Scott Simon of National Public Radio has a cogent and beautifully written piece on Michael Moore in today’s Wall Street Journal (yes, I know: I’m getting a late start on the papers). How’s this for a lead? “Michael Moore has won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.” And could a sentence prove any more cutting than this? “Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler.”
I repeat that the author of this sweetly biting piece is one of the leading figures at NPR. Here and there in the media, intellectual honesty lives on.