Michael Moore thinks America is a bad place.
This past weekend, the LA Times published a (negative) opinion piece by Moore which James Lileks thoroughly debunks.
One of the examples that Moore uses in claiming America is a bad place and that people who display the flag are evil is this 1976 photo showing a white man using a flag pole to attack a black man. Lileks points out that as usual, Moore doesn't state the full story.
The full story points out that Booker T. Washington was right in his autobiography Up From Slavery when he says that racism is more harmful to the racist than to the one he attacks.
What Moore doesn't say is where the two men in the photograph are today. The attacker's name is James Rakes. In 2001, he was working as a laborer on the Big Dig highway project in Boston.
The man who was attacked is Ted Landsmark. At the time of the attack, Landsmark had already earned a BA in political science. Since then, he has been the dean
of graduate and continuing education at the Massachusetts College of Art. He also served as the director of Boston's Office of Community Partnerships and is is currently the president and CEO of the Boston Architectural Center. In the meantime, he also completed a Ph.D. at Boston University.
Moore thinks this is a horrible country. I think it a great country. Only in this country did Ted Landsmark have the opportunity achieve the success he has gained. James Rakes reaped the rewards his actions and attitudes have inevitably led him to. What's wrong with that?
