Michael Moore's Rockstar Moment

On a nasty, wet spring evening, in the back room of a church auditorium, a couple of reporters and independent bookstore types are waiting for Michael Moore, author and filmmaker of Roger & Me fame. We were promised exclusive interviews here, before his speech, but our allotted time has already come and gone.

Ten minutes before he's scheduled to speak, Moore breezes in, apologizing, bemoaning the traffic. But forget the reporters. "What about those people out there?" Michael Moore wants to know. Several hundred people are still outside, shivering on a line still wrapped around the corner, hoping against hope for last-minute tickets to a sold-out event. "Are they gonna get in? No? I gotta go talk to those people." He turns to me and my notebook. "Don't you think that's more important?"

What could I say?

Yes, Michael Moore's publicist promised me an interview, but Moore doesn't do well with publicists. He doesn't call, he doesn't write, and he doesn't have a "handler" to shepherd him around on his tours. Screw handlers. Michael Moore is a man of the people. He leaves the reporters and heads outside. The people standing there in the storm deserve at least a few minutes of what they came for -- his hilarious schtick. He talks outside for more than twenty minutes. Inside, the sounds of the cheering, grateful fans cut through the sound of the rain.

Take the energy of a tent revival, add a political message, deliver it with comic flair to rival Chris Rock's, and you've got Michael Moore's nationwide book tour, coming soon to an indie bookstore, college campus or church auditorium near you. The book is called "Stupid White Men," and it just climbed to #2 on the New York Times bestseller list, with no sign of stopping.

All this -- Moore wants you to know -- for a book that almost didn't get published.

On Sept. 10, HarperCollins printed the first 50,000 copies of Stupid White Men. On Sept. 11, the world went on hold, including distribution of the book. A couple of months later, according to Moore, he called his publisher to get an update on the book's status. He heard that the "political climate had changed," and his book -- a rollicking indictment of everything from the way Bush won the election to racism in America -- was no longer appropriate. The book is indeed provocative; it includes an open letter to Dubya that asks, among other pointed questions, "George, are you able to read and write on an adult level?" and then proceeds to raise some serious doubt about the issue. Other chapters are entitled "Idiot Nation" and "Kill Whitey."

HarperCollins thought Stupid White Men was not in keeping with America's mood (all of this is according to Moore, but the publisher has not denied any of it). They wanted him to change sections like "Kill Whitey." During his speech, Moore intones the velvety voice of a publishing executive, purring, "'Whitey is no longer the problem.'"

"Man," Moore yells, "Whitey is always the problem!" Everyone cheers.

Moore refused to change a single word of his book. On November 30, Moore got a call from his editor saying that since he wouldn't rewrite 50 percent, pay $100,000 to reprint the first 50,000 copies, or change the title, they planned to pulp the book.

Those threats were a mistake that may have inadvertently helped HarperCollins make millions.

When faced with this ugly case of censorship, Moore took advantage of his last option -- he leaked the story, at a speech in New Jersey. Enraged, a New Jersey librarian took up the cause, rallying librarians by email to attack HarperCollins for banning books.

Moore imitates the publishing exec, purring again, "'Moore, what did you do to the librarians? We're getting a lot of angry librarian hate mail.'" Then Moore launches into a bit about how you should never piss off the librarians. The crowd goes wild. "Hey, since when did librarians get a cult following?" he says, laughing.