Well, for the record I'm a flaming liberal, at least on most social and economic issues. But. I worry about Moore, whose first film I quite liked. Here he seems to put his gains up to validate his convictions, when others are putting up great loss in the hope of some good for others. The market is very seductive. It can play on nearly anyone's vanity. I hope he is holding his bearings, and it's not really for me to judge if he is. But his exhuberant exaggeration--my fear is whether he, like so many stupid white men before him, might be seduced into a vanity of his own import, and deserving, because it succeeds, it sells.

   The Dixie Chicks are fascinatingly bad. You can't look away. (The Pope too, imho.) Not everyone who goes to Moore's movie is signing it, like a petition. It's on a topic that matters to people, and it got some attention. ta da. You can't count on the market to be much smarter than that.

I'm not saying he shouldn't say whatever he wants, he should do his best to do exactly that. And he should think about that. We all should. Being able to do that.