Moore Hype

Ok. I admit it. Michael Moore is my anti-Christ. There are other arch-devils out there, but this guy has to top the list. I can respect guys like Ralph Nader (though he’s also made a career of trashing other people and things, often unjustly but with great hype). But it’s interesting, there’s something Moore has in common with Soros. They’re both in it for money. Michael Moore has written as much poisonous garbage about the previous president (42) as he has about President George W. Bush. It just didn’t stick with our crowd because we’re not actually the “hate mongers” the left tries to say we are. It sticks just fine with the “bleeding heart” side. What does that say about them? What it says about Moore is that he also "follows the money". Even those that hate what he does admit he's a genious at promotion. He's picked a fireball, controversy genre in which to sell, and plays it to the hilt, looking for every trick he can to find more buyers. He hits first at his target audience's righteous fury, then at other people's curiosity.

I was all in a tizzy because of how “well” Michael Moore’s movie is doing in the theaters this weekend. I got depressed. I was thinking “geez, is THIS the country we live in?”

Then I did some arithmetic, and some further looking (and I got an amazing e-mail from someone in Iraq I may post in this blog verbatim because it’s so impressive).

Point one, which is part of the “setup” for my punch line. Look at the prison abuse “scandal” in Iraq. The military came forward LAST NOVEMBER with this story, announcing what was going on and that they were putting it to an end. They put out press releases about it EVERY WEEK for the next four months. It wasn’t until pictures came out that it became international news. So what’s the point? Pictures are supposed to say more than words. Nobody pays attention to words, they like pictures better.

Point two, part of the arithmetic. Let’s be “conservative” and say that a movie ticket in this country averages $6. I know, most of you are laughing. You’d LOVE to find a theater that sold tickets consistently at $6. Well, I don’t go to the movies very often (maybe once a year) so forgive my underestimation. I'm trying to help Moore out my making the numbers look like even more people than there were.

Point three, F-9/11 supposedly grossed $21.6 million this weekend. It broke the documentary record for one weekend sales. Bowling for Columbine (which has already been debunked as fiction instead of documentary due to several filming techniques that “fabricated” scenes for dramatic impact - and there are several groups I am watching who claim they can prove F-9/11 is similarly dramatic fiction) was the previous record holder. At $21.3 million. Anyone notice anything there? Can we guess that, in the last three years, the average price of a ticket has gone up thirty cents? If it has gone up more than that, FEWER people actually saw this movie than his last. Let’s just say things have stayed the same. At $6/ticket, that’s 50,000 more people than last time. This is where my panic started to subside. Again, I think I’m actually over-stating in Moore’s favor here.

Point four, which is an obvious extrapolation from Point three. Let’s bump it up to $22 million in ticket sales (and I don’t want to suggest any of these theaters has actually over-estimated their sales for dramatic impact, that would be... ridiculous... wouldn’t it?) that’s 3.67 million people. Now before I get outraged that 3.67 million people across this country went to see this self-declared propaganda (let’s further assume that not only did all those tickets sell in reality, but each one went to a unique person). There are 288 million people in the country (That’s 0.01%). If the movie grosses $200 million over it’s entire run and each person that went was unique (nobody saw it twice) that would make 11.5%. Political analysts have gauged hard-core liberals against hard-core conservatives and found that at the absolute worst time to oppose war (when everyone is “for” it) 12% of the people still say it’s a bad idea. 12% will always answer on EVERY poll that war is NEVER the answer. 33%, on the other hand, was the lowest support any war in American history ever got. These numbers are supported in other areas of contention, most notably taxes and abortion. So, perhaps an extrapolation here, but I think it would be a stretch that the 12% of our population who, under my most generous estimates, went to see this film, were people who were going to vote for President Bush’s re-election in the first place, but then also changed their minds and decided to vote for Senator Kerry.

Ok. Now I’m breathing a little easier. But then, consider this. Here comes the punch line.

Rush Limbaugh’s DAILY audience is 12 million people. His WEEKLY audience is 20 million people. His venue is WORDS not PICTURES. He does this EVERY WEEK and is growing instead of subsiding. In other words, F-9/11, or at least ONE of Michael Moore’s messages, would have to sell $72 million EVERY WEEK DAY, or if we accept that he lets “repeat viewers” to his movies in FREE, $120 EVERY WEEK to match Limbaugh. Not one week, not one month, but every week. From now on. Oh, and from only 600 theaters, not 898. Rush is only on 600 radio stations.

And by the way... Passion of the Christ? $500 million and growing.

I actually slept pretty well last night.