Celebutards (9 page)

M
ICHAEL
M
OORE WILL NOT
be ignored.

The puffy pontificator and Oscar-winning filmmaker masquerades as a congenial, harmless nebbish. But at the core of his propaganda is a deep-seated disdain for all things American, and he will fudge facts or outright lie to get this message across. Madonna and the rest of the Hollywood crowd are so smitten with Moore, he might be considered the guru of the far left. But take everything he says with a grain of salt. Better yet, ignore it altogether. If you can.

Michael Francis Moore was born April 23, 1954, in Flint, Michigan, the son of Veronica, a secretary, and Frank Moore, an auto assembly-line worker. He’s married to producer Kathleen Glynn, and lives in New York, where he claims to be a practicing Roman Catholic. Fun-fact: After winning a tournament as a youth, Moore was named a lifetime member of the National Rifle Association. He would later address his dislike for guns in
Bowling for Columbine
.

It comes as little surprise that Moore dropped out of the University of Michigan-Flint—a trend of the celebutard set. He was named the editor of
Mother Jones
magazine in California for a mere four months in 1986, before he was fired for refusing to print an article that criticized the Sandinistas’ human-rights record in Nicaragua. Mind you, this was not because he doubted the article’s premise. Rather, Moore feared that President Ronald Reagan might say, “See, even
Mother Jones
agrees with me.”

The article’s author, Paul Berman, summed up Moore perfectly as a “very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy.” The kind of warped reasoning that made Moore kill the article—damn the truth for politics!—would color the rest of his career, and even feed his first commercial success: He won $58,000 in a settlement over wrongful termination from the magazine. He used this money to help make the film
Roger and Me
. A monster was born.

Released in 1989,
Roger and Me
is a documentary about the effects of closing General Motors auto plants in Flint, Michigan—with a heavy subtext of corporation-bashing. The movie was humorous and gripping. And completely misleading. It set the tone for everything to come.

In the movie, Moore changed the chronological order of events for shock value. He shows a family being evicted from their home at the moment the chairman of General Motors, Roger Smith, gives a Christmas message. In reality, the two events did not coincide. He also shows President Ronald Reagan visiting Flint as the town collapses. In truth, the footage was shot years earlier, in 1979, when Reagan was merely a candidate for high office, not president.

The film is based on the premise that Moore tried, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to interview chairman Smith, who manages to hide from him. Yet this is belied by unearthed footage that shows Moore questioning Smith during a 1987 General Motors shareholders meeting. That session is not in the film.

Overall, film critic Pauline Kael slammed the movie for exaggerating the impact of the plant’s closing on the community. It didn’t matter. At the time of release
Roger and Me
was the most successful documentary in American history. It’s since been surpassed at the box office by Moore’s
Bowling for Columbine
and
Fahrenheit 911
.

Out in 2002,
Bowling for Columbine
is another political screed using documentary techniques, this one about gun ownership in America. It was so preachy and over-the-top, the movie very nearly made me run out and buy an Uzi. And I favor gun control.

The premise is that Canada, Moore’s utopia to the north, has a much lower rate of gun violence, despite similar levels of gun ownership as the United States—a completely disingenuous claim that Moore uses to condemn the violent American culture. But Moore knows very well that the ownership of handguns is far lower in Canada than in the States. Still, this fact does not stop him from making fun of hunters who, in the scheme of things, are not a major part of the problem.

But the moment in the film that had me running for the gun cabinet came when Moore interviewed then National Rifle Association president Charlton Heston. As soon as the men sat down, Moore began hectoring the gun enthusiast about his support for firearms. Heston had no choice but to walk away from the chat, as the camera rolled. Even so, Moore theatrically placed a photograph of a six-year-old school shooting victim, Kayla Rolland, at Heston’s feet. Was he suggesting Heston was a murderer? Please! The arrogance.

Bowling for Columbine
won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. When he picked up his award, Moore couldn’t contain himself. He said, onstage, to boos and cheers: “We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in a time where we have fictitious election results, that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”

Oscar host Steve Martin couldn’t help himself either, cracking, “The Teamsters are helping Mr. Moore into the trunk of his limo.”

I confess that, being weak of stomach, I did not sit through the entirety of
Fahrenheit 911
. I fundamentally object to films that commandeer the tragedy of September 11, 2001, in a cynical effort to advance a political agenda. And from what I’ve seen, Moore does this shamelessly, examining ties between the United States government and Saudi Arabia, particularly the family of Osama bin Laden. This point of view may be fodder for a very good film. Not a disjointed, sputtering, political rant by Michael Moore.

