feminist blogs

I thought this was a really interesting interview. Moore and Maddow discuss Moore’s new film, the Stupak Amendment, the hesitation of Democrats to get things done, and more. Its too bad more people can’t be as bold as these two.

Michael Moore on 'The Rachel Maddow Show' making fun of the whiny, perennially scared Democrats.

It’s finally Friday!  Here’s to some fabulously feminist plans for the weekend, plus a little bit of light reading to get it kicked off in high fashion!

An Interview with Michael Moore – Poponthepop
A Ban on Race-Based Abortions? – Broadsheet
“Famine Marriages” a Biproduct of Climate Change – IPS News
Mifepristone (aka “The Abortion Pill”) is Ruled Out as HIV Treatment – AIDSmeds.com
Let’s Appreciate Abortion Providers Every Day – The Abortioneers
Is Violence Against Women Really Taken Seriously? – Womanist Musings

Finally, I managed to watch Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story. Living in Southern Illinois since before the film came out made this task very hard. This is, obviously, not an area where Michael Moore's documentaries run to sold out theatres. People prefer the blessed forgetfulness offered to them by the typical Hollywood swill.

First of all, I have to say that whatever you feel about his ideology Michael Moore knows how to make good documentaries. Every frame offers a perfect conjunction of text and accompanying image. The documentary is as engaging as a good mystery film. This is simply very high-quality film-making.

Most of the things Moore narrates are sadly familiar to all of us: foreclosures, businesses failing, unemployment, economically devastated areas that look worse than anything you can find in many third-world countries, the useless and horribly unfair bailouts, the back room deals by Paulson, Geithner, Bush and Co, Obama getting bought out by the same crowd of vile criminals the second he gets close to presidency. We have seen all this unfold, and it's impossible not to recognize that everything Moore shows is true. Many instances in the movie are touching and sad, while many others are hilarious (For example, Moore says after rereading the US Constitution: "The Constitution doesn't mention capitalism. But it does talk about 'welfare' and 'union'. Wait, welfare and union? That sound like a very different -ism!")

Now, after all I have said in praise of Capitalism: A Love Story, I have to say that I disagree with Moore's central premise, which is capitalism is bad and it should be substituted by something better, namely democracy. I'm sure Moore understands extremely well that you can't substitute one with another since democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic one. He uses the word "democracy" in order to avoid saying the word that scares the regular movie-going people, namely "socialism."

To support his view that socialism is better, Moore tells a story of a business owned by all its workers together. Every decision is made jointly by the workers in a democratic-style voting process. I'm glad this system works for the company Moore describes in the movie. However, this could never work on a larger scale. If anything, a smooth running of his business is a huge exception. I, for one, do not want to run my place of work. It's not my job and I don't want it to be my job. Some people are good at being managers, organizers, and the leaders of people. Other people are not. Working collectively on a shared project is an impossible burden for some people. There is no doubt in my mind that not having one actual owner will bankrupt an absolute majority of businesses very soon.

The reality that Moore doesn't address is that the current economic system in the US is not really capitalist. In many ways, it is eerily similar to the Soviet economy. In the Soviet Union, huge amounts of government money would go to bail out companies that could not survive on their own. If there were a real capitalism in the US, Goldman Sachs would have gone bankrupt a long time ago. The way capitalism works is that if you are inept enough to bankrupt your company, you are pushed off the market by more capable competitors. Goldman Sachs has long been completely incapable of an honest win over anybody else. They are kept in place by a complex system of Soviet-style handouts. This is as contrary to capitalism as anything can possibly be.

As a living system that exists in an ever-changing society, capitalism constantly transforms in order to adapt itself to a different set of conditions. The "wild" capitalism of the XIX and the early XX centuries did not really work. As a result, a system of checks and balances (e.g. the Glass-Steagall Act in the US) arose to help it work better. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a profoundly anti-capitalist act aimed at allowing a small group of people an unfair and 100% manufactured advantage over their competitors.

