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Tonight I saw filmmaker and general loudmouth Michael Moore speak at UT. The event was originally scheduled at the LBJ School's Bass lecture hall, but demand for tickets was so great he spoke in Gregory Gym, which seemed nearly full. Greeted by thousands of students on their feet cheering, Moore seemed genuinely overwhelmed by the crowd and its enthusiasm. After the crowd died down he exclaimed, "This is the Texas the rest of the world needs to see!"

Moore spoke on a number of topics including the war, his, um, performance at the Oscars, and media consolidation. I'm too tired to write or even remember all of my impressions here, but it was an interesting mixture of political posturing and showmanship. At one point, he pulled out his Oscar for Bowling for Columbine and said, "This is the people's Oscar! Do you wanna touch it?"
He handed the statuette to a student in the front row, then told them to pass it around the audience. However, the Oscar never left a roped-off section of seats for student VIPs. Although it would have taken hours for it to pass through the hands of everyone there, it seemed a little cheap.

Regular readers of this site will know that I think Moore is the Rush Limbaugh of the Left, a political entertainer with axes to grind, but lacking a certain political consistency or circumspection. I think its great that someone with progressive political views can capture so much attention, but he also serves as a caricature for critics of the progressive project, feeding their straw-man attacks. Anyway, I thought he played fast-and-loose with his attacks on Clear Channel, suggesting they owned a third to half of the radio stations in the US. While I won't deny Clear Channel owns a lot of radio stations (1,125) and doesn't act in the public interest, I think those numbers are way, way inflated. The FCC says there were 10,983 commerical radio stations in 2001, so Clear Channel may own well over 10% of the commercial radio market, that's a far cry from a third or a half of stations.

In another moment in the talk, he noted how James Baker represented the Bush campaign in the Florida legal tussle after the 2000 election, but suggested some anonymous wimp represented Gore. Moore asked, "Does anyone remember who the Gore team had?"
I shouted, "David Boies!" from the balcony, but that got no reaction from anyone.
I wondered if Moore actually forgot a lawyer with the profile of Boies represented Gore or if he "forgot" for rhetorical effect.

On the whole, I enjoyed the talk quite a bit. My favorite moment was when Moore criticized the administration's profiling of Muslims as terrorists, pointing out that while Osama Bin Laden is a Muslim, he's also a multi-millionaire, and Ashcroft and pals aren't indiscriminately locking up multi-millionaires.