And yet,
Fahrenheit 911
is the most successful documentary of all time. It didn’t get an Oscar, though. Moore did not enter it as Best Documentary, trying instead for a Best Picture award. It did not even get nominated. Pity.

I caught up with Michael Moore during the 2004 Democratic convention, where he hung out with like-minded celebutard Jimmy Carter, and was treated as a hero. While the convention was held in Boston, the nearby college town of Cambridge, Massachusetts had been taken over by hard-core leftists. People such as ex-presidential candidate, screaming Howard Dean, who laughed at his own crack, “You can’t call the president a fascist—we’re not trying to do that this week, anyway!” He was perfect company for Moore, who appeared goofy, jumpy and giggly.

“Thank God for the Canadians,” he crowed to an audience. “They’re just like us, only better. They just wish we would read a little more.”

I wanted to ask, “So when are you going, eh?”

In the 2007 film
Sicko
, Moore blasts America’s certainly imperfect health care system, while lionizing those in Europe and even Cuba. I’ll tell you about a piece I saw on CNN, normally no stranger to far-left politics. In this one, though, Dr. Sanjay Gupta had both guns blazing as he interviewed Moore about the movie.

“People will walk away with the perception that health care is free in England and Canada….” Gupta said as Moore interrupted.

“It is free! It is free! It is free!” he insisted.

But Gupta interjected with the obvious, “You pay for it through taxes.” And he rattled off the high tax rates in France, where “free” health care rips a sizable chunk from the family income.

Moore sat there, speechless, shaking his head. He had no answer.

“We’ve got Michael Moore speechless,” said Gupta. “That’s pretty hard to do.”

It’s hard to stump Michael Moore when he’s surrounded by his regular cheering section. Alone, he is a fool.

I wonder—if no one listened to Michael Moore, would he cease to exist?

M
ADONNA
. T
HE
M
ATERIAL
G
IRL
.
The Material Mom. Madge. Mrs. Ritchie. Slut. Whatever you call her, it cannot be denied that few in history have accomplished so much—she’s catapulted into an international cottage industry through movies, music, books, and her own naked body—with so very little. Her rise to the title of world’s top-earning female performer is impressive. Less so is her head-scratching ability to convince audiences that she has something terribly important to say about politics, religion or world affairs, simply because this sexual savant can afford the biggest toys.

Madonna sprang onto the scene in the early 1980s, wriggling her sweetly pudgy form in Spandex and a crucifix, and has shaped herself into arguably the world’s most famous woman, raking in an estimated $325 million. Over the decades she’s evolved from an ambitious gal who acted out, ad nauseam, against her own sexual hang ups and perceived repression, to one who leaped into the body of a sinewy, tweed-wearing, British-accented stick-in-the mud obsessed with the Jewish mystical religion, Kabbalah.

Along the way, Madonna has undergone many earth-shaking personal reinventions designed to keep her in the public eye. She was a free spirit in her early film,
Desperately Seeking Susan
, a breathy bombshell playing opposite Warren Beatty in
Dick Tracy
, and a weirdly prudish hussy done up, nude and self-conscious, in bondage gear in her coffee table book,
Sex
. In her 1991 documentary,
Truth or Dare
, Madonna graciously admitted she was neither the world’s greatest singer nor dancer. And still, she became a bigger star than the world has seen.

Her props of choice are relics of her Roman Catholic faith, chiefly crucifixes and rosaries that she employs as sex toys. A 1989 video for “Like a Prayer,” featured stigmata and Madonna making out with Jesus. It lost the artist an endorsement deal with Pepsi, and brought down a rain of condemnation from defenders of the Catholic church. Which may have been the entire point. For a while, she held the power to make one wonder how far she’d go to shock.

Madonna Louise Ciccone—a second middle name, Veronica, was added unofficially at her confirmation—was born August 16, 1958, in Bay City, Michigan, the third of six children born to an Italian-American father, Silvio “Tony” Ciccone, and a mother of French-Canadian descent, Madonna Louise Fortin.

Madonna would be haunted for much of her life by the death of her namesake mother from breast cancer when she was just five years old. Her lack of a female nurturer is a theme that crops up, over and over, in her work. In interviews and song lyrics, she points to a strict, and possibly abusive, relationship with her father.

Later, Tony Ciccone married the family housekeeper, and had two more children.

Madonna attended the University of Michigan, dropping out after her sophomore year to pursue a dance career in New York City, arriving in town with just $35.00 in her pocket. She worked at Dunkin’ Donuts, and as a nude model. In 1982, she signed her first record deal. She was on her way.

