An anonymous tipster alerted us via the News tab to a possible racist/scandalous/nebulous slip of Michael Moore’s tongue. I sat through the entire, excruciating 10+ minute video at Breitbart.tv, only to discover that the controversial part is at the end; the video I posted below features the last eleven seconds of the entire segment and contains the relevant moment.
Link: sevenload.com
Well? What do you think? Racist or immature? Mispronounced or intentionally mangled? Or is this much ado about nothing? Comments on Breitbart were hot, heated and divided about whether or not Michael Moore started to channel Apu. What say you?
Scraping the barrel for “brown” stories? What’s next, “Optimus Prime stolen from ancient India”?
between you, me, and rahul…the homo-eroticism on this thread is too much for me to bear.
Dude, if you have any info on the veracity of this I’m all over it 🙂
I watched the full video, and I highly highly recommend it. Is it schadenfreude for me to have enjoyed Moore’s blitzkrieg on Wolf? As for racism, I still maintain, “Oh no, he di’nt!” The only disgusting thing in the entire piece was said by Lou Dobbs – that guy’s face is always redder than Stalin.
I don’t know about Optimus Prime, but Megatron surely is. Check out the story of Sakatasura, who transformed himself into a bullock cart, to kill Krishna.
Which of us is Suzanne Somers?
Is this really what you guys think a political issue affecting South Asians looks like?
thigh-master? cum and knock on her door? you’ve gone beyond my cultural references, rahul. there’s something happening here but i don’t know what it is. do you mr jones.
great legs though.
Yeah, Sanjay Gupta mispronounces his own name to make it sound the way an American would pronounce it. And hes not the only one. Now cumon!!
Oh, Manju, you have many contacts to get you facts. You are very well read, it’s well known. So, I’ll hand you a bone.
Maybe Moore was really saying that Sanjay’s character on CNN was over, because of his greasy behavior? You know, Goop, Ta!
I meant career.
I won’t go to that length. Why shud he be interested in Dr Gooptah’s job security?
So this what it takes huh? To stop the dung flinging at Anna, we need a Michael Moore post? Quick, somebody edit a George Bush clip so that it appears he says macaca. Similar edited clips of Moore, Narendra Modi, Mushi, Arundhati, Kaavya, Kal, Hillary, Sanjaya, Salman should be enough to deflect future dung flinging.
NVM, don’t tempt fate.
must you block quote the only sentence of mine that has a typo?
I know threads are to be made on these type of blogs for discussion but in my opinion, taking the time to discuss something like this just contributes to the crying wolf syndrome that is very counter-productive to the cause…
Wow, you guys are really paranoid. It’s kind of sad, actually.
i agree eduardo.. any little thing gets everyone in a tizzy..
No actually, we all have internet connections and an abiding curiosity in all things brown-related or possibly brown-related.
Moore is pronouncing the doc’s name much like Sanjay’s colleagues do on TV–his anger is obviously causing him to overemphasize one portion of the doc’s name. Much like the notorious Lack-Shmee Singh does on NPR. A self-parody almost, but really it’s just the way they pronounce their names.
I’ve never really been offended by Sanjay Gupta’s reporting because I regard most things health-related, reported by cable news, to be somewhat equivalent to the color-coded ‘threat-level’ indicator of which Fox News is so fond.
That’s it? So everytime someone butchers my name they are being racist? Shit. I had no idea.
I agree with Eduard. It was not racist at all.
please another check to the “are you kidding me with this?”
I don’t think it was intentional. I think it’s something everyone has done: you know how to pronounce someone’s difficult-(for you)-to-pronounce name and you can pronounce it correctly if you are consciously making the effort. But in the heat of a discussion, you might start reverting to your natural, mangled pronunciation. I know I do it with the French. 😉
Also, these videos are a great example of why I hate watching Blitzer et al- if I wanted to hear people screaming at each other like this about politics, I’d just invite my family over on a Saturday night.
First of all, try to understand the concept of propaganda. a SINGLE film cannot itself function as propaganda. Lets look at the wikipedia definition:
” a concerted set of messages aimed at influencing the opinions or behavior of large numbers of peopl”
The operative word here is set, so print, broadcast, radio TV, film when they all function together, it’s propaganda. So you see a news report giving you the blow by blow on the war (we moved troops from this locale to that locale, etc..) then you see a commercial for a video game called “Tank X” where you’re a tank in a urban war zone, then you go to a movie and see american flags all over the place and people saluting them, (for ex. National Treasure), then you open the newspaper and see a full page ad to join the Army or Navy, because its not just a job, its an adventure, then you turn on TV and see Jack Bauer chop someone’s pinky off for the secret code and say he did it for the country.
That is what propaganda is.
Secondly, as for the desi angle – earlier I jokingly stated, many of the NHS hospital workers were desi, but last I checked being desi living in the US doesn’t give you any sort of health insurance benefits that supercede those available to your average US citizens. I’m not saying don’t discuss this issue, although I personally think its a no-brainer, just don’t make it the only issue.
I watched the entire video (not just the last 10 seconds) — Moore spent most of the video calling CNN the incompetent network they are. I didn’t notice anything racist at all. Moore dislikes Gupta because they’re on opposite sides on most things, the Iraq war, and now Healthcare. Can’t people dislike other people on political grounds? If you watch Moore say “Bush” when he’s frustrated, he uses the same elongated, booming pronunciation.
Anna, This is a much ado about nothing. Who submitted this story?? Someone needs to recall ‘the boy who cried wolf’ — save the claims of racism for when it really happens (and it does, of course, happen), otherwise people’ll just dismiss you as a cry-baby.
slighty off-topic but who checked out M. Night on Entourage this week. HILARIOUS!! Ari: “Indians and improv. No greater match.”
