Moore Wants More Ralph

Michael Moore has become an alternative American icon, unmistakable in his big floppy jeans, baseball cap and slightly sinister giggle. The filmmaker and activist gained widespread attention ten years ago for his film "Roger & Me," a darkly funny documentary about the shutdown of General Motors factories in his hometown of Flint, Michigan.

Moore subsequently created the television series "TV Nation," wrote the best-selling "Downsize This! Random Threats From an Unarmed American," and made several other films including "The Big One," which documents, among other things, his hysterically persistent confrontation with the CEO of Nike, Phil Knight.

He is currently producing the second season of a weekly half-hour series "The Awful Truth," and he will appear in his first acting role this October in Nora Ephron's "Lucky Numbers" with John Travolta and Lisa Kudrow. Jennifer Bleyer spoke with him last week on a morning flight from Milwaukee to Detroit as part of Ralph Nader's three-day whirlwind "Non-Voter Tour" and found him bleary eyed but passionately unrelenting.

Bleyer: What do you say to the question that's on a lot of people's minds, is a vote for Nader a vote for Bush?

Michael Moore: Number one, Bush is not going to win. I truly believe that, because the people of this country are not that stupid. He's behind 52 to 38 (percent) right now and every week he goes lower and lower. He's going to continue to sink like a stone.

I want to appeal to the people who are non-voters, who have never voted before or who aren't voting now because they don't like the choices on the ballot. For them, a vote for Nader is not a vote for Bush because they weren't going to vote for Gore in the first place.

Secondly, Gore doesn't own these people. He has to earn their vote, and I personally believe that a vote for Gore is a vote for Bush. It might be a kinder, gentler version of it, but still it's a vote for one of the two people running who are sponsored by big business.

Bleyer: But what do you say to people who see an earnest difference between the two, and really want to vote for Nader but are legitimately scared of a Bush presidency?

Michael Moore: You should never vote out of fear, you should vote your conscience. If people voted out of fear we never would have had the country, there never would have been a revolution. You've got to especially encourage young people to follow their conscience, because if you don't start doing it now at the age of 18, you'll never do it and in fact it'll get worse.

You'll always be doing things you don't really want to be doing. Who wants to live their life like that? You'll end up working in jobs you don't really want to work, being in relationships you don't really want to be in. It's like, oh my God, don't live your life like this! Free yourself.

Bleyer: Who exactly are the non-voters?

Michael Moore: It's a combination of people who are just turned off to the whole system, people who believe that there's no difference between the two candidates, and the young people who maybe have never voted before, because they've just come out of 12 to 16 years of an educational system that is not a democracy, that they have very little say in, then they're told to go out in the real world and behave as if they're participants when they haven't been allowed to be participants in their own education.

Bleyer: Last night in Madison, I was talking to kids about their thoughts on getting out the youth vote, and why young people don't vote. They didn't seem to think it was because kids are cynical, but more along the lines of people having it so good. They said that for most young people they know in Madison, unless someone's going to take their BMW away, why should they vote? They don't see politics affecting their lives because they're so privileged.