In 1985, she married the actor Sean Penn, forming a disastrous union that dissolved into allegations of domestic violence (by Penn). Many other affairs ensued, but they always took a back seat to her career, which seemed to know no ceiling. It all climaxed, if you will, with Madonna’s coffee table book,
Sex
, and the album,
Erotica
, which at the time looked to be the biggest controversy of her life. She had no idea.

Sex
, a volume hidden behind Mylar wrap and covered in weighty metal, retailed for $49.95, an exorbitant sum when you consider that ordinary pornography such as
Penthouse
or
Hustler
sold for less than one-tenth the price, and could be read with one hand. But
Sex
was promoted as an art book. It featured black-and-white photographs of a nude Madonna in all manner of poses, from bondage to something akin to prostitution. However, the images struck me as posed and decidedly unsexy and not very artful.

Madonna insisted earnestly that she rebelled against society’s sexual repression, a weight she said all women are forced to live under. It made me wonder—what the hell is she talking about?

By 1992, American women had the ability to take lovers and careers without repercussions. Madonna herself was proof of that. Also, AIDS had put a damper on sexual acting out. The repression she complained of in
Sex
seemed a personal problem best discussed with a trained therapist.
Sex
is now in demand as a relic of the era, but it did not do so well at the time.

Madonna had accomplished everything she’d set out to do, and more. At 38, she starred in
Evita
, playing Argentina’s first lady, Eva Peron, who died when she was but thirty-three. Then, four days before her forty-second birthday, in August 2000, Madonna gave birth to her second child, Rocco John Ritchie. She married his dad, British filmmaker Guy Ritchie, ten years her junior, later that year. Rocco joined a household that included daughter Lourdes, born out of wedlock to Madonna in 1996.

But for a standard celebutard, the bigger the star, the more compelled she is to align herself with the leftist cause du jour. Onstage at her top-grossing
Confessions
tour, she made obscene comments about President George W. Bush. At Madison Square Garden, she instructed fans to go out and see the film,
Fahrenheit 911
, in which her rotund celebrity pal, Michael Moore, blasts the administration’s war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard at a movie in my life,” Madonna said.

As she rounded the bend toward fifty, she’d lost the ability to shock. That didn’t stop her. Neither did bombing in a remake of the film,
Swept Away
, directed by her husband.

But Madonna still had one dramatic transformation left, and this renovation may prove her most remarkable of all. She was no longer tongue-kissing babes half her age, or rushing to remove her clothes. Rather, she was in a hurry to put them on. She wrote children’s books, none featuring pictures you’d ban from the kids’ bedroom. And most strangely, the woman from Michigan developed a fake English accent. She’d come a long way from her spankie days. Madonna was reborn once again. She turned into a middle-aged mom. Madonna gave a fawning interview to Britain’s
Harpers & Queen
in 2005, in which she revealed that she can be a tyrant to Lourdes, or “Lola.” Lourdes was barely nine years old at the time, and sharing a home with Rocco, the child of Madonna and step dad Guy Ritchie. Her own father, personal trainer Carlos Leon, was cast out of Madonna’s life shortly after she was born. It is unclear how much of a role Madonna allows Carlos to have in his little girl’s life, since his name never came up.

“I’m the disciplinarian, Guy’s the spoiler,” Madonna told the magazine. “When Daddy gets home, they’re going to get chocolate.” Evidently, not milk chocolate, as Madonna insists “We’re a TV and dairy-free house.” Whole grains, fish and vegetables are in. Ice cream and chocolate milk are definitely out at the Ritchie abode.

“TV is trash. I was raised without it. I didn’t miss anything,” she also said. “TV is poison. No one even talks about it around here. We don’t have magazines or newspapers in the house either.” This is the same gal who made a spectacle of herself, on TV, at the 2003 MTV Music Video Awards by sucking face with Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. In the audience, watching approvingly, were Guy and Lourdes, who was then six, and done up in a white communion dress, lace gloves and a studded belt with the inscription, “Boy Toy.” Madonna used to wear that male-bashing slogan around her own waist, long before Lourdes was even conceived. This tacky display was much commented on, but at least, for Madonna’s sake, Guy and Lourdes were able to watch Mom’s performance, in all its exhibitionistic, sapphic delight, live at Radio City Music Hall—and not on that poisonous TV.

To
Harpers & Queen
, Madonna said that when her children misbehave, “I take privileges away. The kids get to watch movies every Sunday, so if they’re naughty they get their movie taken away. They have to be particularly naughty for that one. If they’re just a little naughty, then no stories before bed.” But Lourdes was subject to the harshest treatment of all. When she fails to pick up her clothes from the bedroom floor, “We take all of her clothes and put them in a bin bag, and they get stuck somewhere, and she has to earn all of her clothes back by being tidy, picking things up in her room, making her bed in the morning, hanging up her clothes, stuff like that.” And if the kid staged a tantrum over which outfit to wear, “We have got down to one outfit,” said her mom. “She wears the same outfit every day to school until she learns her lesson.” Nine years old.

