A packed Berlin concert hall. Cheers and applause in a raucous welcome fit for a beloved popstar. But this idol doesn't exactly sing. He rants and rails against US President George W. Bush.
US filmmaker and author Michael Moore began his German tour in Berlin this week to promote the German-language version of Dude, Where's My Country.
In two sold-out appearances, 3,000 adoring German fans got exactly what they came for: a hissing diatribe against the US government.
"Welcome old Europe, thank God for old Europe," Moore began at the Columbiahalle Sunday, referring to an unpopular term coined by the US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"I live in a country in which it is almost a matter of national policy to keep people stupid. I am almost embarrassed to talk about it but I feel you are owed an explanation."
Appearing in his trademark jeans and baseball cap, Moore read from his new book, Volle Deckung, Mr. Bush ("Full Cover, Mr. Bush"), railed against the war in Iraq, poverty and violence in America and the 2000 presidential election. He urged Germans not to let their country become "like the US" and said Americans were waking up to the "lies" of the Republican administration.
Laughter. Clapping. Whistles of support. The whole night through.
Moore began his European tour in England this month, "as an advance man" for Bush's visit to Britain. After Berlin, Moore visits Hamburg, Cologne and Munich before heading to two more sold-out shows in Austria.
While his documentaries are popular in the US and he makes the bestseller lists with his books, he is still sometimes seen by the press and public there as a fringe gadfly.
But in Europe, he is a phenomenon: his book Stupid White Men sold 1.1 million copies in Germany, almost double what it sold in the US, according to US magazine Publishers Weekly.
The English version was only one of two English books to ever make the German bestseller lists -- the other was Harry Potter. The new book is already 18th in advanced sales on Internet site Amazon.de.
Moore's appearances sell out and he appears in the most high-brow newspapers and magazines.
"He is for young people like a popstar," wrote German newsweekly Der Spiegel.
"And what is completely astonishing is that Moore is pretty old and looks like one of the `stupid white men' he writes about. In spite of this, Michael Moore is in; he is hip; he is cool."
Germans attribute this to Moore's mirroring of what is popular thinking in Europe, particularly after opposition grew in France and Germany to the US-led war in Iraq.
"He hits a nerve with what he says and people agree with him," said Ursula Haberl, who attended the show. "He is a star here."
Another fan said he gives legitimacy to negative images of the US and an outlet for frustration with Washington's
policies.
"He reinforces all the stereotypes we have of America," said Stefan Baumann. "We can point to him and say, see, even Americans are saying that about themselves."
But Baumann added that some of Moore's work goes too far and Germans do not always realize that his anti-Bush stance is not an anti-American stance.
"A lot of what is in the book is really repetitive and some of it is just not quite believable," he said.
"But Germans believe it because they want to. As for me, I just like him because he is funny."
Moore, for his part, says he believes Europeans truly like Americans, just not the government and does not see himself as promoting anti-Americanism.
"You like us, our charming simpleness," he said.
"We're a happy people, we don't have to think too much. We don't have to know what is going on in Nairobi."
And he is thrilled with his warm welcome in Europe.
"I am overwhelmed with the support my work has received here," he said.
"Thank you, people of Germany, for being a good friend."
May 11 to May 18 The original Taichung Railway Station was long thought to have been completely razed. Opening on May 15, 1905, the one-story wooden structure soon outgrew its purpose and was replaced in 1917 by a grandiose, Western-style station. During construction on the third-generation station in 2017, workers discovered the service pit for the original station’s locomotive depot. A year later, a small wooden building on site was determined by historians to be the first stationmaster’s office, built around 1908. With these findings, the Taichung Railway Station Cultural Park now boasts that it has
The latest Formosa poll released at the end of last month shows confidence in President William Lai (賴清德) plunged 8.1 percent, while satisfaction with the Lai administration fared worse with a drop of 8.5 percent. Those lacking confidence in Lai jumped by 6 percent and dissatisfaction in his administration spiked up 6.7 percent. Confidence in Lai is still strong at 48.6 percent, compared to 43 percent lacking confidence — but this is his worst result overall since he took office. For the first time, dissatisfaction with his administration surpassed satisfaction, 47.3 to 47.1 percent. Though statistically a tie, for most
In February of this year the Taipei Times reported on the visit of Lienchiang County Commissioner Wang Chung-ming (王忠銘) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and a delegation to a lantern festival in Fuzhou’s Mawei District in Fujian Province. “Today, Mawei and Matsu jointly marked the lantern festival,” Wang was quoted as saying, adding that both sides “being of one people,” is a cause for joy. Wang was passing around a common claim of officials of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the PRC’s allies and supporters in Taiwan — KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party — and elsewhere: Taiwan and
Six weeks before I embarked on a research mission in Kyoto, I was sitting alone at a bar counter in Melbourne. Next to me, a woman was bragging loudly to a friend: She, too, was heading to Kyoto, I quickly discerned. Except her trip was in four months. And she’d just pulled an all-nighter booking restaurant reservations. As I snooped on the conversation, I broke out in a sweat, panicking because I’d yet to secure a single table. Then I remembered: Eating well in Japan is absolutely not something to lose sleep over. It’s true that the best-known institutions book up faster
RSS