often international in scope, with many European performers augmenting the American artists.^[8]

Sullivan had a healthy sense of humor about himself and permitted—even encouraged—impersonators such as John Byner, Frank Gorshin, Rich Little and especially Will Jordan to imitate him on his show. Johnny Carson also did a fair impression, and even Joan Rivers imitated Sullivan's unique posture. The impressionists exaggerated his stiffness, raised shoulders, and nasal tenor phrasing, along with some of his commonly used introductions, such as "And now, right here on our stage...", "For all you youngsters out there...", and "a really big shew" (his pronunciation of the word "show"). Will Jordan portrayed Sullivan in the films I Wanna Hold Your Hand, The Buddy Holly Story, The Doors, Mr. Saturday Night, Down with Love, and in the 1979 TV movie Elvis.^[9]

In 1963, Ed Sullivan appeared as himself in the film Bye Bye Birdie.

Sullivan, the starmaker[link]

Ed Sullivan congratulates Izhak Perlman after a concert at Tel-Aviv, in 1958.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Sullivan was a respected starmaker because of the number of performers that became household names after appearing on the show. He had a knack for identifying and promoting top talent and paid a great deal of money to secure that talent for his show.

When Elvis Presley became popular, Sullivan was wary of the singer's bad-boy style and said that he would never invite Presley on his program. However, Presley became too big a name to ignore, and Sullivan scheduled him to appear on September 8, 1956. In August, however, Sullivan was injured in an automobile accident that occurred near his country home in Southbury, Connecticut. Sullivan had to take a medical leave from the series and missed the Elvis Presley show. Charles Laughton wound up introducing Presley on the Sullivan hour.^[10] After Sullivan got to know Presley personally, he made amends by telling his audience, "This is a real decent, fine boy."^[11]

Sullivan's failure to scoop the TV industry with Presley made him determined to get the next big sensation first. In 1964, he achieved that with the first live American appearance of The Beatles, on February 9, 1964, the most-watched program in TV history to that point and still one of the most-watched programs of all time.^[12] The Beatles appeared three more times on the Sullivan show in person, and submitted filmed performances later. Sullivan struck up such a rapport with the Beatles that he agreed to introduce them at their momentous Shea Stadium concert on August 15, 1965. The Dave Clark Five, heavily promoted as having a "cleaner" image than the Beatles, made 13 appearances on the Sullivan show, more than any other UK group.

Unlike many shows of the time, Sullivan asked that most musical acts perform their music live, rather than lip-synching to their recordings. Some of these performances have recently been issued on CD.^[13] Examination of performances show that exceptions were made, as when a microphone could not be placed close enough to a performer for technical reasons. An example was B.J. Thomas' 1969 performance of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head", in which actual water was sprinkled on him as a special effect. In 1969, Sullivan presented the Jackson 5 with their first single "I Want You Back", which ousted the B. J. Thomas song from the top spot of Billboard's pop charts.

Sullivan, shown here dressed up in a clown suit, hosted the 1972 special Clownaround.

Sullivan appreciated African American talent. He paid for the funeral of dancer Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson out of his own pocket. He also defied pressure to exclude African American musicians from appearing on his show. One of Sullivan's favorite and most frequent acts was The Supremes, who appeared 17 times on the show, helping to pave the way for other Motown acts to appear on the show such as The Temptations, The Four Tops, and Martha and the Vandellas.

At a time when television had not yet embraced country and Western music, Sullivan was adamant about featuring Nashville performers on his program. This insistence paved the way for shows such as Hee Haw and variety shows hosted by country singers like Johnny Cash and Glen Campbell.

The act that appeared most frequently through the show's run was the Canadian comedy duo of Wayne & Shuster, making 67 appearances between 1958 and 1969.

Sullivan also appeared as himself on other television programs, including an April 1958 episode of the Howard Duff and Ida Lupino CBS sitcom, Mr. Adams and Eve. On September 14, 1958 Sullivan appeared on What's My Line? as a mystery guest, and showed his comedic side by donning a rubber mask. In 1961, Sullivan was asked by CBS to fill in for an ailing Red Skelton on The Red Skelton Show. Sullivan took Skelton's roles in the various comedy sketches; Skelton's hobo character "Freddie the Freeloader" was renamed "Eddie the Freeloader."