Thank you a dozen times for mentioning what you did. Who, indeed, because some have not realized– it’s not me. I wouldn’t have put it on the news tab because I didn’t think it was racist. But I respect all of you readers and am not so sure of myself, that I’d let my decision be your decision, if that makes sense. The person who submitted the story was a lurker; I wanted to see if they had company among mutineers.
Again, I didn’t come up with this story, one of YOU did. I wanted to know what the REST of you thought.
As for the crit that “you guys are all paranoid”, please. Are you reading these comments? Most people don’t see anything offensive here, but thanks for tarring everyone with your insulting brush. No one is getting in a tizzy. Can people distinguish between an open discussion, which is what I was trying to initiate and me writing “THIS IS RACIST! THIS IS AWFUL!”???
Please Anna. This was no way intentional. I have seen many whites pronounce Gupta as Goopta. Hell, i heard even an Indian or two mangle their names thinking it will be easier for a white guy to understand.
Sorry, Anna. I should have read your last comment before posting mine.
Apart from the fact that Webster defines it differently, what would you call this in concert with the movie, even going with your notion? Again, all of his movies are dominated by an unsubtle populistic theme (independent of whether you agree with them). I call that propaganda.
Also, I didn’t realize 24 was sponsored by the Pentagon 🙂
Considering that Moore pronounced Gupta’s name just fine earlier, it seems to me his mispronunciation was intentional at the end. Now, I do not believe it was racial, but it was certainly an attempt to dismiss Gupta’s reporting in childish antics. Just as some of Moore’s critics hurt themselves by making fun of his weight, Moore makes himself look pretty stupid.
While Moore may be America’s very own Leni Riefenstahl, he’s not as effective. Riefenstahl persuaded the whole of Germany that their future lay in Nazism. Moore has failed to enact more restrictive gun laws, defeat Bush in 2004, and is not likely to have much effect on America’s admittedly expensive health care system.
Cute.
Rahul,
Are you suggesting that neither one used film as a medium to spread a political message?
OT, but Rahul #55..wipes away the tears gawd bless you! utterly, utterly merry…
y’all are reading too much into this, seriously anna, wtf.
No, that is not at all what I am suggesting. But comparing Moore to a Nazi sympathizer is like saying Winston Churchill (I am deliberately not making the contemporary comparison because that is guaranteed to derail the discussion) is like Hitler, because both used armies to capture territories. The underlying morality is relevant to the analogy.
having a point of view = propaganda?
The very fact that his movies are so UNsubtle should be the first clue that this is not propaganda
Jimi wrote:
If you took the trouble to read all the posts you’d see that Anna very clearly stated that she posted this not because she believed it to be true, but because she wanted to initiate discussion on here (which I applaud). No where in the original post did she say he believed the clip to fall one way or the other.
Well…..as a southern born white american that is teaching himself Hindi…..I can say that learning the script and the various phonetics has been a challenge…as the description of pronunciations can vary depending on the nationality and accent of whomever wrote the particular text I am studying…. So Moore, an American who is not and never has studied the language, would be completely in the dark on correct pronunciation. I really don’t think grammer and pronunciation should be used as guages of “racisim” as folks all over the world mis-pronounce their own and other languages everyday….and I sincerely doubt their intent is hate for themselves or others.
Black is white. Up is down.
Paul Krugman can be argued to have a point of view. Moore is a propagandist. Anyways, apparently, Moore’s techniques produces quite an emotional response among people, so I’ll let this sit for a while and comment later.
IMHO the Michigan accent mixed with a shot of disgust led to the offensive concoction you heard. Seriously what would it benefit the man to appear racist? He knows his detractors are waiting for just such an incident to discredit him further.
So..how do you say it? To be fair, I have a white name that no one can pronounce correctly. If you mangle it, so what? Try it: Einojuhani Hint: it rhymes with “hiney”
Are you kidding me? Moore might dislike Dr. Gupta, but racist? He probably is deliberately mispronouncing his name, but that is probably to emphasize Moore’s contempt for Gupta’s facts.
awww, you two are cute. thanks for soothing my jingle-jangle morning weariness 🙂
that is bush league.
Michael Moore’s comment was in response to Gupta’s crits on the “Anderson Cooper 360” show. I saw this via google:
CNN’s Gupta Fact Checks Michael Moore’s ‘Sicko’
As far as the healthcare debate, I was sick in the fall, and 7 months later, yesterday in fact, finished settling my healthcare bills–having accumulated 250 pieces of paper from health insurance company and the 3 separate billing agencies used by the hospital. I successfully disputed 8 of the incorrectly re-imbursed insurance claims, and made 47 separate payments ranging from $10.41 to $700+. And I have “good” healthcare insurance … in reference to Michael Moore– having met people screwed by the system I don’t think Moore meant anything by it–and I understand the frustration with a cheerleader “Gupta” personality or Jones/Davis/Chang/etc/etc.
(By the way, Gawande’s writings are excellent, read Better on a recent sunday afternoon.)
I second that.
Let’s move from this side distraction to real issues, which there are plenty of.
Rahul, cheers.. but I do think Moore has a point of view. And I would take a Moore documentary any day over television, which is inundated with propaganda (among them commercials,corporate news items, paid product placements, product ads passing as news,vapid and stupid talk shows, and most of all the very narrow predetermined frame of argument often taken for granted even in the “best” news programs/shows).
When fellow CNN anchors mispronounce “Gupta” all the time, how can you claim this is racist if Moore mispronounces it??
Much ado about nothing!
I don’t think a guy like Micheal Moore grew up with a lot of Guptas. If it was someone in their 20’s maybe there’d be something there.