Popular Speakers Not Always Most Relevant
By Peter Douglas
Staff Writer

This month Big Bridges Auditorium hosted two important speakers, Michael Moore and bell hooks. Though both drew impressive audiences, Michael Moore drew the larger of the two. ASPC sponsored his appearance, and charged students five dollars for tickets, which quickly sold out. bell hooks’s talk, sponsored by the Department of Black Studies, was a much more casual affair in which no tickets were involved. In fact the speech was scheduled for Hahn, not Big Bridges, until the Claremont University Consortium was convinced that it was a worthwhile event. Yet, though Michael Moore was much a more widely publicized and anticipated event, bell hooks gave a much better talk. As we have seen so many times before, this proves that a big name does not ensure a worthwhile speech.

While hooks gave a clear and fascinating presentation of her latest work, Moore’s appearance was little more than a series of unoriginal and disconnected rants. Part of Moore’s problem was that he was trying to be both funny and make very serious political points. Some comedians can do this skillfully, but Moore cannot. His attempts at humor, including several renditions of his impersonation of a dying conservative radio host, generally fell flat. hooks, by contrast, does not suffer from delusions of comedy. She gave a straightforward and serious talk, while still managing to receive a few laughs, that was captivating nearly from start to finish.

Another problem of Moore’s was that he had no focus. He discussed race, the war in Iraq, President Bush, Canada, the Democratic presidential candidates, health care, and even God, but there was no unifying theme to this cacophony of political sentiment. Moore made the interesting point that we are really living in a left-wing country, but he never really backed this up or discussed it at length. hooks did have a point to her talk, that men suffer from patriarchy just as women do, and she stuck to this and developed it clearly while she was on stage. By the time hooks finished, the audience had a good idea of her theory on patriarchy and maleness and how she has come to it. With Michael Moore, we knew where he stood on all kinds of issues, but not why or why it was important.

hooks’s speech was not only better organized, but also more exciting and controversial. While she did not yell like Moore did, I could tell from the reaction of the audience around me that she was making a lot of people angry. This is something that should happen at any truly relevant speech. Pomona may be a liberal place, but most of us still do not want to hear that we are part of a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy that is causing everyone a lot of suffering. Meanwhile Michael Moore may be a “liberal propagandist” as Adam Strauss ’05 described him, but nothing he said was particularly new or controversial, at least here at Pomona. We have all heard that conservative talk show hosts are idiots, that the war in Iraq is terrible, and just about every negative comment you can make about President Bush. Moore did not offer us any new insights as to why we are in our current situation or how the liberal majority in this country can be realized. While Moore wants to appear a visionary, basically his whole talk played it safe, giving a liberal audience what they wanted to hear without challenging its views or offering a new way to think about the world. hooks even mentioned this, suggesting that Moore’s speech could have been a lot better if he had discussed patriarchy. Something was clearly missing from Moore’s speech, whether or not it was specifically patriarchy.

Finally, hooks did a much better job of engaging the audience than Moore did. Encouraging people from around the hall to speak up in a dialogue with her, she gave credible answers to tough questions like “What is the solution?” and “What is love?”. Moore also took questions but didn’t seem responsive to the audience in the way hooks was. For example, one student asked whether or not it was better to stay in Iraq and do a good job of rebuilding the country. Moore talked about how we should only put soldiers’ lives at risk if we are really in danger, which is a good point, but it did not really answer the question. In addition this was the only tough question that Moore was asked. People simply gave him topics, like Halliburton, on which to continue his rants. This, of course, was not Moore’s fault, but it made for a dry question and answer session. It would have been much more interesting if someone had challenged him on the blanket generalizations he made or asked him to back up his assertion that we live in a left-wing country. Overall, it seemed that hooks was much more eager to speak to the audience and was much more confident in her answers, as she smoothly segued from one question to another. Moore was more interested in self-promotion, and thus he was never really able to engage the audience.

In the end, I am glad I went to both talks, and I think both speakers had something to offer. bell hooks, however, was much more substantive than Michael Moore was, and since there are a limited number of speakers that can come to Pomona, perhaps someone who could have offered more than Michael Moore could have come in his place. It is great that Pomona can bring big names like Michael Moore to speak, but a big name does not make up for a lousy speech. Hopefully, ASPC will from now on consider not only the fame of a speaker, but also his or her reputation for giving an organized, relevant, and worthwhile presentation.