My review of Michael Moore’s one-man show on Broadway

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Marion D.S. Dreyfus

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Audiencing at the Bellow of the Beast: The Terms of My Survival
Michael Moore’s nightly hissy-fit for enbubbled libs willing to shell out shekels

Just a few yards down West 46th, a dozen pedicabs nuzzle wheel-rim to wheel-rim outside the hyperhot Hamilton, with more arriving by the minute for the well-heeled attendees of this megahit. Lined up demurely in front of the Richard Rodgers like that, these pedicabs hearken back to the early aughts of the past century, as they eclipse for a moment the contemporary environment beyond. At the rap Hamilton, there’s not a seat to be had for love or money.

Farther up West 46th street, Michael Moore holds sway at the Belasco. But at the performance we attended, there were plenty of prime seats, four or five on each side of the mezzanine, empty. At the rear, entire rows went begging for backsides.

Since there were very, very few Republicans or Conservatives who would pay to put themselves under the hate-infested likes of Moore, he was evidently pandering to leftist passions and predilections.

For the first hour, during which he took numerous drinks of some sort (he sounded slightly nasal and insisted he has a cold), Moore called the duly elected president “Stupid,” “an f’ing moron,””dumbest candidate ever, against the smartest candidate ever,” and invited the audience to yell up any qualities about President Trump they could offer. They yelled up, “Liar!” “Sexual predator” (Moore: “He’s the Harvey Weinstein of the Republican Party!”), “perv,” “constant liar,” and more. Yet he thinks the DNC is all loving, all encompassing.

He offers up stories of how he at 18 won a local Michigan election, for which his goal was solely to fire his high school principal – and the vice principal. The photo he threw up on the flag background (where all the stripes normally red are uniformly blue, by the way) shows a singularly geeky, unappetizing Moore, with long, Prince Valiant hair and goofball demeanor, which he called “chick-bait.”

He isn’t uninteresting. He isn’t even unfunny, to people who buy into his murk and distilled committed prog leftism. We two, probably the only persons in the audience not orgasmic about his every dribble of prejudicial contumely, did not laugh at all through the whole two-plus hours.

One oddity is that though he imprecates the audience for not doing more, the title of his piece, “The terms of my surrender,” is 180 degrees opposite of what he actually says all through. He has no desire or ability to “surrender,” and wants to ensure ridding the country of one man he cannot abide.

Following his repeated hysteria (covering his face with both hands) that he couldn’t understand how “this could happen,” he expostulates that of the past seven elections, all but one featured the Democrats having a higher popular vote than their opponents. He never speaks of the electoral college. Just as he repeatedly harangues the audience that “the polls show the people agree with us,” the things he mentions, and seems to think cover all the important bases, are abortion (“choice”), transgenders fighting in the military (“they’ve been fighting so long that they must be the best military of all”), marriage “equality,” and naturally, “climate change.”

Unmentioned and unconsidered: taxes, a healthy economy, jobs, security inside and outside our borders, the threat of insurgent infiltrates and aliens. The bubble, incarnate.

At one point, developing his theme that Americans are badly educated and getting worse, he stages a mock battle of wits between a Canadian and an American. We knew right before he got the Canadian nurse and the American graphic artist that the questions would be tilted, and sure enough, the American woman lost the contest and got fewer right than the Canadian.

He inveighs against homeland security in a mildly funny skit ending in his reading the menu of taboo take-aboards on airplanes which is more amusing than the rot he spews on how scandalous it is that the Senate has not once brought up the “I” word, Impeachment.

He apologized in the end for running long – because he had a cold – but ends with a huge and endless exhortation to “Do something to not let Trump win a second term.” He says, to groans from the seated, that Trump will win a second term.

During the whole spiel onstage, he refers to Hillary as “her,” and blames her “Brooklyn geographers” for failing to know about a place called Wisconsin. Odd that he never mentions the scandals unrolling these weeks with Nuclear One, Russia, Democrat violence and intolerance. (He says his life has been threatened numerous times, especially when he has spoken out against the country, or the rights of the people, or refugees/Muslims. He delights in thinking that the President may have a long-run battle against the NFL.

He stops us cold, however, near the end, when he promises that President Trump (he never uses “President,” of course) who is “insane,” WILL start a war. Why? To distract us from his numerous scandals mounting. Ha. Not a word about the North Korean despot’s endless provocations .

This one-man show, running 2 hours and 20 minutes without intermission, features the Unshaven One, rotund and shambling in a moving target of bardeaux of hate sprach against our current President. His physiognomy, for those who are not acquainted with the Michigander and his documentaries and low-jinks, is so unprepossessing that he entered the Belasco from the front, his own show, and no one recognized him.

Best part: when we were leaving the theater, a security guard was setting up canvas pens to corral any would be autograph seekers. I am trying to get to my vehicle. He asks, “Do you want to get in here?” I come back with a decisive, “No! I don’t want anything Michael Moore has to sell.” He responds, “Me too.” He pauses: “But I got a job to do…” We smile conspiratorially.

My colleague and I both laugh. We’re well outside the Dem bubble.

Marion d s dreyfus . . . 19 October 20©17This article is republished with permission from our friend Oleg Atbashian at The People’s Cube.