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, 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 & 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 ...

Contact
HC

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

On Thursday I'll be in L.A., Friday in San Diego, Saturday in Denver
and Boulder, and next week it's on to Michigan and the Midwest. More
cities are being added, so check in at my website, www.michaelmoore.com.

Off to shadow the Cheney shadow government,

Michael Moore
Author
Filmmaker
Evildo-doer

Write me at:

Write to Mike at Stupid White
Men

Write to Mike at AOL

Michael Moore's site

TO ORDER "STUPID WHITE MEN," GO TO...

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... or here ...

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the book

TO ORDER SEASON TWO OF "THE AWFUL TRUTH," GO TO...

Awful Truth - 2nd
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