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Melnyk pursues Moore to ask him why, in his own pursuit of an interview with Roger Smith of General Motors, he failed to mention that he had already spoken to him. Moore has said he interviewed Smith long before he began filming. When she twice intercepts Moore on tour, she is rightly embarrassed by his gracious response. If there is a renaissance of documentaries, it is not served by films such as this.
This is not to suggest Moore should not be pursued and challenged about whether or not he "cuts corners", just as the work of the revered father of British documentary, John Grierson, has been re-examined and questioned. But feckless parody is not the way. Turning the camera around, as Moore has done, and revealing great power's "invisible government" of manipulation and often subtle propaganda is certainly one way. In doing so, the documentary-maker breaches a silence and complicity described by Günter Grass in his confessional autobiography, Peeling the Onion, as maintained by those "feigning their own ignorance and vouching for another's . . . divert[ing] attention from something intended to be forgotten, something that nevertheless refuses to go away".
For me, an earlier Michael Moore was that other great "anti-American" whistleblower, Tom Paine, who incurred the wrath of corrupt power when he warned that if the majority of the people were being denied "the ideas of truth", it was time to storm what he called the "Bastille of words" and we call "the media". That time is again overdue.