Might be just a coincidence. But we notice Detroit’s filing for bankruptcy comes at more or less the same moment filmmaker Michael Moore has filed for divorce.
We get the differences between the two cases. Detroit is an anti-capitalist Michigan city. It is going Chapter 9 because it followed policies that largely reflect Moore’s economic preferences: an animosity toward business, a faith in high taxes and a belief in government as the solution.
Moore, of course, is not a city but an anticapitalist Michigan filmmaker. Unlike Detroit, he has not let his ideological swipes at the free market interfere with his own effort to prosper. Thus, he has amassed a net wealth estimated at $50 million.
Over the years, the Hoover Institution’s Peter Schweizer has chronicled the gap between Moore’s messaging and his money-making. In his book “Do As I Say (Not as I Do),” Schweizer devoted a whole chapter to Moore, noting his use of non-union labor, his travel by private jet and the investments he made in lucrative but liberally incorrect stocks such as Halliburton.
Now, the breakup of any marriage is a sad event. So there’s no joy in the news that Moore is splitting from his wife of nearly 22 years. The silver lining is that, given his penchant for profit, they can each count on having millions in assets even after everything is divided up.
Schweizer sums it up this way: “If the city of Detroit had in its public dealings been as open to capitalism as Michael Moore was in private dealings, it might be another Silicon Valley instead of another dying industrial city.”