Personality[link]

There was another side to Sullivan: he could be very quick to take offense if he felt he had been crossed, and could hold a grudge for a long time. This could sometimes be seen as a part of his TV personality. Jackie Mason, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, and The Doors became intimately familiar with Sullivan's negative side.

On November 20, 1955, Bo Diddley was asked by Sullivan to sing Tennessee Ernie Ford's hit "Sixteen Tons". Diddley sensed the choice of song would end his career then and there, and instead sang his #1 hit "Bo Diddley". He was banned from the show.

Buddy Holly and the Crickets had first appeared on the Sullivan show in 1957, singing two songs and making a favorable impression on Sullivan. He invited the band to make another appearance in January 1958. Sullivan thought their record hit "Oh, Boy!" was too raucous and ordered Holly to substitute another song. Holly had already told his hometown friends in Texas that he would be singing "Oh, Boy!" for them, and told Sullivan as much. Sullivan was unaccustomed to having his instructions disobeyed. When the band was summoned to the rehearsal stage on short notice, only Holly was in their dressing room. Sullivan said, "I guess The Crickets are not too excited to be on The Ed Sullivan Show," to which Holly, still annoyed by Sullivan's attitude, replied, "I hope they're damn more excited than I am." Sullivan, already bothered by the choice of songs, was now even angrier. He cut the Crickets' act from two songs to one, and when introducing them mispronounced Holly's name, so it came out vaguely as "Buddy Hollett." In addition, Sullivan saw to it that the microphone for Holly's electric guitar was turned off. Holly tried to compensate by singing as loudly as he could. The band was received so well that Sullivan was forced to invite them back for a third appearance. Holly's response was that Sullivan did not have enough money. Footage of the performance survives; photographs taken that day show Sullivan looking angry and Holly smirking and perhaps ignoring Sullivan.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was set to appear on the show, but network censors rejected the song he wanted to perform, "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", as potentially libelous to the John Birch Society. Refusing to perform a different song, Dylan walked off the set at dress rehearsal. Sullivan, who had approved the song at a previous rehearsal, backed Dylan's decision. The incident resulted in accusations against the network of engaging in censorship. This was not the first incident of apparent network censorship on Sullivan's show. In 1956, Sullivan flew to Europe and was able to film an interview with Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, and Helen Hayes on the set of the film Anastasia. When he arrived home, Sullivan learned he would not be able to air the Bergman material from it.^[10]

Jackie Mason was banned from the series in October 1964 (the ban was removed a year and a half later, and Mason made his final appearance on the show). During a taping of Mason's monologue Sullivan, off camera, gestured that Mason should wrap things up, as the show was suddenly shown live following an abbreviated address by President Lyndon Johnson, which was expected to preempt the entire show.^[14] The nervous Mason told the audience, "I'm getting two fingers here!" and made his own frantic hand gesture: "Here's a finger for you!" Videotapes of the incident are inconclusive as to whether Mason's upswept hand was intended to be an indecent gesture, but Sullivan's body language immediately afterward made it clear that he was convinced of it, despite Mason's panic-stricken denials later.^[15] Sullivan later invited Mason back for a return engagement, but the notoriety of the "finger" incident lingered with the studio audience.

When The Byrds performed on December 12, 1965, David Crosby got into a shouting match with the show's director. They were never asked to return.^[16][17]

On January 15, 1967 The Rolling Stones were told to change the chorus of "Let's Spend the Night Together" to "Let's spend some time together". Lead singer Mick Jagger complied, but deliberately called attention to this censorship by rolling his eyes and mugging when he uttered the new words.^[18] Shortly, after the performance, the Stones went backstage, and came back on stage, dressed in Nazi uniforms with swastikas, which caused an angry Sullivan to tell them to go back to their dressing rooms and change back into their performing outfits, however, the Stones left the studio and Sullivan banned the group from ever appearing on his show again.^{[19][Full citation needed][page needed]} Nonetheless, the Stones appeared on the show one final time on November 23, 1969.^[20]

The Doors were banned on September 17, 1967 after they were asked to remove the lyric "Girl, we couldn't get much higher" from their song "Light My Fire" (CBS censors believed that it was too overt a reference to drug use). The band was asked to change the lyric to "girl we couldn't get much better". Morrison sang the original lyric.^[21]

