The government has been seized by a ne'er-do-well rich boy and his elderly henchmen...Our great economic expansion is unraveling faster than a set of Firestones...Our water is poisoned, the ozone's in shreds, and the SUVs are advancing like a plague of locusts...

Remember when everything was looking up? When the government was running at a surplus, pollution was disappearing, peace was breaking out in the Middle East and Northern Ireland, and the Bridge to the Twenty-First Century was strung with high-speed Internet cable and paved with 401K gold?

Well, so much for the future. Michael Moore, the award-winning provocateur behind Roger & Me and the best seller Downsize This!, now returns to size up the new century - and that big, ugly special-interest group that's laying waste to the world as we know it: stupid white men.

Whether he's calling for United Nations action to overthrow the Bush Family Junta, begging African-Americans to place "whites only" signs over the entrances of unfriendly businesses, or praying that Jesse Helms will get kissed by a man, Stupid White Men is Mike's Manifesto on Malfeasance and Mediocrity. Among his targets:

• George W.: "'President' of the United States. The Thief-in-Chief. A trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office."
• Bill Clinton: "One of the best Republican presidents we've ever had."
• The former Yugoslavia: "Bring back Marshall Tito! Nobody in America liked him much when he was alive, but now he looks like Lady Bird Johnson."
• The idiot nation: "A friggin' stain on a blue dress. That's what captured our attention in the '90s - along with slow-moving Broncos, six-year-old strangled beauty queens, and Hugh Grant's dating habits."
• Corporate America: "There is no recession, my friends: no downturn, no hard times. The rich are wallowing in loot - and now they want to make sure you don't come a-lookin' for your piece of the pie."