Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [136]
It was a sobering and bitter pill to swallow as we heard Bob Miles say these words. We knew what he was saying was true. So what would be our responsibility in all this? Is it better never to film people or events like the Aryan Nations, to just ignore them? Or is it better to expose them outright, hoping that will become our best defense against them?
We stopped at the gas station on our way out of town. There was a sign in the window that read: MOVIES ON HOME VIDEO HERE!
“Wow,” I said. “Look at that. You can rent a movie at a gas station. Is that what it’s coming to? Movies are now sold like a bag of Doritos or a Hostess cupcake?”
“I think that’s the future over there,” Anne said, pointing to a large satellite dish in someone’s backyard. “And I’m sure our Aryan friends will find a way to make good use of it.”
“This was a good shoot,” Kevin remarked. “Thanks for setting it up for us,” he said to me. “You were a real natural with these folks. You should think about doing more of this.”
“Hanging out with hot Nazis?” I asked.
“Yes, that,” he replied with a grin.
I went inside and got them all some coffee and other snacks.
Parnassus
IN 1986, I WAS WITNESS to a murder plot. I was there, in the room, when those in charge hatched their plan to kill the American Middle Class. It took place in a penthouse of an exclusive Acapulco resort, in a private gathering organized by top officials in the Reagan administration. I snuck in and I saw it, I heard it all, and I got out alive so I could tell a story that, unfortunately, no one at the time wanted to hear or believe. “The death of the middle class? Planned by our own government? HA HA HA HA HA HA!!”
But, forgive me—I think I’m a bit ahead of myself.
Let me begin again:
I used to think all liberals and lefties were the same: good hearts, good politics. It took a real wake-up call in the capital of liberalism, San Francisco, for me to realize that there were various forms of “liberals,” and the one I had never encountered back in Flint was the Wealthy Liberal Who Loved Humanity But Hated People. He’s the liberal whose conscience is eased by the generosity of his checkbook—just as long as you, the recipient of his largesse, look the other way and not consider how he came to have that money in the first place.
But I’m ahead of myself again.…
For the nearly ten years I edited and published the Flint Voice (which, in 1983, became the Michigan Voice), I never earned more than $15,000 a year. On two different occasions, the Voice was so broke I had to lay myself off. It was not unusual for me to be late on paying the $200 a month for my rent. There weren’t a lot of businesses interested in advertising in a muckraking paper that was constantly raking the muck out of the very businesses being asked to advertise.
Case in point: the local Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge. They had a policy of not hiring blacks and refusing to rent out rooms at night to anyone who was African-American. How did I know this? A clerk who worked there told me. One thing I learned as a journalist is that there is at least one disgruntled person in every workplace in America—and at least double that number with a conscience. Hard as they try, they simply can’t turn their heads away from an injustice when they see one taking place.
Such was the case with Carole Jurkiewicz, the head desk clerk at the Howard Johnson’s Motor Inn on Miller Road in Flint. One day she walked into my office and brought with her a number of applications filled out by people looking for a job at Howard Johnson’s. Many of them had a star marked in pen at the top.
“These are the white