17 June 2004

Michael Moore's View of Animals and Those Who Defend Them

The other day, someone sent some quotations from Michael Moore’s books or essays. I unfortunately deleted them. The quotations were awful. Moore not only expressed indifference to the fate of animals; he poked fun at those who care about them and ridiculed the idea of animal rights. It was vile stuff, which shows the true character of this “man of the people.” I have a friend who cares deeply about animals but also admires and respects Moore. I wonder how he feels about Moore’s mockery of what he holds dear.

This raises a larger question. Leftists profess to be concerned with the disadvantaged, the oppressed, the downtrodden, the exploited. Don’t these terms apply, quite literally, to nonhuman animals? Michael Moore doesn’t see the contradiction between defending working people from greedy capitalists (an instance of exploitation) and dining on the flesh of cows, pigs, and chickens, who were made to suffer horribly (and eventually die) for his trivial pleasure. I don’t think Moore really cares about human beings, if you want to know the truth. I think he cares about himself, and only himself.

If someone has quotations about animals from Moore’s books or essays, please send them to me with full citations, including page numbers. I don’t own any of his writings and never will. He’s a despicable and hypocritical human being, one of the very worst I’ve seen. That he is celebrated in certain quarters—e.g., Hollywood, France, academia—is a symptom of an insidious social disease.

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