Moe Howard of the Three Stooges recalled in 1975 that Sullivan had a memory problem of sorts: "Ed was a very nice man, but for a showman, quite forgetful. On our first appearance, he introduced us as the Three Ritz Brothers. He got out of it by adding, 'who look more like the Three Stooges to me'."^[22] Joe DeRita, who worked with the Stooges after 1959, had commented that Sullivan had a personality "like the bottom of a bird cage."^[23]

Diana Ross later recalled Sullivan's forgetfulness during the many occasions The Supremes performed on his show. In a 1995 appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman (which is filmed in Ed Sullivan Theater), Ross stated, "he could never remember our names. He called us 'the girls'." ^[24][25]

In a 1990 press conference Paul McCartney recalled meeting Sullivan again in the early 1970s. Sullivan apparently had no idea who McCartney was. McCartney tried to remind Sullivan that he was one of The Beatles but Sullivan obviously could not remember and, nodding and smiling, simply shook McCartney's hand and left.

Politics[link]

Sullivan, like many American entertainers, was pulled into the Cold War fervor of the late 1940s and 1950s. In 1949, Sullivan booked dancer Paul Draper to appear on Toast of the Town. However, Draper’s scheduled appearance in January 1950 was met with opposition from Hester McCullough, a woman who involved herself in the hunt for subversives. McCullough accused Draper of sympathizing with the communist party, and although Draper denied the accusation, McCullough demanded that Sullivan’s lead sponsor, the Ford Motor Company, cancel Draper’s appearance. Despite McCullough’s protest, Draper was a guest on Toast of the Town, as was originally scheduled. After the program was broadcast, Ford received over a thousand angry letters and telegraphs in response to Draper’s appearance. Consequently, Sullivan was obligated to write a letter of apology to Ford’s advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhardt, promising to never again move forward with such a controversial guest. Meanwhile, Draper was forced to move to Europe to earn a living.^[26]

Another guest who never appeared on the show because of the controversy surrounding him was legendary African-American singer-actor Paul Robeson, who, at the time of the Draper incident, was undergoing his own troubles with the industry's hunt for supposed Communist sympathizers.

After the Draper incident, Sullivan began to work closely with Theodore Kirkpatrick of the anti-communist Counterattack newsletter. Sullivan would check with Kirkpatrick if a potential guest had some "explaining to do" about his politics. Sullivan wrote in his June 21, 1950 New York Daily News column that "Kirkpatrick has sat in my living room on several occasions and listened attentively to performers eager to secure a certification of loyalty."^[27] Jerome Robbins, in his PBS American Experience biography, claimed that he was forced to capitulate to the House Un-American Activities Committee, identifying eight Communist sympathizers and disgracing himself among his fellow artists, allegedly because Sullivan threatened to reveal Robbins's homosexuality to the public.

Later years and death[link]

In the fall of 1965, CBS began televising the weekly programs in color. Although the Sullivan show was seen live in the Central and Eastern time zones, it was taped for airing in the Pacific and Mountain time zones. Most of the taped programs (as well as some early kinescopes) were preserved, and excerpts have been released on home video.

By 1971, the show's ratings had plummeted. In an effort to refresh their lineup, CBS cancelled the program along with some of its other longtime shows. Sullivan was angered by this so greatly that he refused to do a final show, although he remained with the network in various other capacities and hosted a 25th anniversary special in 1973.

In early September 1974, X-rays revealed that Sullivan had advanced esophageal cancer. Only his family was told, however, and as the doctors gave Sullivan very little time, the family chose to keep the diagnosis from him. Sullivan, still believing his ailment to be yet another complication from a long-standing battle with ulcers, died five weeks later, on October 13, 1974, at New York's Lenox Hill Hospital.^[28] His funeral was attended by 3,000 at St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York on a cold, rainy day. Sullivan is interred in a crypt at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Personal life[link]

Sullivan was engaged to champion swimmer Sybil Bauer, but she died of cancer in 1927 at the age of 23.^[29] He was married to the former Sylvia Weinstein from April 28, 1930, until her death on March 16, 1973. They had one daughter, Betty Sullivan (who married the Ed Sullivan Show's producer, Bob Precht). Sullivan was in the habit of calling Sylvia after every program to get her immediate critique.

