March 6, 2002

Stupid White Men Update
Michael Moore

Dear friends,

This is just a quick note of thanks for the support all of you have given my book.

Stupid White Men debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list this week, and at #1 on the Publisher's Weekly nonfiction bestseller list for independent bookstores. It's still #1 for all books on Amazon.com, and, my personal favorite for a good laugh, #4 on the bestseller list for the Wall Street Journal. By the fifth day of release, the book had gone into its 9th printing.

More copies have been sold in one week than Downsize This sold in a whole year. Pundits and publishers are stunned. "But the president has an 80% approval rating!" There's something going on here, and they don't know what it is...

I am writing this from northern California, two weeks into the book tour, on a drive with my family to visit small towns like Ukiah and Arcata.

Last night in Santa Rosa, at the local high school, they had a thousand people packed inside and another 500 out on the lawn who couldn't get in. It's like this in all the places I visit. Hundreds, thousands, turning out to discuss all the sorry excuses for the state of the nation.

People have had it with keeping silent for the past 6 months. They resent having felt like if they chose to question what the government is up to or, God forbid, dissent, they would somehow be considered unpatriotic.

Let's get one thing straight – this is what it means to be "unpatriotic:"

1. When you shred our constitution and eliminate our civil liberties, passing laws that make it illegal to encourage opposition to the government's actions, THAT is un-American.

2. When you send our kids to go fight and die on a foreign land so that you can finally build a pipeline for your oil backers across that country, THAT is un-American.

3. When you use the dead of September 11 to try to get huge tax cuts passed that will only benefit your rich benefactors, THAT is un- American.

4. When you allow criminals who are stealing the pensions of workers and retirees to come in and hand-pick the head of the agency which is supposed to be regulating them, and then you place some of the criminals' top brass in your administration to "serve" as the secretary of the army and White House counsel, and then these criminals turn out to be your number one financial backers – and their law firm turns out to be your #3 backer – and, in spite of all this you still haven't resigned in disgrace, THAT is un-American.

I want all of you to share this success with me and feel heartened and reassured by the response to this book. It is an overwhelming rebuke, first to those who sought to censor or ban it, and now to the oft-repeated conventional wisdom that the whole country is whistling the same tune and marching in lockstep to the vision of Cheney/Ashcroft/Bush. It's a bunch of hooey, folks, and I have seen it first hand – and not in the usual centers of leftist discontent.

This tour has taken me to Ridgewood, New Jersey (area that always returns its Republican congressman), Arlington, Virginia (a town filled with military people), Grass Valley, California (in the middle of nowhere in a congressional district represented by a right-wing Republican). In each of these towns it's been a literal mob scene.

The Virginia bookstore says that "this crowd is an all-time record." The line is out the door in downtown Ridgewood, and the store does not have enough books. In Grass Valley, so many have come from hundreds of miles across the Sierras that can't get in, so I tell the hundreds out in the street that I'll stick around and do a second show. Three hours later they are still there, and I do it all over again.

I want to thank all of you who have written. I read your emails at night and I am so sorry I don't have the energy to respond. Hundreds of you have written to say that your bookstore does not have the book.

The main reason that is happening is that the publisher has not printed enough books and cannot ship them fast enough when they do. Often, it is because the bookstore did not order enough copies. A few stores, and one chain in particular, have not been exactly overjoyed to be carrying the book. On the other hand, Barnes and Noble have put it on their bestseller list and are offering it at 1/3 the price.

Every single independent bookstore I have stopped into has been out of books and they tell me that both the publisher and the distributors are not sending them books. I do not know what to do about this. I have made my calls. I am told everything is OK. I can see first-hand on the road that it is not OK, and that many stores simply do not have the book.

You can help me by letting HarperCollins know when you cannot find the book. Write them at ...

http://www.harpercollins.com/hc/aboutus/contactus.asp

Again, my sincerest appreciation to all of you and I look forward to seeing many of you on the rest of this tour.

Write me at: StupidWhiteMen@aol.com
http://www.michaelmoore.com/

TO ORDER "STUPID WHITE MEN," GO TO...
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060392452/ref=ase_dogeatdogfil ms/ Amazon.com

... or here ...

http://www.michaelmoore.com/announce/how_to_buy_SWM1.html


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