In response to this “fact-checking” piece by Sanjay Gupta on Sicko, Michael Moore appeared today on Wolf Blitzer’s show and delivered a diatribe directed not only at the piece, but at CNN and the MSM in general.
Who has the right of it?
Here is a page from Moore’s website documenting factual allegations made in Sicko.
Looks to me like a tempest in a teapot. Gupta does not appear to have said anything that substantially undermines Moore’s film, nor does he appear to have attacked the film. He simply uttered some commonplaces about how there are no medical utopias and how Moore somewhat exaggerates the contrast between the American system’s problems and other system’s successes in order to make his point.
Moore is a canny propagandist (and I say that approvingly. I see no harm in making forthright political propaganda deliberately designed to advertise a cause, as long as we all recognize it for what it is and don’t mistake it for objective journalism), and it makes sense for him to inflate media controversy around his film as much as possible. But that doesn’t mean the rest of us need to join in.
Don’t get me wrong: I think Moore makes some good points in his criticism of the mainstream media, and I look forward to seeing Sicko because I’m sure he makes some good points there too. I enjoy Moore’s filmmaking style and the way he connects large political issues to the immediate concerns of ordinary individuals. I just think it needs to be remembered that he’s deliberately, and passionately, telling one particular side of the story.
Maybe Moore has seen the results of just letting things like this go without response. Any disparaging comment at all, no matter how mild. such as “exaggeration” will be picked up by at least part of CNN’s audience as a total negation of Moore’s claim.
Like Moore’s work a lot better than I like him, he gives me the hillarys. But Sanjay Gupta creeps me out big time and downtown, the stinky karma of greed and narcissism, he’ll be reincarnated as an assistant slug.
That was a joy to watch.
I think Gupta’s piece was mostly a bunch of obfuscating truisms and strawmen. Of course other countries aren’t utopias. Moore never said they were. He only points out that they have better health care systems than we do.
Moore is also right that the US media is completely sold out to corporations and, unfortunately, the average American is utterly brainwashed into thinking that captalism = good, socialism = bad. Amazing that people are so mistrusful of the government (an institution which they actually have some control over) yet are as trusting as puppies when it comes to utterly soulless corporations over which they have no control at all.
Moore is right that the American health care system cannot be fixed unless all profit motives are completely removed. Capitalism is an amoral system and an amoral system cannot be entrusted with necessary humanitarian services to the state. Health care should be treated like the military – a purely state run system with no profit motive.
Meanwhile, the RW response to this is an allegation that Moore mocked Gupta’s name.
[shrug] Judge for yourself.
He did.
I love Michael Moore, and he’s absolutely right to thrash Wolf Blitzer for his moronic brand of journalism. It’s frustrating to see him undermine his own strong argument with this kind of stupidity, but he clearly delivered Gupta’s name in a mocking, racist tone.
The biggest headline on his home page should be an apology.
What a weird allegation. He did no such thing. I’ve watched all the way through this twice and it plain didn’t happen. Moore pronounced Dr. Gupta’s name correctly and without affect. This is phony outrage taken to a new extreme.
I don’t know what video you watched, but the one I watched contains no hint of a mocking tone when Moore says Gupta’s name. He over-enunciates it very slightly but that just sounds like he’s trying not to mess it up and he talks like that all the time anyway. He has nothing to apologize for and the last thing he should do is let the topic get hijacked by one of the RW’s patented asinine phony indignation issues.
Hogwash on both accounts. The common American bitches about rich corporations all the time. Furthermore, the common American has an almost absolute amount of control over corporations (which are no more utterly soulless than any other non-human entity, including governments, even warm, fuzzy, incredibly inefficient dinosaur lefty governments that are soon going to be extinct.)
The problem is people thinking health care is a necessary humanitarian service, it isn’t. No one should get anything but the absolute bare minimum of care (as in, the doctor stops you from bleeding if you come in with a gunshot wound) if they can’t afford it.
Hmmm… don’t sound too good to me. I think I’ll take socialized healthcare over your brand.
Anyone else’s neck hurt from watching that video? Michael Moore is on a long wait list for an opthamologist.
No, the average American is brainwashed into believing that private enterprise is always beyond reproach while the government is always incompetent and evil.
If by “almost complete,” you mean “none whatsoever.” I agree with you. Tell me, how can the average American affect any control over HMO’s or pharmaceutical prices?
Yiou’re extraordinarily uneducated about progressive democracies. You’re proving my point about how Americans are brainwashed. You actually believe the tripe they feed you.
The problem is that Americans have been brainwashed to believe that it isn’t.
Yeah, I don’t hear it either. Can you give us a time reference?
Well, like Will Rogers said, it ain’t a crime to be poor in America, but it may as well be.
I’ve gotta disagree with you too. I watched the link that BrainGlutton referred to, and I just didn’t hear it. At the very end, Moore says Gupta’s name a little louder and faster than he did the previous two times, which I assume is what everyone’s referring to, but it really doesn’t sound mocking to me. And I don’t even like Michael Moore.
I haven’t seen Sicko but I have been reading up on the issue recently. What metrics does Moore use to judge quality of health care? I’m utterly unconvinced by the per capita expenditure vs. life expectancy argument since it does very little to separate failings of a medical system from an individuals failure to live healthfully.
This is an interesting argument considering the current state of Military Medicine is somewhere between in-a-shambles and cluster-fuck.
Note, I’m not against a form of universal health care, I just don’t think the government should have anything to do with administering it.
The YouTube clip that BrainGlutton posted happens to end just before the incident in question. Here’s a longer piece:
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/56446/
Sorry, no timecode. All I can tell you is that the progress bar is directly below the O in “DOW” when Moore mocks Gupta.
As I said, I’m a big fan of Moore. But it takes a lot of intellectual contortion to explain away this delivery. I’ve listened to Michael Moore a lot. I know what enunciation sounds like, and this wasn’t enunciation. It was mockery.
Ermm . . . no, he/she doesn’t, Martin. Which you should know very well, and shame on you if you don’t.