The last one didn’t work out, but maybe second time’s the charm? Michael Moore just announced he has another documentary attack on a sitting president in the works. It’s called “Fahrenheit 11/9,” the play on numbers a reference to another date that will live in infamy: the day Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. It will be a lot like “Fahrenheit 9/11,” his blockbuster evisceration of George W. Bush, only somehow even funnier and much, much, much scarier.
Still, remember how “Fahrenheit 9/11” didn’t achieve what it meant to do — that is, convince the populace not to re-elect Dubya? It made a ton of money — it’s still the highest grossing documentary ever, if you don’t include the “Jack-Ass”es (which are documentaries, we insist) — but it’s safe to assume few Bush II fans ever watched it. Not to belittle it as a piece of political art, but it was a classic case of preaching to the choir, making lefties feel like they weren’t insane, that the world really was going to crap and maybe, just maybe, Moore’s film would save the planet.
It didn’t, though at least we more or less survived that hot mess — long as you ignore that we destabilized the Middle East, ballooned up the National Debt and paved the way for a demagogue reality TV star to assume the American throne. Moore has been one of the more tireless chroniclers of the Trump era, releasing the film “Michael Moore in Trumpland” shortly before Election Day and prepping the one-man show “The Terms of My Surrender,” which is coming to Broadway.
He’s also been able to keep his sense of humor, amazingly, while many of us have turned to mere gallows humor, laughing at the apocalypse we’re sure is en route. So instead of being pessimistic, assuming that “Fahrenheit 11/9” won’t make a difference either, let’s be cautiously optimistic.