Sullivan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6101 Hollywood Blvd.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Leonard, John, The Ed Sullivan Age, American Heritage, May/June 1997, Volume 48, Issue 3
• Nachman, Gerald, Ed Sullivan, December 18, 2006.
• Maguire, James, Impresario: The Life and Times of Ed Sullivan, Billboard Books, 2006
• Bowles, Jerry, A Thousand Sundays: The Story of the Ed Sullivan Show, Putnam, 1980
• Barthelme, Donald, "And Now Let's Hear It for the Ed Sullivan Show!" in Guilty Pleasures, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1974

External links[link]

Biography portal

• The Official Ed Sullivan Show Website
• Ed Sullivan at the Internet Movie Database
• Ed Sullivan at TVGuide.com
• Overview of Ed Sullivan's life
• The Ed Sullivan Show – Rock 'n' Roll Classics

Michael Moore
Moore in New York to promote his memoir Here Comes Trouble, September 2011
Born	Michael Francis Moore (1954-04-23) April 23, 1954 (age 58) Flint, Michigan, United States[1]
Alma mater	University of Michigan–Flint
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter, producer
Years active	1972–present[2]
Religion	Roman Catholic[3]
Spouse	Kathleen Glynn (1991–present)
Website
michaelmoore.com

Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author, social critic and activist.^[4] He is the director and producer of Fahrenheit 9/11, which is the highest-grossing documentary of all time.^[5] His films Bowling for Columbine and Sicko also place in the top ten highest-grossing documentaries.^[5] In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections.^[6] He has also written and starred in the TV shows TV Nation and The Awful Truth.

Moore criticizes globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton^[7] and George W. Bush, the Iraq War, the American health care system, and capitalism in his written and cinematic works.

Personal life[link]

Moore was born in Flint, Michigan,^[1] and raised in Davison, a suburb of Flint, by parents Veronica (née Wall), a secretary, and Frank Moore, an automotive assembly-line worker.^[8][9][10] At that time, the city of Flint was home to many General Motors factories, where his parents and grandfather worked. His uncle LaVerne was one of the founders of the United Automobile Workers labor union and participated in the Flint Sit-Down Strike.^[11]

Moore was brought up Catholic,^[12] attended parochial St. John's Elementary School for primary school and later attended St. Paul's Seminary in Saginaw, Michigan, for a year.^{[13][8][14][15][16]} He then attended Davison High School, where he was active in both drama and debate,^[17] graduating in 1972. As a member of the Boy Scouts of America, he achieved the rank of Eagle Scout.^[8] At the age of 18, he was elected to the Davison school board.^[18]

Since 1990, Moore has been married to producer Kathleen Glynn,^[19] with whom he has a stepdaughter named Natalie. Moore is a Catholic,^[3][20] but has said he disagrees with church teaching on subjects such as abortion^[21] and same-sex marriage.^[22]

Following the Columbine High School massacre, Moore acquired a life membership to the National Rifle Association (NRA). Moore said that he initially intended to become the NRA's president and dismantle it, but he soon dismissed the plan as too difficult.^[23][24] Observers such as Dave Kopel noted that there was no chance of that happening;^[25] authors David T. Hardy and Jason Clarke wrote about how Moore failed to discover that the NRA selects a president not by membership vote but by a vote of the board of directors.^[26]

In 2005 Time magazine named Moore one of the world's 100 most influential people.^[27] Also in 2005, Moore started the annual Traverse City Film Festival in Traverse City, Michigan.

Career[link]

After dropping out of the University of Michigan–Flint following his freshman year (where he wrote for the student newspaper The Michigan Times), Moore worked at the local Buick plant.^[28] At 22 he founded the alternative weekly magazine The Flint Voice, which soon changed its name to The Michigan Voice as it expanded to cover the entire state. In 1986, when Moore became the editor of Mother Jones, a liberal political magazine, he moved to California and The Michigan Voice was shut down.

