A letter

Dear Michael Moore,
Congratulations on breaking all sorts of records with the opening weekend of your film Fahrenheit 9/11.
You’re opinionated and controversial, and you’ve clearly found out how to make that combination work. Not everyone likes you or agrees with you, but even their criticism turns into heightened attention to the issues you promote. I’m excited to have had over 100,000 page views this year, but you reached millions with your message in one weekend.
I’d like to suggest a topic for your next film: The War on Drugs.
It’s perfect for you — tailor-made for your style of moviemaking. It’s got pathetic government officials, worthy of ridicule. It’s an issue where the government is out of step with the majority of Americans, yet the public has not gotten motivated enough to apply pressure on leglislators. It’s a story with strong elements of racism and the destruction of families and inner cities. (In fact, about the only problem with you doing the film is that it’s a story that also includes conservative values.)
You can interview the families of innocent victims of the drug war. You can go to Washington and ask Congressmen who have sick relatives if you can take away their medicine. You can follow John Walters around and see how often he repeats the same lies.
Those of us on the side of drug policy reform have the facts and the truth with us. But, to be perfectly honest, we have an uphill battle to convince the general population of the critical and urgent need for reform. You could change that with a strong and controversial movie.
If you need some help, I could get some people to picket the theatres, or create some “Michael Moore’s Drug War movie is un-American” web sites to help ratchet up the controversy — but you’re already a genius at getting the controversy marketing machine going.
Please, please make a movie on the war on drugs. I don’t care if you piss people off. I’d just like a boisterous national argument about drug policy reform.
Thanks.