Michael Moore's Mug. Ugh

We've known for a long time that Michael Moore is a laughing-on-the-inside clown. Now comes definitive proof with the cover of his latest book, Will They Ever Trust Us Again?, a collection of letters from U.S. soldiers. The Meet the Beatlesesque cover tests the Oscar-winning funnyman's ability to forego shtick and hold a pose while the cash registers go ka-ching in the background (not that there's anything wrong with that):

What's with the paper-football-sized coffin flag in Moore's hands? Are his mitts that gargantuan, oversized and swollen from pounding the corridors of power with fists of rage at all that is indecent and unholy in a post-Saddam world? Or could they just not find a regular-sized flag?

My favorite Moore-as-serioso moment came when the zaftig auteur behind the underappreciated Candadian Bacon (was Alan Alda ever so sublime, other than in that South Park cameo?) roused himself into a donut-fueled outrage and declaimed the butterfly-ballot imbroglio in Palm Beach County, Florida as the final act of Kristallnacht. Really.

Reason's Brian Doherty explained poured some cold water on Fahrenheit 9/11 here and went Bowling for Columbine with the popular, yet politically impotent, truth-teller here.

Update: I swapped in a JPEG for the BMP image. And if you want a bigger image to look at, go here.