Moore at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009

After four months at Mother Jones, Moore was fired. Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard reported this was for refusing to print an article by Paul Berman that was critical of the Sandinista human rights record in Nicaragua.^[29] Moore refused to run the article, believing it to be inaccurate. "The article was flatly wrong and the worst kind of patronizing bullshit. You would scarcely know from it that the United States had been at war with Nicaragua for the last five years."^[30] Moore believes that Mother Jones fired him because of the publisher's refusal to allow him to cover a story on the GM plant closings in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. He responded by putting laid-off GM worker Ben Hamper (who was also writing for the same magazine at the time) on the magazine's cover, leading to his termination. Moore sued for wrongful dismissal, and settled out of court for $58,000, providing him with seed money for his first film, Roger & Me.^[31]

Directing/producing[link]

Roger & Me

Moore first became famous for his 1989 film, Roger & Me, a documentary about what happened to Flint, Michigan, after General Motors closed its factories and opened new ones in Mexico, where the workers were paid much less. Since then Moore has been known as a critic of the neoliberal view of globalization. "Roger" is Roger B. Smith, former CEO and president of General Motors. Harlan Jacobson, editor of Film Comment magazine, said that Moore muddled the chronology in Roger & Me to make it seem that events that took place before G.M.’s layoffs were a consequence of them. Critic Roger Ebert defended Moore's handling of the timeline as an artistic and stylistic choice that had less to do with his credibility as a filmmaker and more to do with the flexibility of film as a medium to express a satiric viewpoint.^[32]

Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint

(1992) is a short (23-minute) documentary film that was aired on PBS. It is based on the feature-length film Roger & Me (1989) by Michael Moore. The film's title refers to Rhonda Britton, a Flint, Michigan, resident featured in both the 1989 and 1992 films who sells rabbits as either pets or meat.^[33]

Canadian Bacon

In 1995, Moore released a satirical film, Canadian Bacon, which features a fictional US president (played by Alan Alda) engineering a fake war with Canada in order to boost his popularity. It is noted for containing a number of Canadian and American stereotypes, and for being Moore's only non-documentary film. The film is also one of the last featuring Canadian-born actor John Candy, and also features a number of cameos by other Canadian actors. In the film, several potential enemies for America's next great campaign are discussed by the president and his cabinet. (The scene was strongly influenced by the Stanley Kubrick film Dr. Strangelove.) The President comments that declaring war on Canada was as ridiculous as declaring war on international terrorism. His military adviser, played by Rip Torn, quickly rebuffs this idea, saying that no one would care about "... a bunch of guys driving around blowing up rent-a-cars."

The Big One

In 1997, Moore directed The Big One, which documents the tour publicizing his book Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American, in which he criticizes mass layoffs despite record corporate profits. Among others, he targets Nike for outsourcing shoe production to Indonesia.

Bowling for Columbine

Moore's 2002 film, Bowling for Columbine, probes the culture of guns and violence in the United States, taking as a starting point the Columbine High School massacre of 1999. Bowling for Columbine won the Anniversary Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival^[34] and France's César Award as the Best Foreign Film. In the United States, it won the 2002 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. It also enjoyed great commercial and critical success for a film of its type and became, at the time, the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary (a record now held by Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11).^[5] It was praised by some for illuminating a subject avoided by the mainstream media.

Fahrenheit 9/11

Fahrenheit 9/11 examines America in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, particularly the record of the Bush administration and alleged links between the families of George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. Fahrenheit was awarded the Palme d'Or,^[35] the top honor at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival; it was the first documentary film to win the prize since 1956. Moore later announced that Fahrenheit 9/11 would not be in consideration for the 2005 Academy Award for Documentary Feature, but instead for the Academy Award for Best Picture. He stated he wanted the movie to be seen by a few million more people via a television broadcast prior to election day. According to Moore, "Academy rules forbid the airing of a documentary on television within nine months of its theatrical release", and since the November 2 election was fewer than nine months after the film's release, it would have been disqualified for the Documentary Oscar.^[36] However, Fahrenheit received no Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The title of the film alludes to the classic book Fahrenheit 451 about a future totalitarian state in which books are banned; according to the book, paper begins to burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. The pre-release subtitle of the film confirms the allusion: "The temperature at which freedom burns." At the box office, as of 2010 Fahrenheit 9/11 is the highest-grossing documentary of all time, taking in over US$200 million worldwide, including United States box office revenue of almost US$120 million.^[5] In February 2011, Moore sued producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein for US$2.7 million in unpaid profits from the film, claiming they used "Hollywood accounting tricks" to avoid paying him the money.^[37]

