Michael Moore's Conservative Counterpart

By Bill Berkowitz, WorkingForChange.com. Posted February 9, 2005.

While Michael Moore has become one of America's notable documentary filmmakers – both Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11 won awards, set box office records and had the nation buzzing – conservatives have been hunting for a right-wing counterpart. Last fall, the American Film Renaissance film festival – whose slogan was "Doing Film the Right Way" – provided a platform for a slew of young conservative filmmakers. The first film festival devoted to screening films with conservative perspectives featured two anti-Moore films – Michael Wilson's Michael Moore Hates America, and radio and television talk show host and WorldNetDaily columnist Larry Elder's Michael and Me and new work from other conservatives.

While neither of the anti-Moore films has yet managed to land a major distribution deal, this year's hopes for a breakout conservative filmmaker and film appears to rest with Evan Coyne Maloney. Despite the fact that Maloney "hasn't completed a single film," he "may very well be America's most promising conservative documentary filmmaker," Jacob Gershman recently reported in the New York Sun.

Maloney is the 32-year-old director of the 46-minute film, Brainwashing 101. He, along with his two partners – Stuart E. Browning, the executive producer and primary funder of the projected full-length version of the film, and Blaine Greenberg – are offering a modicum of fame and a few decent prizes to students who catch their liberal professors injecting their own political opinions into courses where those views are deemed superfluous: Students can take down a pompous professor, become an instant celebrity (of sorts), possibly appear in a full-length documentary and win one of three decent prizes – an Apple iBook G4 Computer (first prize), an Apple iPod (second prize), or an Apple iPod Mini (third prize) for their troubles. (The contest, which began on Sept. 13, 2004, will accept entries until May 1, 2005.)

To qualify for fame and swag, students have to provide documentary evidence that their liberal professors fouled their classrooms with left-wing demagoguery.

Here is what is required of participating students:

1. "When a professor voices his or her political views in class – but only when it does not pertain to the subject matter at hand – keep track of how much class time is spent on the political discussion, and to the best of your ability, record the comments made by the professor.

2. "Also, record the date of the discussion, the name of your professor, the name and course ID of the class, and the name and location (city and state) of your school.

3. "Lastly, you must be able to provide the name of at least one other student who was present at the time and who is willing to corroborate your report."

On the filmmaker's web site, AcademicBias.com – decorated with headshots of Marx, Lenin, Che Guevara, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore – Mahoney, Browning and Greenberg describe the short version of Brainwashing 101 as "a provocative short film showing how universities use tools such as 'speech codes' to force political views upon students." In what they call a cutting expose, the filmmakers "shine a light on political correctness, academic bias, student censorship – even administrative cover-ups of death threats – at three schools: Bucknell University, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly)."

Maloney describes himself as a "libertarian conservative" who "considers Ronald Reagan his political hero." He told the Sun's Gershman that he was also greatly influenced by Dinesh D'Souza's book, Illiberal Education. While at Bucknell University, he edited the conservative newspaper, the Sentinel. In a pre-Iraq War essay entitled "Give Peace a Chance to Do What, Exactly?" Maloney parroted the Bush/Cheney line, arguing in support of the invasion claiming that "Iraq and al Qaeda complement each other quite well," and that the United Nations needed to "hold Iraq accountable ... [or it] will be committing itself to permanent irrelevance."

Maloney began his film career by "staking out" Michael Moore "for four days," hoping to confront him and "provok[e] a flustered reaction," which he would then post on his weblog Brain-terminal.com. Moore didn't flinch; instead he told Maloney that documentary filmmaking "should be open to all people of all political persuasions." "It should not just be people who are liberal, or left-of-center, or whatever," the Oscar-winner said. "Make your movies, and then the people will respond or not respond to them."

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and movements.

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