A few weeks ago, Michael Moore made a speaking appearance at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor across the street from what used to be Borders' flagship store, aka Store #001 for old Borders folk. As anyone who's seen Moore's film The Big One knows, Moore has a complicated history with Borders and that certainly came through in his remarks.
I wish I could say I was surprised that Moore trotted out the same old nonsense about how Borders sought to "eliminate the independent bookstore." That canard was tired back in the mid-90s when I worked for Borders and hasn't improved with age. At its peak, Borders sought to be the best bookstore in America in terms of selection and service. If that service involved calling the local bookstore down the street to see if they had what a customer wanted, that was part of the deal.
Like many people, Moore confuses coincidence and correlation. In Moore's view, the fact that independent book and music stores went out of business in markets where Borders opened automatically means that Borders somehow willed their demise.
This reductive view ignores that in many places those stores thrived and sometimes even expanded - at least until the rise of Amazon (but that's another store). More significantly, it fails to recognize that the stores that succeeded did so because they evolved to meet their customers' needs, while those that didn't do so are the ones that failed. This should be totally obvious, even to someone with an agenda like Moore, because it's ultimately the same principle that defined Borders' collapse.
I've enjoyed some of Moore's films and agree with him on many things. As a filmmaker and social commentator, though, he's a one-trick pony, foregoing any attempt at a nuanced debate in favor of bludgeoning. Unfortunately, that particular trick isn't getting any better with age.
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