Lizzy's Film Reviews

書名: Stupid White Men
作者: Michael Moore (他是個白人)
這本書(全名是Stupid White Men ...and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation)真是好書，只是我一直沒力氣介紹，而且他的幽默諷刺要親眼讀才會知道， 所以我擷取(其實是自己打)幾段introduction裡的原文，有興趣的人看看吧，還可以練練英文。(台灣竟然到現在還沒中譯本！驚人！)

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(前略，前面在提一些近年美國的怪現象)
(這裡將繼續承接美國科技泡沫破碎之後的情形)
Oh, and aren't you lucky! You're working two jobs, and so is your wife, and you've got little Jimmy working down at McDonald's, too, so you can afford that new home on the tree-lined street with neatly trimmed lawns and little white picket fences, and - look, there goes Spot to greet Grandpa as he pulls into the driveway! - and next month you're going to make the last payment on that student loan you've had for the past twenty years, but then...SUDDENLY, your company has announced it's moving to Mexico - without you! Your wife's employer has decided she's no longer needed because the new "human resources" consultant believes that one person can easily do the jobs of three, and little Jimmy has come down with an unknown illness from something he ate out of the McNugget fryer, and your HMO(維護健康組織) says they won't cover little Jimmy's operation but they'll be happy to treat him as an outpatient(門診病人) if you're willing to drive to Tijuana(墨西哥西北部的都市) twice a week because, well, they've built a new outpatient clinic just across the border, thanks to free trade, which may or may not be responsible for the worm found in Jimmy's half-eaten McNugget - oh, sorry, the collection agency just called and they'd like your new Celica(豐田的一款車) back because you've missed a payment! Hey, maybe when you go to Tijuana and drop Jimmy off you can head down the street and reapply for your old job, where all the "associates" are given their own outhouse(外屋;附屬房屋) and fed a free breakfast burrito when they arrive at work at five o'clock every morning.

在上面那段文字之後，作者提到，在幾年前，一切都是那麼美好，美國人口袋飽滿、經濟繁榮、以巴和平...然後:
Then something happened. Investors lost millions in the stock market. Crime went up for the first time in the decade. Job losses skyrocketed. American icons like Montgomery Ward(一家百貨公司) and TWA(環球航空公司) vanished. Suddenly we were 2.5 million short of oil - every day! Israelis started killing Palestinians again, and Palestinians returned the favor. By mid-2001, thirty-seven countries were at war around the world. China became our enemy - again! The United Nations kicked us off their Human Rights Commission, and the European Union attacked us for unilaterally violating the ABM treaty(反彈道飛彈條約) by reintroducing "Star Wars."(「星戰」計畫，最早期由雷根於1983年提出，後失敗) It was hard, damn hard, to find a good movie; millions stopped watching network television; and every radio station you tuned in sounded the same - like crap.In short, all of a sudden everything sucked. Whether it's the shaky economy, depleted energy supplies, elusive world peace, no job security, no health care, or the simple unusable ballot(選票) we were given to pick a President, it has become maddeningly clear to most Americans that nothing seems to work. Firestone tires don't work, and the For Explorers that ride atop them don't work either - which means you don't work at all because you're dead and decapitated and lying in a ditch outside the Dunkin' Donuts.911(報警電話) doesn't work. 411(查號台) doesn't work. Cell phones don't work, and when they do, it's some asshole having an argument with his broker at the table next to you while you're trying to eat dinner.

接著談到「freedom of choice」的消失，以及企業壟斷的狀況，連所謂「兩黨」都是本質相同的難兄難弟。
Freedom of choice is a thing of the past. We're down to six media companies, six airlines, two and a half carmakers, and one radio conglomerate. Everything you will ever need is at Wal-Mart. You can choose between two political parties that sound alike, vote alike, and are funded alike by the same exact wealthy donors. You can choose to wear nondescript pastels and keep your mouth shut, or you can choose to wear a Marilyn Manson(美國叛經離道的搖滾樂手) T-Shirt and get kicked out of school. Britney or Christina, WB(華納) or UPN(美國某大電視台), Florida or Texas - there ain't no friggin' difference, folks, it's all the same, it's all the same, it's all the same...How did all this happen? Three little words:Stupid White Men.Think about it: the Bush boys, who took the slender inheritance of Poppy's(在此是老爹papa的暱稱) political mind (not to mention charisma(領袖氣質，此字在哈佛商業評論裡常出現)) and spread it even thinner among themselves. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Spencer Abraham, and the other old shills Bush revived to prop him up. The CEOs of the Fortune 500; the wizards behind Hollywood and five-hundred-channel TV; hell, the average Joe who sees 15 mpg on his new-car sticker and thinks "not bad!" as the ozone(臭氧) clouds part above his head.

