Take Moore’s relentless campaigning for another anti-corporate zealot, the Green Party’s Ralph Nader, for the 2000 Presidency, saying that Nader’s policies would improve working conditions for everyone.

But before Nader told everyone else what to do, he should’ve cleaned up his own act first.

According to the 1976 memoir “Me & Ralph” by David Sanford, formerly Nader’s personal editor, Moore’s favorite champion of the working man only paid his employees $5,000/year while expecting them to log all of their activities from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., otherwise they received nothing at all.

Claims the former Nader employee Tim Shorrock, the workers at Nader’s non-profit, anti-business magazine “Multinational Monitor” became so distraught by their working conditions that they tried to form a labor union against Nader. Angered, Nader fired Shorrock, changed the locks to his office, and attempted to sue him for embezzlement (for taking his own private work papers with him).

As Jim Turner, one of Nader’s old pals, put it, “We spent a hundred years trying to clean sweatshops out of our system and what happens? Along comes the first major reformer of any impact, and he starts doing the same goddamned thing.” That’s probably hyperbole, but it seems pretty clear that Nader isn’t the most lenient employer.

Yet Moore scorns Bill Gates as a tyrant while campaigning for Nader like he’s the model for all businesspersons to follow. Moore has one set of standards for the HMO Humana and another for Nader.

This isn’t to say that Moore necessarily agreed wholeheartedly with such actions of Nader’s. As of this writing, I have not heard any reports of Moore treating his own employees so shabbily.

Yet Moore never apologized for Nader’s abusive mismanagement. Considering that Moore vigorously helped Nader on his presidential campaign, ignorance of these incidents isn’t an excuse.

Thus, there is an implicit sanction for Nader’s behavior in Moore’s endorsement. Moore expects America to believe that it will become a better place for corporate employees with one of the nation’s cruelest bosses at its head.

Finally, Moore loathes George W. Bush and his supporters to the point of perversity. He sees Bush as a symbol of American private enterprise, whether this assessment is fair or not.

Thus, Moore believes that, if he can discredit Bush, he will finally expose capitalism as the abomination he sees it as being. Yet, recently, it was Moore’s own philosophy that was exposed in its naked essence.

On Sept. 12, 2001, the very day following the terrorist attacks, Moore wrote the following on his Web site: “If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who did not vote for him! Boston, New York, DC, and the planes' destination of California — these were places that voted against Bush! Why kill them? Why kill anyone?”

It’s fortunate that Moore added those last three words “Why kill anyone?” because that’s the only trace of humanity in that entire paragraph. Moreover, “Why kill anyone?” actually contradicts the implicit message of the rest of that shocking passage.

It implies that the people in the states where Bush won electoral votes somehow deserved to die more than those in New York, since that state was won by Gore. Its thinly-veiled message is that the lives of those who voted for Bush are worth less than that of other people.

It didn’t occur to Moore, then, that no state deserved that atrocity more than any other.

Thankfully, Moore later had the good sense to remove those words from his Web site altogether. But that he put them up in the first place gives us some insight into his actual agenda. He doesn’t care for the working man as much he has an unbridled hatred for the free market and anyone remotely associated with it.

If people want to further enrich Moore by purchasing his new book and keeping it on the bestsellers list, I recognize their every right to do so. I just think they should know, however, how unfair it is that Moore continues to have the reputation of the worker’s friend.

If our government was run the way Moore preferred, with the corporate “menace” finally vanquished, the standard of living would be lower for everyone, especially the working class.

To see part 1 of this 2-part series, go to http://www.hawaiireporter.com/story.aspx?Leftist+Michael+Moore%3a+Enemy+of+the+Worker+-+Part+1

Stuart K. Hayashi is the president of the Reason Club of Honolulu and an undergraduate in Entrepreneurial Studies at Hawaii Pacific University, though his opinions do not necessarily reflect that of either institution. He can be reached at radical_individualist@hotmail.com

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