Michael Moore at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival receiving a standing ovation for Sicko

Sicko

Moore directed this film about the American health care system, focusing particularly on the managed-care and pharmaceutical industries. At least four major pharmaceutical companies — Pfizer, Eli Lilly, AstraZeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline — ordered their employees not to grant any interviews to Moore.^[38][39][40] According to Moore on a letter at his website, "roads that often surprise us and lead us to new ideas—and challenge us to reconsider the ones we began with have caused some minor delays." The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2007, receiving a lengthy standing ovation, and was released in the U.S. and Canada on June 29, 2007.^[41] The film was the subject of some controversy when it became known that Moore went to Cuba with chronically ill September 11th rescue workers to shoot parts of the film. The United States is looking into whether this violates the trade embargo. The film is currently ranked the fourth highest grossing documentary of all time^[5] and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.^[42]

Captain Mike Across America

Moore takes a look at the politics of college students in what he calls "Bush Administration America" with this film shot during Moore's 60-city college campus tour in the months leading up to the 2004 election.^[43][44] The film was later re-edited by Moore into Slacker Uprising.

Capitalism: A Love Story

On September 23, 2009, Moore released a new movie titled Capitalism: A Love Story, which looks at the late-2000s financial crisis and the U.S. economy during the transition between the incoming Obama Administration and the outgoing Bush Administration. Addressing a press conference at its release, Moore said, "Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him."^[45]

Writing[link]

Moore has written or co-written eight non-fiction books, mostly on similar subject matter to his documentaries. Stupid White Men (2001) is ostensibly a critique of American domestic and foreign policy but, by Moore's own admission, is also "a book of political humor."^[46] Dude, Where's My Country? (2003), is an examination of the Bush family's relationships with Saudi royalty, the Bin Laden family, and the energy industry, and a call-to-action for liberals in the 2004 election. Several of his works have made bestseller lists.

Acting[link]

Moore has dabbled in acting, following a 2000 supporting role in Lucky Numbers as the cousin of Lisa Kudrow's character, who agrees to be part of the scheme concocted by John Travolta's character. He also had a cameo in his Canadian Bacon as an anti-Canada activist. In 2004, he did a cameo, as a news journalist, in The Fever, starring Vanessa Redgrave in the lead.

Television[link]

Between 1994 and 1995, he directed and hosted the BBC television series TV Nation, which followed the format of news magazine shows but covered topics they avoid. The series aired on BBC2 in the UK. The series was also aired in the US on NBC in 1994 for 9 episodes and again for 8 episodes on Fox in 1995.

His other major series was The Awful Truth, which satirized actions by big corporations and politicians. It aired on Channel 4 in the UK, and the Bravo network in the US, in 1999 and 2000. Moore won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award in Arts and Entertainment for being the executive producer and host of The Awful Truth, where he was also described as "muckraker, author and documentary filmmaker".

Another 1999 series, Michael Moore Live, was aired in the UK only on Channel 4, though it was broadcast from New York. This show had a similar format to The Awful Truth, but also incorporated phone-ins and a live stunt each week.

Music videos[link]

Moore has directed several music videos, including two for Rage Against the Machine for songs from The Battle of Los Angeles: "Sleep Now in the Fire" and "Testify". He was threatened with arrest during the shooting of "Sleep Now in the Fire", which was filmed on Wall Street; the city of New York had denied the band permission to play there, although the band and Moore had secured a federal permit to perform.^[47]

He also directed the videos for R.E.M. single "All the Way to Reno (You're Gonna Be a Star)" in 2001 and the System of a Down song "Boom!".

