'Stupid White Men' Reveals
An America Awakening To Reality
From Michael Moore www.michaelmoore.com
Dear friends,
This is just a quick note of thanks for the support all of you have given my
book. "Stupid White Men" debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list
this week, and at #1 on the Publisher's Weekly nonfiction bestseller list
for independent bookstores. It's still #1 for all books on Amazon, and, my
personal favorite for a good laugh, #4 on the bestseller list for the Wall
Street Journal. By the fifth day of release, the book had gone into its 9th
printing.
More copies have been sold in one week than "Downsize This" sold in a whole
year. Pundits and publishers are stunned. "But the president has an 80%
approval rating!" There's something going on here, and they don't know what
it is...
I am writing this from northern California, two weeks into the book tour, on
a drive with my family to visit small towns like Ukiah and Arcata.
Last night in Santa Rosa, at the local high school, they had a thousand
people packed inside and another 500 out on the lawn who couldn't get in.
It's like this in all the places I visit. Hundreds, thousands, turning out
to discuss all the sorry excuses for the state of the nation.
People have had it with keeping silent for the past 6 months. They resent
having felt like if they chose to question what the government is up to or,
God forbid, dissent, they would somehow be considered unpatriotic.
Let's get one thing straight -- this is what it means to be "unpatriotic:"
1. When you shred our constitution and eliminate our civil liberties,
passing laws that make it illegal to encourage opposition to the
government's actions, THAT is un-American.
2. When you send our kids to go fight and die on a foreign land so that you
can finally build a pipeline for your oil backers across that country, THAT
is un-American.
3. When you use the dead of September 11 to try to get huge tax cuts passed
that will only benefit your rich benefactors, THAT is un-American.
4. When you allow criminals who are stealing the pensions of workers and
retirees to come in and hand-pick the head of the agency which is supposed
to be regulating them, and then you place some of the criminals' top brass
in your administration to "serve" as the secretary of the army and White
House counsel, and then these criminals turn out to be your number one
financial backers -- and their law firm turns out to be your #3 backer --
and, in spite of all this you still haven't resigned in disgrace, THAT is
un-American.
I want all of you to share this success with me and feel heartened and
reassured by the response to this book. It is an overwhelming rebuke, first
to those who sought to censor or ban it, and now to the oft-repeated
conventional wisdom that the whole country is whistling the same tune and
marching in lockstep to the vision of Cheney/Ashcroft/Bush. It's a bunch of
hooey, folks, and I have seen it first hand -- and not in the usual centers
of leftist discontent.
This tour has taken me to Ridgewood, New Jersey (area that always returns
its Republican congressman), Arlington, Virginia (a town filled with
military people), Grass Valley, California (in the middle of nowhere in a
congressional district represented by a right-wing Republican). In each of
these towns it's been a literal mob scene.
The Virginia bookstore says that "this crowd is an all-time record." The
line is out the door in downtown Ridgewood, and the store does not have
enough books. In Grass Valley, so many have come from hundreds of miles
across the Sierras that can't get in, so I tell the hundreds out in the
street that I'll stick around and do a second show. Three hours later they
are still there, and I do it all over again.
I want to thank all of you who have written. I read your emails at night and
I am so sorry I don't have the energy to respond. Hundreds of you have
written to say that your bookstore does not have the book.
The main reason that is happening is that the publisher has not printed
enough books and cannot ship them fast enough when they do. Often, it is
because the bookstore did not order enough copies. A few stores, and one
chain in particular, have not been exactly overjoyed to be carrying the
book. On the other hand, Barnes & Noble have put it on their bestseller list
and are offering it at 1/3 the price.
Every single independent bookstore I have stopped into has been out of books
and they tell me that both the publisher and the distributors are not
sending them books. I do not know what to do about this. I have made my
calls. I am told everything is OK. I can see first-hand on the road that it
is not OK, and that many stores simply do not have the book.
You can help me by letting HarperCollins know when you cannot find the book.
Write them at ...
http://wwwharpercollins.com/hc/aboutus/contactus.asp Again, my sincerest
appreciation to all of you and I look forward to seeing many of you on the
rest of this tour.
On Thursday I'll be in L.A., Friday in San Diego, Saturday in Denver and
Boulder, and next week it's on to Michigan and the Midwest. More cities are
being added, so check in at my website, www.michaelmoore.com.
Off to shadow the Cheney shadow government,
Michael Moore
Author Filmmaker
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