WORKING FOR MICHAEL MOORE - THE "MOTHER JONES" YEARS

He also showed signs of what people who observed him in later years would call manic depression. A senior staffer who worked closely with Moore told me:

"We had a staff picnic in August. Now, if you're the editor of a magazine that has a staff picnic, you go to the picnic and you lead; you have fun. Moore went to this picnic and he found a table in the picnic area off to the side and sat there by himself, staring into space for five hours with this really morose look on his face. He wouldn't talk to anybody. It was the weirdest thing, really bizarre. People were wondering, 'What the hell? This is our editor? Our leader?' It was at that point that most people realized, 'This guy can't run this magazine; he can't lead us.' Some of this stuff would even be excusable if he was coming in on Monday with thirty great ideas, twenty great writers, but that wasn't happening at all. As a matter of fact, he was blowing us away with how stupid he was at running the magazine."

Jesse Larner: Forgive Us Our Spins.

Actually, Jesse's book (written from the Left, remember) makes it plain that, at other points in his career, Moore could come up with some inspired ideas. But there's surely a pathological component in the reckless deceptions he scatters around in his work. As Jesse observes, the man is like a burglar who keeps robbing the same bank, almost as if he wants to be caught.

Perhaps that's another reason why so much of the media has given him a pass. When a person's behaviour is that extreme, it's easy to convince yourself that it must express some deeper truth, plucked from the heart of the ordinary working Joe. (Moore has always been brilliant at playing the class card.) I've interviewed him by phone, and couldn't help marvelling at how effortlessly he ignored inconvenient questions; all that mattered to him, it seemed, was serving The Cause. But what if The Cause is just a pretext? Even now, a lot of people still haven't faced up to that question.