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Well...
Speaking as someone who, like Stoatie, loves Bradbury's work and isn't really willing to change his opinion on that score, I admit to being a little disheartened by Bradbury's expressed views, but not all THAT surprised. Bradbury is a fantasist in more ways than one...if you read a book like (best example) Dandelion Wine, which I believe Bradbury has referred to as having been autobiographical, it's very clearly an idyllic and hugely idealized portrait of small town life...which is, generally speaking, representative of Bradbury's consistent characterization of small town America. Though he (very bravely) wrote some excellent stories about the evils of racism -- and I don't mean allegorical tales about blue and green aliens here, I mean stories about how fucked up the idea of rednecks lynching southern blacks was at a time when lynching was still a frighteningly common practice -- I think it's clear that he never connected those evils with the "good old days" USA that Bradbury (for whatever reason) seems to believe did actually once exist in the real world. In short, for all his insight into human nature -- and I would say it's there, in the best of his fiction -- it might be safe to say that Ray Bradbury is now and always has been just a little bit...uh...naive.
Because this naivete is reflective of optimism, I find it forgivable. I find it even more forgivable when I consider that 1990 was a time when Bush I had something horrifying like a 90% approval rating. Bush I rode to office on the coattails of the most popular president to that point in American history, too. It's easy to say that no one with a working brain would have voted for Reagan or Bush I (or Bush II, for that matter), but that makes for WAY more stupid motherfuckers than I want to contemplate. And really, it's way more stupid motherfuckers than even seems plausible to someone as jaded as me.
Which means that a lot of people were taken in by the Reagan/Bush promises of a return to an idealized American past. Since Bradbury believes that such a past did once exist, this is exactly the kind of rhetoric that might appeal to him. As well as a HELL of a lot of other people. Who, for the most part, know very little about American history, but know somehow that things couldn't possibly have always sucked THIS bad.
True, people who appraise themselves of the facts behind the bullshit won't buy it, but...well...those people have always been in the minority. It's much easier to believe in a benevolent leader over here and an evil empire over there, especially when you're an incredibly rich and well-beloved author. It gels with the worldview of an optimist whose efforts are rewarded. I'm sure that if Bradbury were to seriously investigate politics and history, his opinions might change; I'm sure this is equally true of many, many supposed conservatives. But they don't make this inquiry, because they don't see the point, and because they have other things to do.
This, however, does not keep them from talking about subjects about which they know essentially nothing.
And, unfortunately, when those people are celebrities -- even minor celebrities like canonized authors (as opposed to major celebrities, like JLo and Britney Spears) -- those poorly-informed utterances are sometimes recorded and taken WAY more seriously than they should be.
So, basically, what I'm saying here is I don't think Ray Bradbury is a nutty right-winger. I think Ray Bradbury kinda just doesn't know shit about politics. I think he's too busy thinking about life on Mars, or life a century ago, to really know all that much about contemporary issues. So it's really too bad that someone asked him to talk about them, because ignorance stops almost no one from forming an opinion. And virtually nothing can stop a writer from talking about himself.
Speaking of which, perhaps if Michael Moore were slightly less of a self-absorbed, self-promoting asshole, he might have thought to, yes, return the call of the living author whose title he was borrowing. I don't think Bradbury has a case for plagiarism here (titles can't be copyrighted), and I think Moore, knowing that, decided what the fuck. Which is kind of a prickish decision for him to have made. It's common courtesy. |
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