As I recall Moore asks Pat Boone what people should do. Boone starts hawking Amway. Cut to the woman hawking Amway.
Multi-level marketing scams like Amway are one of the parasites on the working class, they're more or less modern Ponzi schemes. Dump your boss - be your own boss, with Amway! Live the dream you've always wanted, work for yourself, get rich! Working class people put up a lot of their own money, and the only way to recoup it is to sucker their friends and family into it as well in Ponzi-like fashion. Although not limited to them, the backbone of Amway is evangelical churches, which is smart, because they're a pretty good place to find the suckers amongst the working class.
Which is why cutting from Pat Boone hawking Amway to the lady who bought into Pat Boone's Amway line is clever (although this is from memory, I last saw the movie a few years ago). Maybe she appears dumb for buying into Pat Boone's pitch, but Moore makes the point with those old GM "worker/management together" videos that workers had bought into GM's line as well. Although Anita Bryant and Pat Boone's bullshit-speak made them look bad, I thought Moore including the Boone -> makeup lady cut made him look Boone look even worse. I was cognizant of the whole Amway and MLM thing because I know working class people who have been suckered into it and have it cause divisions between friends and family by it's very insidious nature - the only way to make money from it is by ripping off your friends and family.
I think it's ridiculous to argue about Moore's baseball cap and miss the point of segments like this. It's also pretty clear that working class people, class conscious working class people, and bourgeoisie people will have different reactions seeing this film. I have read and seen a lot of Moore stuff, and it's pretty clear he's far to the left - I'm sure he knows that a boring lecture about the proper praxis and dialectic to working class people is pointless. This is a country that voted Reagan into office twice, he has to present a message to the public that they want to consume. Vanguard News Network - "Uncensored News for Whites, No Jews, Just Right" - http://www.vanguardnewsnetwork.com/books12.htm - posted a review of Moore's book Stupid White Men that said it was "moderately enjoyable" and that "My admiration for Moore stems from his award-winning documentary 'Roger and Me,' [...] The film memorably portrayed the aftermath of the closure of a GM auto-plant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. Additionally, Moore has been vocal in his opposition to unfettered free-trade, which sends high-paying manufacturing jobs to the third-world where they turn into unregulated sweat shops, staffed by workers making a fraction of U.S. wages." However, the author becomes unhappy, as racist right wing people tend to be, about Moore's lefty discussion of African-Americans in one chapter, after which the reviewer denounces him a "race traitor" and concludes that "I used to think Michael Moore was a decent guy who stood up for the economic interests of middle-Americans. Thankfully, this book set me straight."
Well, I guess he lost one fan. But I think it goes to show how widespread in the working class Moore's message appeals - even racist Nazis are glad that someone in the media is talking about the economic devastation and problems that the working class faces. Enough working class people are paying attention to people like Pat Buchanan, I'm glad Moore has their ear as well. In my mind, the enemy is the inheritor class, and right wing working class people are just confused, Gramsci and Wilhelm Reich go into detail about this. I really have to applaud Moore for presenting a left-wing message that appeals even to Nazis, except apparently for Moore's belief that blacks and whites are equal. And I think a leftie who tut-tut's this and says that they're not buying into one of the super-progressive parts of it are missing the point. A large percentage of the working class has been taken in by first estate charlatans and an inheritor class that fuels and manipulates nationalism ! an! d racism to it's own ends. These people can't be written off - the evangelicals have everyone running around trying to get everyone to accept Jesus as their personal savior, and we need people like Moore bringing in people as well. Chomsky is another person who breaks down boring economic tracts into every day language that the average person can understand, a kind of left wing Ross Perot.
I don't think red-diapered babies are aware of how devoid right wing working class culture is of any kind of good left wing images. Michael Kinsley on Crossfire, Eleanor Clift on McLaughlin group, no one who will be leading a charge to the barricades, I'm reminded of that chapter in "The Book of Daniel" where they listen to the radio debates between the right-winger and a left-wing patsy. Socialism *represents* the working class, thus virtually all the working class should be for it. Moore shows a picture of the working class embattled, just as the right paints a picture of the working class embattled by blacks, Mexicans and liberal cultural revolutionaries. Working class people are under siege, and they respond to those, like Moore or Buchanan, who realize that they are under siege and say as much.
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