The celebrity documentarian has made a career out of playing a provincial oaf whose childlike questions cut to the heart of issues.
The persona has become so marketable that audiences often seem not to care that his approach to the facts is as sloppy as his dress.
From the beginning - his first film, Roger and Me manipulated the timeline of events for polemical advantage - he has perfected a ingratiating and self-serving style that has undermined the generally unexceptionable rightness of his causes: the epidemic of mass shootings, the fraying healthcare system and, most famously, the management of the "war on terror".
In his newest film, the ursine filmmaker does the lumbering innocent abroad more extravagantly than ever before, visiting eight countries to explore policies and ideas that he wants to see adopted in his homeland.
