As odd as it is, through the miracle of marriage, I am now related to Bob Eubanks. Yes, the Bob Eubanks of the Newlywed Game. He's my mother-in-law's cousin. I've never met him in person or otherwise, although during a relatively heavy drinking binge back in college I could have sworn he was under my bed selling plastic statues of Booker T. Washington (granted it could have just as easily been Gene Rayburn).
Anyway, he has a book out, It's in the Book, Bob, which my mother-in-law has a signed copy of. I was reading a bit of it yesterday, more specifically a chapter entitled Michael and Me. Guess which Mikey he's talking about?
Basically, Bob was in Flint, Michigan to do a taping of the Newlywed game. Bob was born in Flint but had moved when he was 2 so he had no real ties to the place. After the show, he had been requested to be interviewed by a film maker who was doing a story about Flint entitled Roger & Me. Bob said sure.
During the interview, Moore pressed Eubanks to try to get him to say something disparaging about the conditions in Flint. Bob declined saying there were many places across the US suffering worse and that he hadn't lived there in so long he couldn't honestly recall how it was originally. Also, Bob took a jab at fatboy (in jest) calling him a pervert for trying to change the wording Bob used during a question on the show. Bob asked the contestants how much their wives' chests weight. Moore kept saying breasts and Bob corrected him.
Moore then made it appear that the cameras were off and just talked a bit with Eubanks. Bob, trying to be congenial told a few off-color jokes. One of the jokes, told to him by a Jewish friend, was - Why don't Jewish women get AIDS? They only marry the assholes, they don't sleep with them! Moore never did stop the taping and used the footage of the joke in Roger & Me making Bob appear to be anti-semitic.
Moore used the footage without a proper release from Eubanks. Even after all the legal wrangling, Bob never got Moore to remove the footage and it really hurt his career for a while. In his book, Bob places the blame for all the problems squarely on the shoulders of the true offender - himself. He understood that, even though the joke was 'harmless' in the fact that he knew he had nothing against Jewish people, it should have never been said. He even agrees that he shot himself in the foot and apologizes to anyone he may have ever offended.
What makes Moore scum (well, one of the things) is that he used the footage intentionally to smear Bob who wouldn't go along with his preordained "Woe is Flint" story line. Bob refused to say what Moore wanted him to because he realized Moore was trying to manipulate him into making statements that Bob didn't either agree with or didn't have enough information to honestly make an opinion.
Bob has a few choice words about Moore and his style of propaganda that is worth reading. I plan on asking to borrow the book when my mother-in-law is done with it. Apparently the man has lead a very interesting life. And as odd as it is that Bob Eubanks is a second-cousin-in-law, I feel we both have a very strong connection. We both think Michael Moore is a complete ass.
rolled out on
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 10:22 AM