Michael Moore's Exploitation of Capitalism: Today's Outrage

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Capitalism (the movie) came to New York on Monday and I missed the premiere.

I'm not too disappointed, mind you, since I haven't seen any of Michael Moore's movies. I can only take so much faux outrage (how's that for irony?).

I do love a good dose of hyprocrisy, though.

For that, I will turn to Michael Corkery, who did attend the premier of Capitalism: A Love Story at New York's Lincoln Center.

Corkery notes in The Wall Street Journal's Deal Journal blog that "before the film, the crowd sipped champagne and cocktails in the "Morgan Stanley Lobby" and then headed to their seats in the "Citi Balcony." Movie tickets were available at the "Bank of New York Box Office" and there's outdoor seating at the "Credit Suisse Information Grandstand."

So Moore owes the glamour and hype of Monday's event to the very institutions he brands as evil in the film. Let's hope Moore selected the venue on purpose to be ironic.

From what I can tell, the idea that capitalism is evil is pretty much the plot of Moore's film. On the movie's official Web site, Capitalism is described as an exploration of the "price that America pays for its love of capitalism."

I love this line from Kenneth Turan's review in the Los Angeles Times: Moore "lays the ills of American society that he's chronicled over all that time at the feet of an out-of-control free-market system he so detests that he puts priests on camera to talk about capitalism as morally evil."