Wading through hogwash

It’s been Michael Moore week in the Guardian.

A lot of people will tell you that Michael Moore needs to get a shave, lose some weight and stop talking nonsense. I agree with them but more, much more than that, he needs an editor.

Moore doesn’t so much have a point of view as a line in invective, his investigations lack analysis and his writing is, well… flabby. Someone needs to come along after he’s said his piece and tidy up the mess so as to make it presentable. No one ever does.

The Guardian has been publishing edited extracts from Moore’s new book ”Dude, Where’s My Country?” One piece, on the evils of corporate America, called “Face it, you'll never be rich” runs to nearly eighteen hundred words. It’s not the shortest by any means.

I’ve read it, so you don’t have to. Here’s my edited extract of the Guardian’s edited extract. I’ve slimmed it down to 158 words but trust me, you're not missing much.

The war on terror has distracted the nation from the war that business corporations have been waging on average Americans. Since 9/11 the business bandits and their government accomplices have been on a punch-drunk rampage, looting the savings and destroying the hopes of millions of families.

America’s economic future is being destroyed by the greed of these corporate mojahedin. The American people are being mugged by lawless gangs of CEOs. They are fleecing the public and destroying the American dream, which is a myth anyway.

Rich people are greedy bastards and Wall Street is a rich man’s game. It’s a smooth conspiracy of the well-heeled, a sham, a ruse concocted by the corporate powers-that-be to lure your average Joe and Jane into handing over their life savings. These evildoers have fleeced the American public and have made off like bandits with the life savings of suckers like me and you.

We’re nothing but peasants to these corporate crooks.

Unfortunately, making it shorter doesn't make it any more intelligent. I guess four words would have done: "American corporations are evil."

To my mind, it's a measure of the Guardian’s decline that it regards Moore’s partisan frothing as “explosive” new writing.