Book Review

"I don't know what it is, but every time I see a white guy walking towards me, I tense up. My heart starts racing, and I immediately begin to look for an escape route and a means to defend myself. I kick myself for being in this part of town after dark. Didn't I notice the suspicious gangs of white people lurking on every street corner, drinking Starbucks and wearing their gang colours of Gap Turquoise or J Crew Mauve. What an idiot! Now the white person is coming closer, closer - and then - whew! He walks by without harming me, and I breathe a sigh of relief."

You were lucky that time! This book is the story of the abominable things that Stupid White Men have done to the world and other peoples, and if you should feel like laughing at it - and what else is there to do - this is your book. Stupid White Men is a brilliant laugh - except of course, it's true.

The story of how the book came to be published at all is proof itself of its veracity.

Stupid White Men was due to hit the streets on 11 September 2001. All 50,000 copies of the first edition were sitting in a warehouse in Scranton New Jersey, waiting for transport, when the bombshell hit. Publishers Harper Collins, a division of News Corp, owned by Rupert Murdoch, told Michael Moore that they couldn't release the book as it was written. The political climate had changed. He would have to rewrite it - tone down the criticisms of Bush - and contribute $100,000 towards the costs of reprinting. The edition already printed would have to be pulped.

Then, in December, Moore found himself addressing a small group of people who'd come to hear the author read his book. Instead, he told them the story of its non-publication. A librarian, sitting down the back, was incensed that this could pass for freedom of speech. She emailed her friends and other librarians.

Librarians turned out to be "one group of terrorists you don't want to mess with", recalls Moore. Murdoch's corporate arm buckled under the pressure of a public outcry at their refusal to publish the book. Within hours of going on sale, the first 50,000 copies were sold out. The next day, Stupid White Men went number 1 on Amazon.com, and shortly after it went to number 1 on Amazon's UK list, when it wasn't even available in that country. It has remained at no 1 for months and, as Michael Moore says, "I have no one other than George W Bush to thank for it".

So, after all, you are able to read Moore's account of how Baby Bush stole the last US election, by removing names of mostly black people and people with similar names to the names of felons, from the voting register in Florida. They still haven't put them all back.

"It used to be that politicians would wait until they were in office before they became crooks. This one came pre-packaged," says Moore. And so on and on, through what Stupid White Men, in their crass stupidity, have done to the world, its climate, the slaves and all the rest of non-white humanity, who just happen to live here too.

The book is a laugh a minute, written in the inimitable American style where every page has you cracking up. The only thing which makes you hope that perhaps the title isn't true is that so many English speaking whiteys have bought it.

Happy New Year to all of us.

BY ROISIN DE ROSA