Appearances in other documentaries[link]

• Moore appeared in The Drugging of Our Children,^[48] a 2005 documentary about over-prescription of psychiatric medication to children and teenagers, directed by Gary Null a proponent of Alternative Medicine. In the film Moore agrees with Gary Null that Ritalin and other similar drugs are over-prescribed, saying that they are seen as a "pacifier".
• Moore appeared on fellow Flint natives Grand Funk Railroad's edition of Behind The Music.
• Moore appeared as an off-camera interviewer in Blood in the Face, a 1991 documentary about white supremacy groups. At the center of the film is a neo-Nazi gathering in Michigan.^[49]
• Moore appeared in The Yes Men, a 2003 documentary about two men who pose as the World Trade Organization. He appears during a segment concerning working conditions in Mexico and Latin America.
• Moore briefly appears in Alex Jones's documentary Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State. Jones criticises Moore for not going into more depth about the World Trade Center attacks in Fahrenheit 9/11, particularly about NORAD standing down, and for portraying George W. Bush as an unassuming frontman instead of an active conspirator in 9/11. Jones manages to ask Moore why he didn't mention NORAD standing down, and Moore swiftly answers that "it would be un-American".
• Moore was interviewed for the 2004 documentary, The Corporation. One of his highlighted quotes was: "The problem is the profit motive: for corporations, there's no such thing as 'enough'".^[50]
• Moore appeared in the 2006 documentary I'm Going to Tell You a Secret, which chronicles Madonna's 2004 Re-Invention World Tour. Moore attended her show in New York City at Madison Square Garden.

Political views[link]

Moore lampoons George W. Bush's reaction to the September 11 attacks notification

Although Moore has been noted for his liberal political activism,^[4] he rejects the label "political activist" saying such a description is redundant as a citizen of a democracy: "I and you and everyone else has to be a political activist. If we're not politically active, it ceases to be a democracy."^[51] According to John Flesher of the Associated Press, Moore is known for his "fiery left-wing populism,"^[52] and publications such as the Socialist Worker Online have hailed him as the "new Tom Paine."^[53]

Moore was a high-profile guest at both the 2004 Democratic National Convention and the 2004 Republican National Convention, chronicling his impressions in USA Today. He was criticized in a speech by Republican Senator John McCain as "a disingenuous film-maker." Moore laughed and waved as Republican attendees jeered, later chanting "four more years." Moore gestured his thumb and finger at the crowd, which translates into "loser."^[54]

During September and October 2004, Moore spoke at universities and colleges in swing states during his "Slacker Uprising Tour". The tour gave away ramen and underwear to students who promised to vote.^[55][56] One stop during the tour was Utah Valley State College. A fight for his right to speak resulted in massive public debates and a media blitz.^[57] The Utah event was chronicled in the documentary film This Divided State.^[58]

Despite having supported Ralph Nader in the 2000 presidential election, Moore urged Nader not to run in 2004 so as not to split the left vote. On Real Time with Bill Maher, Moore and Maher knelt before Nader to plead with him to stay out of the race.^[59]

Moore drew attention in 2004 when he used the term "deserter" when he introduced Retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark at a Democratic Presidential debate in New Hampshire. Noting that Clark had been a champion debater at West Point, Moore told a laughing crowd, "I know what you're thinking. I want to see that debate" between Clark and [George W.] Bush -- "the general versus the deserter." Moore said he was referring to published reports in several media outlets including The Boston Globe which had reported that "there is strong evidence that Bush performed no military service as required when he moved from Houston to Alabama to work on a U.S. Senate campaign from May to November 1972."^{[60] [61][62]}

On April 21, 2008, Moore endorsed Barack Obama for President, stating that Hillary Clinton's recent actions had been "disgusting."^[63] Moore is an active supporter of the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York City and spoke with the OWS protesters on September 26, 2011.^[64] On October 29, 2011, he spoke at the Occupy Oakland protest site to express his support. ^[65]

Published work[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Moore, Michael (1996). Downsize This! Random Threats from an Unarmed American. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-097733-7. 
• Moore, Michael; Glynn, Kathleen (1998). Adventures In A TV Nation. New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-098809-6. 
• Moore, Michael (2002). Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation!. New York: Regan Books. ISBN 0-06-039245-2. 
• Moore, Michael (2003). Dude, Where's My Country?. New York: Warner Books. ISBN 0-446-53223-1. 
• Moore, Michael (2004). Will They Ever Trust Us Again?. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-7152-1. 
• Moore, Michael (2004). The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-7292-7. 
• Moore, Michael (2008). Mike's Election Guide 2008. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0-446-54627-5. 
• Moore, Michael (2011). Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life. New York: Grand Central Publishing. ISBN 0-446-53224-X.