My girlfriend and I had one of our rare evenings when each of our kids were with their respective other parents, so we decided to go to the movies. We saw Super Size Me at the local art-house theater, the same one that happened to be showing Fahrenheit 9/11. Well, I have to report that the crowd that Michael Moore's film drew to the theater was huge. Easily the biggest crowd I've ever seen at this particular little indie theater. We were amazed at the number of people filing out as one showing of F911 ended and we were amazed at the number of people lining up to see the next showing.

I comforted myself by reminding myself that, A) ticket sales don't equal votes… B) seeing a movie and agreeing with it's point of view are two different things… and, C) it's wrong for me to presume that everyone who sees the movie is mentally weak enough to be brainwashed by it. I know that I should probably see the film myself before critiquing it, but I can't bring myself to do it. Bowling for Columbine was so full of outright lies and manipulative distortions that I can't bare the idea of putting a dime of my money in Michael Moore's pocket. Besides, there are so many reliable reports on the content of the movie that it is possible to critique the movie's themes without seeing it.

Super Size Me must have let out about the same time as F911, because as we left the theater, there was a guy out front selling anti-Bush bumper-stickers, pins, and T-shirts. Real high class merchandise, too, with messages like "Buck Fush" and "No More Bushit." I just shook my head and walked away, but my girlfriend needed to use her cell phone to check her messages, so I found myself standing outside the theater, maybe ten feet from this guy, as he hocked his wares. Every time a person passed by he'd say "Don't be silent, buy a bumper-sticker or a T-shirt and fight back," things of that nature. I swear, I stood there quietly for as long as I could. I'd have ignored him if I could have, but my girlfriend took just a minute too long to check her messages.

So I approached the guy.

"Excuse me," I asked, "but how is buying a t-shirt or a pin fighting back?"

"It's using your voice," he said. "If you don't speak up, you're part of the problem."

I had to agree with that. I could stand there and keep my mouth shut and be part of the problem, or I could say something. So I rushed in.

I asked him exactly what it was he was fighting back against. He told me that he was fighting back against the Bush administration and the corruption. What corruption, I asked.

"Well," he said, "the stolen election in Florida. And, the over 400 (he had an exact number but I've forgotten it) Republican voters in New York who voted twice in the last presidential election, for example."

"And you can sight your sources for this information?" I asked.

He just stood there.

"If you're going to quote numbers and suggest that things like that are factual, you should be able to identify your sources," I continued. "What are your sources for the voters who voted twice in New York?"

"It's common knowledge," he said. "It was in the media. Go to our website and read more."

"Alright, what's your website?"

"Hillarynow.com."

I swear, I didn't mean to burst out laughing. I really had no intentions of laughing right in his face. The fact that by then my girlfriend had hung up her cell phone and was laughing too only made it worse.

Once I composed myself I asked him "So the sources for the numbers you've quoted are at your website?" By then, however, he'd tired of my questions and began shouting me down.

"Goodbye, sir," he shouted. "Thank you. Goodbye. Goodbye, sir, thanks. Goodbye. Goodbye, sir. Goodbye. Goodbye."

It occurred to me that he didn't want his potential customer base hearing what I was saying. "Are you trying to censor me?" I asked. Of course he denied it, and as I tried to wish him good luck fighting the power by tapping into the free enterprise system, he began shouting me down again. "Goodbye, sir. Thank you, goodbye."

So I said "OK, I'll check out your site. I'll even link to it."

He kept shouting me down. And, this time, as he was shouting goodbye at me, he threw in "Oh, you're a REAL good liberal."

This kinda left me dumbfounded for a second. Why would he assume that I was a liberal? If I was asking questions that were counter to his point of view, wouldn't he assume I was a conservative? I guess he thought that I'd left the theater after seeing F911 and that I'd enjoyed the film, agreed with the film's agenda, and then failed to do the right thing by buying one of his T-shirts. As a liberal, I guess, that made me a failure.

It boggles the mind.

So, yesterday I went to the guy's website, www.hillarynow.com. It turns out that there are a number of URL's he could have referred me to. This guy has a number of sites up. It seems that he's "professional political activist" from Florida who is running for Governor of that state. I read some of his posts, his open letter to Hillary and his biography, and I just ended up feeling somewhat sorry for the guy. I get the impression that he's very angry; very unhappy with his lot in life. He feels persecuted for his homosexuality and he feels that some of his rights have been denied and he seems to feel disenfranchised. He may have some legitimate reasons for those feelings, I don't know. Most of all, he just seems to want someone to blame.

I wish now that I'd just ignored him. How did it do any good for me to engage in an argument with a stranger on the street?

Especially when I walked away leaving him thinking that I was a liberal? And a bad one at that?

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PS --
By the way, Super Size Me turned out to be a pretty good film. We laughed pretty hard while watching it and I'm less inclined to end up at any fast food drive-thrus for a while. The film's central message seemed to be that fast food is bad for you and that fast food restaurants make a lot of money by encouraging us to eat bad food and selling it to us. I agree with that. There were some ideas in the film that drifted a bit too close to nutty conspiracy theories for my taste, but overall the film reminded me of Roger & Me. Remember Roger & Me? Remember when Michael Moore was interesting?