Who's the noisiest of them all? A reader responds to Michael Moore's biographer, the tireless and even-handed Jesse Larner:
Though I suspect Mr Larner is correct when he asserts that Rush Limbaugh has a larger number of uncritical followers than Michael Moore when it comes to the United States audience, I think he has forgotten about how Moore is revered outside of the United States. I live in Australia, for example. Here, no matter how many examples I cite of Moore's dishonesty, the response is always that he would be sued if he were dishonest. As few outside of the United States have ever heard of such Supreme Court decisions as "New York Times v Sullivan" that protect Moore, and since other nations' laws regarding defamation are far stricter, it is easy to see why they would draw this conclusion.
Perhaps I am nitpicking, since Mr Larner is to be commended for urging his peers on the Left to abandon such charlatans who claim to speak for them. I would say that I have conservative ideological beliefs, but will never call myself a conservative while that word evokes memories of the insults of Coulter and Limbaugh rather than the philosophy of Burke, Hayek and Rand. Hopefully, with the help of the Larners of this world, the Left and Right alike will shed their dead weight and debate ideas rather than compete with propaganda.
That "Why don't they sue?" argument drives me crazy too. I've heard it so often from my friends that I've given up trying to explain.