Republican Thugs Part 9 – Michael Moore Edition

In yet another version of our continuous Republican Thug series, comes probably the most disturbing one yet.

In an excerpt from his upcoming book \"Here Comes Trouble\", Michael Moore tells us some stories of republican hatred, violence and plain stupidity. He talks about random people attacking him, hiring Navy Seals to live with him to protect him and the toll it took on his family. I recommend reading the whole excerpt but here is an interesting story and a troubling one.

First the most troubling one:

And then there was Lee James Headley. Sitting alone at home in Ohio, Lee had big plans. The world, according to his diary, was dominated and being ruined by liberals. His comments read like the talking points of any given day’s episode of The Rush Limbaugh Show. And so Lee made a list. It was a short list of the people who had to go. At the top of the list was his No1 target: “Michael Moore”. Beside my name he wrote, “MARKED” (as in “marked for death”, he would later explain).

Throughout the spring of 2004, Headley accumulated a huge amount of assault weapons, a cache of thousands of rounds of ammunition, and various bomb-making materials. He bought The Anarchist’s Cookbook and the race-war novel The Turner Diaries. His notebooks contained diagrams of rocket launchers and bombs, and he would write over and over: “Fight, fight, fight, kill, kill, kill!”

But one night in 2004, he accidentally fired off a round inside his home from one of his AK-47s. A neighbour heard the shot and called the police. The cops arrived and found the treasure trove of weapons, ammo and bomb-making materials. And his hit list.

I got the call some days later from the security agency.

“We need to tell you that the police have in custody a man who was planning to blow up your house. You’re in no danger now.”

Secondly is one story that comes full circle. Moore discusses his Oscar Speech that drove the right crazy. He was booed and jeered immediately and as he tells it:

A little known fact: the first two words every Oscar winner hears right after you win the Oscar and leave the stage come from two attractive young people in evening wear hired by the Academy to immediately greet you behind the curtain. So while calamity and chaos raged on in the Kodak, this young woman in her designer gown stood there, unaware of the danger she was in, and said the following word to me: “Champagne?” And she held out a flute of champagne.

The young man in his smart tuxedo standing next to her then immediately followed up with this: “Breathmint?” And he held out a breathmint.

Champagne and breathmint are the first two words all Oscar winners hear. But, lucky me, I got to hear a third. An angry stagehand came right up to the side of my head, screaming as loud as he could in my ear: “ASSHOLE!”

Other burly, pissed-off stagehands started toward me. I clutched my Oscar like a weapon, holding it like a lone man trapped and surrounded in the woods, his only hope being the torch he is swinging madly at the approaching vampires. All I felt at that moment was alone, that I was nothing more than a profound and total disappointment.

Luckily, as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20 and this story comes full circle:

Eventually I found myself back on The Tonight Show for the first time in a while. As I was leaving the stage, the guy who was operating the boom microphone approached me.

“You probably don’t remember me,” he said nervously. “I never thought I would ever see you again or get the chance to talk to you. I can’t believe I get to do this.”

Do what? I thought. I braced myself for the man’s soon-to-be-broken hand.

“I never thought I’d get to apologise to you,” he said, as a few tears started to come into his eyes. “I’m the guy who ruined your Oscar night. I’m the guy who yelled ‘ASSHOLE’ into your ear right after you came off the stage. I … I … [he tried to compose himself]. I thought you were attacking the president – but you were right. He did lie to us. And I’ve had to carry this with me now all these years, and I’m so sorry …”

By now he was starting to fall apart, and all I could think to do was to reach out and give him a huge hug.

“It’s OK, man,” I said, a big smile on my face. “I accept your apology. But you do not need to apologise to me. You believed your president! You’re supposed to believe your president! If we can’t expect that as just the minimum from whoever’s in office, then, shit, we’re doomed.”

“Thank you,” he said, relieved. “Thank you for understanding.”