They want Moore

Michael Moore likes to portray himself as a slacker who would rather be home watching ESPN. But lately he has belied that image, making twice-nightly appearances to promote his book *Stupid White Men And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation,* a 266-page tirade against George W. Bush that has unexpectedly touched a nerve with readers.

Moore was in Kansas City Monday for two such appearances. Tami Burgess showed up an hour before the 7 p.m. talk at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. She said Moore was venting complaints "that I wasn't hearing anywhere else." Reading his book, she said she realized "I wasn't the only one who feels this way."

Moore's one-man book promotion blitz that began at UMKC ended at 1:15 a.m. Tuesday - six hours, two performances and hundreds of autographs later - at the Uptown Theater. "I think 1:25 is the record," Moore said, looking at the clock. "Twenty-five cities, and not one of these has ended in the p.m. Always the a.m."

In just two days the 700 tickets for his UMKC talk were given away. Moore agreed to add a late-night encore at the Uptown, sponsored by the Free Speech Coalition. About 1,000 more people paid $5 to hear him there with musical guests Iris DeMent and the Wilders. At 10:25 p.m., while Moore was being shuttled across town, DeMent led the audience in a rendition of "This Land Is Your Land."

From California to the New York island, "Late Night With Michael Moore" has become one of the hottest tickets in literature. Other political authors have topped the nonfiction book charts - his book is currently No. 1 on the New York Times' list - but this sudden demand to see Moore in person suggests something more than a publishing phenomenon.

It's something that even Moore - who barely filled 300 seats at the Tivoli Manor Square four years ago - could not have anticipated when he sat down last summer to write *Stupid White Men*.

"I had a guy come up to me and say, 'This is the first time in six months I felt comfortable wearing this T-shirt.' The T-shirt said, 'I HATE GEORGE BUSH,' " Moore said Monday. "This isn't supposed to be a country where you're afraid to speak your mind. "This government has had its boot to the neck of the American people. It said, 'If you're critical of George Bush, you're unpatriotic.' That was a mistake."

Moore's book ridicules not only the Bush presidency but also members of the Bush Cabinet, American idiocy at home and arrogance abroad. The chapter on the 2000 presidential election is titled "A Very American Coup." After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the publisher, HarperCollins, refused to issue the book, fearing a political backlash. According to Moore, HarperCollins wanted him to rewrite 50 percent of the book and tone down the anti-Bush rhetoric. He not only refused, but began campaigning on his michaelmoore.com Web site to put pressure on HarperCollins.

Both factors - the publication delay and Moore's campaign - helped fuel the book's juggernaut. By the time Stupid White Men finally was released, uncut, Feb. 19, Bush's approval ratings had begun to ebb, the terrorism war was somewhat fading from view and Enron was at full boil. With Moore sounding the alarm, the opposition seemed to rouse from its collective slumber. Since then Stupid White Men has gone through 15 printings, and Moore says HarperCollins research indicates it is reaching a much broader audience than anyone expected.

"People want so badly to support America and do what's right," says Anne Winter, the owner of Recycled Sounds Records and Tapes and a member of the Free Speech Coalition, which helped organize the Uptown event. "But we're not necessarily behind the president and what he represents." It helps, said Winter, that Moore is a humorist-activist. "If we're not laughing, we're crying," she said. "Michael helps us to laugh."

On tour, Moore eschews the traditional book lecture for a more grueling one-hour performance that is part stand-up comedy act, part Green Party rally. Although at one point he apologized to his UMKC audience for using a bad word, he swore freely at the Uptown, while the noisy and supportive crowd egged him on. Moore repeatedly mocked Bush's policies, comparing his anti-terrorism crusade to the "permanent war" of Orwell's 1984. Moore's fingers shot up in the air and formed quote marks whenever he said "President" Bush.

Moore also gave a rollicking blow-by-blow account of his negotiations with HarperCollins. He recalled how a company executive told him the book was "out of touch with the American people," a remark that drew derisive laughter from the audience. When asked to come up with a different title, Moore suggested Bring Me the Head of Antonin Scalia. (HarperCollins doesn't dispute Moore's account, saying only that "there was a lot of discussion about the best way to move the book forward.")

Afterward he signed books for more than an hour, often stopping to chat with fans and pose for photographs with them. A young female attorney wanted advice on making documentary films. He suggested making one about her firm's largest client. "The best documentary you can make is something you know," he said, "You know stuff we don't. You've had a peek behind that curtain."

One man, at Moore's prodding, told him about the accident that put him in a wheelchair. A young woman handed him a book with a waterlogged title page. When Moore asked what had happened, she said sheepishly, "My roommate blew bong water on it."

Somebody asked Moore if he was planning a third season of his Bravo series, "The Awful Truth." Probably not: Moore is finishing up his next film, "Bowling for Columbine," and wants to write another book. Moore said he's developing a "very provocative" sitcom for Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment. It's about a white man who "thinks blacks have it so good in America ... and then the next day he wakes up and discovers he's black." He would love to see the show on a network, preferably CBS, where it can reach "the people who need to watch this." (HBO, he said, is aimed at "a cable elite that already agrees with my views.")

In Detroit and San Diego he was kicked out of meeting halls for breaking curfew. But at 1:45 a.m., he was the last man out of the Uptown Theater. He gathered the CDs, T-shirts and zines given to him by appreciative fans. Stuffing them into his tote bag, he laughed. "What am I going to tell the guy at the airport," he said, "when he asks me if any strangers have given me anything?"