接下來要講到笨白人對地球的破壞以及無知。天氣異常變熱，這些白痴竟然覺得好棒，可以去作日光浴！！
That's right, the whole planet is being overrun – and I'm convinced it's starting to fight back. One day last February in Chicago the temperature hit 70 degrees, and what happened? Everyone was, like, Wow, this is great! People were walking around in shorts, and the beach along Lake Michigan was filled with sunbathers. "Boy, I love this weather," Said one lady to me on the street.You love this? Let me ask you - if the sun suddenly rose at midnight tonight, would you say, "Oh, wow, this is beautiful! I love it! More daylight!" No, of course you wouldn't. You'd be freaking out on a level that has never been measured. You would be screaming bloody murder that the Earth was spinning out of control, heading toward the sun at a million miles a second. I doubt anyone would be running to the beach to catch any of those bonus rays. Of course, maybe it's not that bad: maybe someone just launched a thousand warheads(彈頭) on Milwaukee, and that's the bright light you're seeing to the north as nuclear fission interacts with vacant(空的) boarded-up(圍起來的) breweries(釀造廠). Either way, you'd be ripping through so many Hail Marys and God Have Mercies you might just knock ten years off your sentence to purgatory(煉獄).

談完這些對於蠢蛋白人來說非常無聊的環保議題，作者又要朝更尖酸的領域邁進了。
But let's not worry about Mother Earth - she's lasted through much worse. Let the tree-huggers lose their sleep over it - we're too damn busy trying to make money!Ah, money. The sweet stench of success.

作者談到之前有個股票經紀人不斷遊說他，要他把給小孩存的本丟進股市，不斷找他、寄"market update"給他，(作者特別把market update加上引號 ，帶著濃濃的諷刺)結果...
Well, the "Investment Opportunities" flyers have stopped coming. In the eighteen months, Microsoft has gone from $120 to $40, Dell from $50 to $16, and Pets.com and its cute little sock puppet have gone to puppy heaven. The NASDAQ has lost nearly 40 percent of its value, and average Americans, snookered into the madness of playing the market with their meager(貧乏的) savings, have lost billions. Any thoughts of "early retirement" we may have entertained are out the window; we'll be lucky if they let us cut back to forty hours a week when we're eighty-two, or incontinent(大小便失禁的), whichever comes first.最辛辣的一段來了:Actually, not all of us. There are almost fifty-six thousand new millionaires in the country - and they've made out like bandits. They made their money because they already had a goodly sum to begin with and then invested it in companies that got rich by throwing people out of work, exploiting children and the poor in other countries, and receiving big reductions in their taxes. For them greed wasn't good, it was mandatory(必須履行的;義務的). In fact, they were so good at creating a climate of greed that the word itself went out of style. Now it's called SUCCESS! and, yes, it comes with it's own punctuation. Soon virtually no one questioned all this gluttony(貪食) as wrong or obscene; it became such a part of our daily life that when this character from Texas got greedy and took an election he didn't win, we stood back and gave it to him - he wasn't being greedy, after all, just being smart. Just as corporate agriculture's dicey(冒險性的) schemes to corrupt the genetic makeup of your corn flakes aren't insane or greedy - that's progress. Just as the guy next door who wants the biggest SUV(豪華跑車名) ever built isn't being greedy - he just wants more torque(扭轉力), baby!

作者在後面舉出許多例子，證明小布希在此次選舉中，動的手腳非常多，手段也相當過分。而且，即使如此，Al Gore的票數仍然超過小布希。(只恨美國的詭異選舉人制度死都不改)姑且不論這個德州佬當上總統應不應該，前文提到的社會公義與價值觀，的確是很大的問題，想想台灣不也一樣？我們對於苦苦耕耘的人們卻不懂得尊重，而我們崇拜的「成功人士」中，有許多是不顧他人、不顧環境、只求將所有利益壟斷、阻止社會階層流動的混蛋。這種崇拜不是很可笑嗎？
對本書有興趣的 可以到這裡看看： http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060392452/qid=1066739438/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-9472485-4749409?v=glance&s=books&n=507846