He hugs Republicans almost every day.By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson"When I think Labor Day, I think Chinese, don't you?" texts Michael Moore, suggesting I book Shun Lee, an Upper West Side staple close to the documentary filmmaker's New York apartment. I call, and the receptionist lights up at the mention of my guest. "Michael Moore? Oh, he's very regular in the restaurant," he says. I mention this to America's best known provocateur as he pushes the table back to squeeze into the high-backed booth seat opposite me and get a puzzled look from beneath his Sundance Film Festival cap. "I come here, maybe, three times a year." Moore comes to the city to work, most recently on a memoir, and "to get some privacy". He is a public figure in Traverse City, his home on Lake Michigan, not just for his Oscar and Palme d'Or wins but for starting a film festival in 2005 that has given its economy a much-needed boost. He relishes the irony of the Republican-dominated local business association naming him businessman of the year, an unexpected accolade for the man behind leftwing film, television and print polemics including Capitalism: A Love Story (2009), a post-crash indictment of big business...[continued]
