Michael Moore

Last weekend I picked up a copy of farenheit 911, a brilliant piece of muck-raking journalism. Somehow I don't think a review is needed as I'm guessing everyone in the western world has seen it but one thing worth pointing out is that I think Mr Moore represents something America needs more of- i.e. a journo who is willing to put their neck on the line when they feel the powers that be deserve to be held accountable.
In the early 1900s, when thousands of mostly eastern european and Italian immigrants came to America they found something far less than the supposed American dream. Many of them found themselves escaping abject poverty and starvation in their own countries only to end up in sweatshop conditions in the USA hardly any better off. Upton Sinclair, a writer at the time tackled the issue with a book called "The Jungle". Based round the Hungarian Yoorghis and his family, it told the tale of poor immigrants who end up working in an abbatoir. The outcry from this book forced government to give these people a better go of things and forced a whole new raft of laws governing food preparation.
Graham Greene also strikes me as having done a similar thing with his Conradesque "the comedians", a novel set in Haiti in the 1960s when it was ruled by the tyranical Papa doc Duvalier. Again public outcry leads to Richard Nixon putting pressure on Haiti to clean up its image. Ditto for African American writer Ida Wells Barnett with her reports on Lynch law in the USA.
Then who could forget Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the two guys at the Washington Post whose investigations into President Nixon forced a massive investigation into Nixon's regime, which subsequently lead to his early resignation from the presidency (that said tricky dicky is still my favourite republican- though thats not saying much).
Michael Moore is a modern version of the muck- raking journalist. Though he has to compete with a dumbing down of the population, the growth of consumerism, an increasingly egocentric population, Fox's extreme pro-Bush stance, less literacy among the Americans and the Democrats inability to find another Clinton type personality he battles on. He fights the good fight for the little guy and through it all maintains a sense of proportion and his pride in what his own country could be, given half a chance.
Will he ever get Bush out of that job? hell no- but at least someone's holding him responsible.