Dear Michael Moore

Dear Michael Moore,

Your name sounds familiar. Are you a movie star? A radio talk-show host? A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist? There are lots of the latter two here today. Well, you’re someone famous at the very least, right? You must be, for two of the speakers here at Citizen University to say your name without explaining its significance. I guess they assumed that I and the five-hundred and ninety-nine other people in the crowd knew who you are. Because you’re famous.

But the thing is, Michael Moore, I don’t know who you are. I’m about as familiar with your work as I am with “Between Two Ferns” (that Emmy award-winning interview with former U.S. president Barack Obama); gerrymandering; current U.S. president Trump’s Supreme Court pick; and the proper way to contact my congressman to express my concerns. Which is to say that I’m not familiar with your work at all. And perhaps more worryingly, I’m not familiar with the politics of my home country.

I think some subconscious recognition of that ignorance may be why I filled out an application in February to attend this year’s Citizen University. Maybe that’s why I dragged myself out of bed at 6:30 this overcast March morning (a Saturday! During Spring Break!) to bus down to the conference. Maybe that’s why I wrote down your name, along with “Greater Seattle Neighborhood Commission,” “Mobilization Lab,” “Color Lines,” “Fighter’s Table,” and many others in my notebook.

You probably don’t care that I wrote your name in neat, rounded letters or that I used a pen that produces smooth blue lines instead of the crummy, sputtering black tracks pens with oil-based ink leave. I don’t know that you’ll care, but I’m telling you anyway because I care. I want to be able to read what I wrote today – “Michael Moore,” “gerrymandering,” “that viral Tea Party ad Matt Kibbe mentioned”  – so that tomorrow, I can look it all up.

Tomorrow, Michael Moore, I’ll know who you are.