He is a left wing extremist.
Simple as that, if you are already right wing oriented of course you‘re going to hate him.
Because he is an extremist, its natural that even some of the leftwingers (PC types as they‘re know around here) are going to feel that he crosses the line.
When someone goes to the extreme one way or another, most people get uncomfortable and when someone makes us uncomfortable we tend to dislike them, but we all need to realise that it‘s to our benefit that people like Moore (or whoever is the conservative equal to Moore) do what they do. They piss people off and draw attention (good or bad) to issues that need to be discussed. They spark healthy debate amoung people who would have never bothered to give these issues any real deep thought otherwise.
Personally I think it was lame to use the Oscars as a pulpit to spew his anti war propaganda, but I think it‘s right on that he exercised his right as an American to say whatever he felt like saying. Anyone who would tell him to shut up has a pretty screwy view of freedom. They have a right to never invite him again, and that was his and their choices to make respectively.
The very fact that he got up there and went off with his views demonstrates that he‘s not only into it for the money. Sucking up to the Oscar commitee and other Hollywood types is where the money is at. The money is not in pissing off the millions of people you impressed with your last movie.
Besides, is it really THAT bad that he would like to see those hundreds of thousands of youth be brought home out of the way of bullets and and bombs and the other horrors of war?
His view might be wrong in your opinion, but I at least, feel that he deserves some respect for putting himself out there to be cut down, insulted, hated, and ridiculed on those soldiers behalf (wether they agree with him or not). It‘s what he belives in, right or wrong, and he made his stand.
I personaly disagree with his full on anti war opinions. I belive that there will come a time when responsible governments in this world will need to make a definitive stand against dictatorship and eraticate not just one or two, but all of the brutal regimes that are the cause of so much human suffering.
It‘s not going to happen by sitting them down and making them watch Michael Moore movies.
They will need to be convinced in the language that they understand...
But there will always be a need for people like Moore who put resistance against the establishment, to question everything, to draw attention to the flaws, otherwise we could suddenly find ourselves under the total control of a power maddened government of our own.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely after all.
And that is what a political party would have (absolute power), if everyone just hushed up and politely accepted what happened around them so as to not make waves, or make people feel uncomforatable.
Ultimately I don‘t feel that liking Michael Moore or not liking him is what is important. I think it is his extreme leftist views that make him a worthwhile subject of conversation.
He gives balance to a country that has plenty of public right wing views that it throws out into the world everyday on the evening news (anti abortion, Christian president, traditional American family unit, no gay marriage, no stem cell research, etc, etc,).
I find that he presents himself to be be distinctly unlikeable in everything that he does. I don‘t think its by accident. He‘s not trying to win popularity contests. In the case of Bowling For Columbine, he‘s trying to not let you forget that 2 kids shot up their school, and schoolmates with nearly 1000 rounds of ammunition before they killed themselves. He‘s reaching out to his fellow countrymen/women to try and stop them from killing each other with guns.