I was born in the Soviet Union and I know for a fact that collective ownership of anything does not work. In the society where I grew up, there was an insurmountable distance between the rich and the poor. A small group of people had everything they could possibly want, while the rest was struggling to survive. And the worst part was that there was no hope for anybody from the poor category to move into the rich category. The membership in the rich category was determined by one's birth to a certain set of circumstances and by the number of indignities one was prepared to commit. Within the group of the rich people, it did not matter how bad a job they did at running their workplaces because there was also the government to bail them out with the money ripped off from the poor in the form of taxes.

Does this remind you of anything? Exactly.

So it makes no sense to discuss whether capitalism is goo for the United States. Simply because there is no real capitalism here. All we have is some weird, unhealthy hybrid of the remains of capitalism and some of the characteristics of the Soviet economy.

Does anybody really wonder why this doesn't work?

The film, however, is lots of fun. I highly recommend.

I thought this was a great interview - I'm a huge fan of Michael Moore - and this is also a great column that Vanity Fair does weekly on their website. There's a link on the site that shows you a preview to the movie too!

The One Percent
Q&A: Michael Moore Says Being Rich Doesn't Necessarily Make You Evil
by Jamie Johnson September 30, 2009, 1:14 PM

Every week on VF.com, filmmaker Jamie Johnson offers a glimpse into the secret lives of the super-rich.

Celebrity provocateur and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore returns to movie screens this week with the release of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I first met Moore at a Tribeca Film Festival screening of a documentary I directed called The One Percent, which focuses on how the very richest Americans have attempted to shape the economy around their interests. Moore’s new film covers related topics from a very different perspective, examining with his inimitable style the effect concentrated wealth and power have on the working class. Earlier this week, I spoke to Moore about the film and about his perception of American capitalism's inherent flaws. Here's how it went:

Jamie Johnson: Your new film is called Capitalism: A Love Story. But it’s clear that you don’t love capitalism, so what do you love?

Michael Moore: Who said it has anything to do with me? I called it that because it’s not whether I love it or not, it’s whether the wealthy love it, and the wealthy do. They love their money and they’re not content with loving just their money. They love our money too, and they want it.

As far as what I do love, I love birds, I love lavender.

I know a lot of rich people. I come from an affluent background. Most of the rich hate you. Why do you think that is?

Most of the rich do what?

Most of the rich hate you.

I’ve gotten that feeling over the years, and it isn’t just because of this movie. I’m one of those, those, ah, peasants who somehow found my way out of the woodwork, and I started talking about the things that I saw that were happening to people who come from the class I come from, and suddenly I had a wide audience. That really wasn’t supposed to happen, because my politics are pretty much supposed to consign me to the church of the left, and I’m supposed to be preaching to the choir. So, the fact that I have this audience that goes beyond the church of the left is somewhat disconcerting to those who have money and who know that I am here to upend the system that has benefitted them.

Are you familiar with Vanity Fair’s New Establishment list?

I’m familiar with it.

Every year the magazine ranks the 100 most powerful members of the establishment.

The media establishment or just The Establishment?

The Establishment.

The man.

Exactly.

O.K., yes, I’m familiar with it.

Well, what do you feel The Establishment needs to hear right now?

What do they need to hear? Well, what will they listen to? They need to know that across the country there are millions of people with an anger that is simmering just beneath the surface, and they would be wise to address the reasons why people are feeling such angry despair because nobody wants anger to boil over. You’re seeing early signs of it, you know, the tea baggers and the town hallers and all of that.

Do you think it’s possible that the anger will lead to physical conflict?

Sadly, yes.

On what level, armed rebellion?

I don’t know. I just know that you can’t throw millions of people out on the curb and not expect a reaction. You’re living in some kind of fantasy world if you think that’s just going to go without any reaction or response. There’s a foreclosure filing in this country once every 7 1/2 seconds. You know, I would hope that those people who make up The Establishment would behave in a moral way, with the values that they were raised with about how to treat people, that they are their brother’s keeper, that they’ll be judged by how they treat the least among us. And, I wish they would ask the question, is this for the common good when they make their decisions.

