FRONT PAGE I TABLE OF CONTENTS OF MAY ISSUE I COMMENTARIES AND ARTICLES I USA NEWS I WORLD NEWS I MIDDLE EAST NEWS I  NEW YORK SCENE I LIFESTYLE I PEOPLE, SOCIETY  AND EVENTS I ARTS I ENTERTAINMENT I CULTURE I BOOKS I MUSIC AND CDs I EVE WORLD I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR I PERSONAL HISTORY  I APRIL ISSUE I MARCH ISSUE I  FEBRUARY  ISSUE I JANUARY ISSUE I  CONTACT I EDITORIAL STAFF I SUBSCRIPTION I TO ADVERTISE I

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New York Monthly Herald. May 2006 Issue P. 1                                                                                                                                          Continues on page 2

Books

Teddy Kennedy's new book mixes personal, political and brother John

U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy was a wide-eyed 14-year-old when his brother Jack, a new congressman, treated him to a personal tour of Washington's landmark buildings - the White House, the Supreme Court, the House of Representatives. "It's good that you're interested in seeing these buildings, Teddy," Kennedy recalls the future president telling him. "But I hope that you also take an interest in what goes on inside them." Sixty years later, it is clear the brotherly advice stuck. The Massachusetts Democrat is among the longest-serving members of the U.S. Senate, elected to his first six-year term in 1962.

Let the X help you stay on beat by schooling you on the proper way to pick a student loan lender.The senator recounts the scene with his brother in his new book, America Back on Track, which is to go on sale April 18. The senator invokes memories of his famous family's personal brand of politics. His grandfather, John F. (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, who served in Congress and as mayor of Boston, would scoop up fistfuls of pencils embossed with U.S. Congress from the House floor and hand them out back home in Massachusetts, Kennedy said in an interview Friday in his Senate office. "Talk about retail politics," he said. His family's political success, Kennedy said, is rooted in the personal relationships his grandfather and late brothers forged across Massachusetts. "The Kennedy strength is still the resonance of all that contact," he said." These family relationships go back. We're one of the states where you really have it." "That doesn't exist in California." Kennedy's book also outlines seven "critical challenges" for the United States, including embracing globalization and restoring faith in government. His prescriptions cover many of the same issues he has pushed during his 43 years in the Senate, including workers' wages, education, universal health care and civil rights.

 

 

Filmmaker Michael Moore: A Biography

Photo: Michael Moore.

In penning what she calls the first-ever biography of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, Toronto-based writer Emily Schultz says she wanted to offer "an ordered view" of a man for whom there seems to be no middle ground: people either love him or hate him. While the book does appear to struggle mightily to be fair, the reader is left with an image of Moore as someone who bends the rules, often unfairly, and who allows his own ego to intrude and nearly overshadow his messages. "Moore works best as a polemicist, not a journalist," Schultz concludes. She notes that while he never claims to be a journalist directly, he does so indirectly when he argues that if journalists were doing their jobs, he wouldn't have to do what he does in such exposes as Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11. Moore is depicted as a bullying boss (his job as editor of the leftist magazine Mother Jones ended early because of personality conflicts with the staff) and a self-aggrandizing filmmaker (although film distributors insisted fans wanted more of Michael Moore on camera). Schultz also takes issue with timeline issues resulting from film editing. For example, in Bowling for Columbine, did he really walk into a Michigan bank to open an account and walk out with a free gun in the short time the film suggests?

Again, if he isn't technically a journalist, how much does he have to adhere to journalism's rules? Should he have been more upfront about the fact the scathing Iraqi war footage in 9/11 came from other filmmakers? And were the Oscars the proper place to unleash his shame-on-you-George-Bush tirade? The most lingering question, though, is: How long can he perpetuate that image of the scruffy, blue-collar, ballcap-wearing ordinary Joe from Flint? In the end, while many of Moore's creative and personality flaws are delineated, it is still up to the reader to decide whether they are to be forgiven in exchange for the deliciously scathing indictments of American society and politics that Moore has not only chronicled but presented with such humour and wit. -By J. MacCay. Continues on page 2