The woman who despises TV will also make an exception if it’s her own show, and it includes heavy doses of Kabbalah. “My ultimate goal is to have a TV series, and each episode would be about girls finding themselves in challenging situations.”

Madonna, the avid environmentalist featured on the cover of
Vanity Fair
’s “green” issue, raised an international stink in 2006, when she imported at least 1,000 pheasants to her British estate, Ashcombe House, so the birds might be shot to death. Each year, bankers, businessmen and celebrities including Brad Pitt paid more than $19,000 a day to partake in the fancy pheasant hunt. One would think this was beyond hypocritical that Madonna, purported lover of all living things, found herself standing between our feathered friends and being a member of the landed gentry. The hunt was discontinued only after Stella McCartney, designer daughter of Sir Paul, protested, proving that Madonna is nothing if not savvy about to whom she should suck up.

M
ADONNA TRIED
, and failed, to conceive a second child with Ritchie. Natural motherhood off the table, Madonna, in gold-plated celebutard style, decided to take drastic action. She followed a trail blazed by the likes of Mia Farrow and Angelina Jolie, and turned to a path of self-reinvention that topped nearly everything that came before: she acquired a live toddler from the Third World.

It was October 2006. Fresh from the pheasant hunt, stories swirled out of Malawi, Africa, that Madonna planned to adopt a local child. It was said that she’d arranged to have twelve boys plucked from orphanages for her to choose from. That troubling image—with its overtones of picking a china pattern to go with the silver, or worse, lining up human beings for a latter-day slave auction—were largely confirmed later on. Madonna told Oprah Winfrey on her nationally televised TV show that she’d put together a list of alternates if her adoption “hadn’t worked out”.

But for the first few days that Madonna was in Africa, her loyal publicist and serial liar, Liz Rosenberg, vehemently denied that she was in the market for a baby. This kept the press at bay. For a while. Of course, when the story turned out to be true, the knives were gleaming.

In reality, Madonna had her eye on David Banda, a bright-eyed thirteen-month-old who had no idea that his absorption by one of the world’s richest women would unleash the furies. Heck, I called Madonna a “sluttish, egomaniacal mother-of the-century” who’d “traveled far beyond her bra-baring, intercourse-simulating, public girl-kissing, Jesus-emulating loser antics to grab attention—and flesh.” Phew. I was getting warmed up.

You see, David was no AIDS orphan. He was not even an orphan. In fact, Madonna later admitted to Oprah that he’d been tested for HIV in Africa, and found to be negative. Would she have taken him any other way?

David’s adoption created an international uproar when it was revealed he had a biological father. His mother died shortly after his birth, and the family was too poor to provide adequate nourishment for the baby, who would have survived on breast milk. So the father, Yohane Banda, gave him to an orphanage. He said in interviews he didn’t realize that handing David to Madonna meant that he’d be giving his child “for good.”

In lieu of payment for the baby, Madonna pledged to raise $3 million for orphans through the creation of a center that would preach her pet religion, Kabbalah. Why, I wondered, did Madonna not simply pledge some of that money to help reunite David with his real family?

Local authorities started legal action to block the adoption, but Madonna swept David home to London, where he arrived at the airport in the arms of a nanny. For Madonna, it was now time for image repair.

For this, Madonna put herself in the loving clutches of Oprah Winfrey. Oprah presented her, via satellite, in full floral getup, on her television show.

Madonna went unchallenged when she told her hostess, “I wanted to go into a Third World country, I wasn’t sure where, and give a life to a child who otherwise might not have one.”

Rather than ask tough questions, Oprah burbled, embarrassingly, “and I say, God bless you for that!” and “Bravo!”

As the clock wound down, an approving Oprah heard Madonna condescend sickeningly toward David’s father, calling Yohane Banda “a simple man who comes from a village who has nothing.” Better the kid be raised by a mega-wealthy woman who can buy anybody.

She described a court hearing in which Banda, “looked into my eyes and said to me he was grateful I was going to give his son a life and, had he kept him in the village, he would have buried him.

“I didn’t need any more confirmation that I was doing the right thing and I had his blessing,” she said, telling how the dad signed away the child. Oprah failed to mention that the man could not read.

In 2007, Madonna left Warner Records and signed a $120 million deal with concert promoters Live Nation. But before she could walk, the company made sure to tell the world that Madonna, who still owed the label an album, might as well let the door hit her on the butt.