What questions do you think they are asking before they make decisions?

Is this good for the bottom line? How does this affect me? Can I make more money? I don’t have enough.

On any level can you relate to feelings that you don’t have enough and that you need more money?

No.

Most documentary filmmakers say that all the important work on documentaries is done in the edit room. Can you take us into your edit room by describing the atmosphere and how decisions are made? What is it like?

You don’t want to know. First of all, it reeks of men. Over the years, I’ve put a couple of signs up in the edit room. One says, When In Doubt Cut Me Out. Another one says, Remember People Want To Go Home And Have Sex After They Watch This Movie.

That’s a good one.

Don’t bum them out to the extent that they won’t be able to enjoy the rest of the date.

Generally, people are frightened by controversy, but it’s something you seem to relish. What’s going through your mind when you’re out in the field with your camera crew and you’re marching head on into a public confrontation? Are you ever scared?

Always.

What are you frightened of?

I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to be arrested. I don’t want to do anything that violates my own personal code of ethics and morals.

Then what propels you to try and gain access to the headquarters of General Motors against the wishes of the company and the company security guards?

Well, in this current film, it’s because I’m a part owner of the company. I’m a citizen of this country. I have some ideas that I thought might help them survive. And I thought that, at least this time, they would call my bluff and invite me in, and I was looking forward to that.

Is there anything you can tell me about scenes that got left on the cutting room floor that you wanted to include, but ultimately couldn’t?

I had a section on how capitalism has killed our daily newspapers, and it got too large. It almost requires its own movie.

Well, thanks for your time. I enjoyed watching the film.

Thank you very much for saying that. Let me just say something about the affluence that you up grew up in. There’s nothing inherently or patently wrong with anybody who does well, works hard, earns a living, betters themselves. I’m not against any of these things. It’s about how you make that money, and then what you do with it. Did you exploit people in the making of that money? And once you made it, did you give back? Are you taxed properly? Is society better off?

I’ll give you just a quick example, when the new bankruptcy laws were being rewritten during the Bush administration to make it more difficult for working people to file for bankruptcy. It was a bill the banks really wanted passed, and it was passed. And it was interesting looking at the Democratic Senators who voted for and against it. People like Hillary Clinton voted for it, or the Senator from my state, Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, voted for it. These are women who did not grow up with money, and these are women who belong to a gender who is hurt more by this than the gender you and I belong to. If you look at the people who voted against the banks, against the new bankruptcy legislation, you see the names Rockefeller, Kennedy, Kerry, Dayton, from the Dayton Hudson family in Minnesota. Those who came from money, who were millionaires, voted on the side of the people. It was a reminder to me that just because someone has money does not in and of itself make them a bad person. And, in fact, this country was founded by a bunch of wealthy land owners, Jefferson, Adams, Washington. I’m sure at the time reporters must have said to them, “You know, you guys have done very well by the King’s system. What’s your complaint? What are you whining about?” It was actually more impressive that they were willing to risk everything they had to for this country when they could have gone the easy route, which was to control the wealth that they had.

Phyllis Schlafy on the ERA: Feminism is Scary, Ya’ll! – Think Progress
Obama Won’t Protect Reproductive Rights – Feministing
Senate Votes to Restore Abstinence-Only Funding – AP
Michael Moore Tells Obama “Don’t Desert the Liberals” – ABC News

This is really just so stupid.

"I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven," the Oscar-winning director of "Fahrenheit 911" said. "To just have it planned at the same time, that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for Day One of the Republican convention, up in the Twin Cities, at the top of the Mississippi River."

That's right up there in mean-spirited sentiments with the utterances of Jerry Falwell and James Dobson, who has set a pretty "high" standard of horribleness.

I don't care how partisan you are -- and I'm pretty damned partisan, mind you -- you don't sing praises of disasters that seem to play in the media game against your political opponents.