Morgan Spurlock's new series '30 days'

Cafe Society
1

I think its an ok series, but I think Spurlock is far too PC and/or environmentalist/green to actually be trustworthy enough for me to take the show too seriously.

He did a special on using hormone therapy as a fountain of youth, and the show showed a man who decided to use hormone therapy to improve his body and mind. However, the guy experienced infertility as a result of the therapy, and everyone acted like it was some terrifying consequence. I thought it was common knowledge that bringing in outside testosterone to a male body shut down sperm production, leading to temporary infertility. That issue kinda bothered me, because anyone who knows the basics about hormone therapy knows it can and probably will shut down sperm production, and production will restart when the drugs are stopped. The producers tried to make it look like that was some kind of major threat that nobody anticipated. Heck, some people use small doses of testosterone strictly for birth control.

His special on Muslims in america was good too but still, his PC side made me critical. The muslim family said that terrorists were extremist minorities, no different than what Eric Rudolph or Tim McVeigh are to white christians. I don’t buy it.

http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=206

Osama bin Laden, however, is viewed favorably by large percentages in Pakistan (65%), Jordan (55%) and Morocco (45%).

http://www.terrorfreetomorrow.org/article.php?id=42

For the first time ever in a Muslim nation since 9/11, support for Osama Bin Laden has dropped significantly (58% favorable to just 23%). [this poll is in Indonesia]

For context, roughly 1/4th of the world’s muslims live in either Pakistan or Indonesia. Support for Bin Laden used to be 58% in Indonesia and is in the 60-70% range in Pakistan.

Among western muslims though i’m sure Bin Ladin supporters are a minority. And even if some do support Bin Ladin, that is a far cry from supporting terrorism against civilians or actively assisting in these things.

Aside from that, I still think its a good series. I just don’t trust Spurlock very much. His green and PC platforms aren’t too trustworthy to me.

This isn’t meant to be a debate on testosterone or how anti-mainstream support for Bin Ladin is, i’m just pointing out that I think the biases of the producers takes away from the quality of the show and make it hard for me to trust what I see on the show. Aside from that its pretty good.

2

I think some producer bias is inherent in shows, like this one, that must be edited significantly for time. What Spurlock sees as relevant, even if he tries his best to remain neutral, may not be what another documentarian does. It is unfortunately the problem of the business. Another factor really is situational bias: Christian who is ignorant of the Muslim religion probably doesn’t have statistics about Bin Laden and his support in the Middle East tucked up a sleeve to toss out in a debate. Actually, the Muslim family probably doesn’t either. They probably looked at all the other Muslim people they knew and worked from that…

I’m not sure what I would do considering that situation. When your show is based on opposing sides of the spectrum meeting up, how do you correct the ignorance bias? I understand they did a cartoon for that particular show underlining the basics (though, as it turns out, blasphemously according to Islam), but can you really take too much time out of a one hour TV show to do that on every tidbit?

3

Isn’t this the conservative response to Michael Moore all over again? “I don’t care about the facts involved, he’s drawing a conclusion that conflicts with my world-view, ergo I think he’s biased and untrustworthy”?

4

Lol. I’m not a conservative. I’m merely pointing out that the producers are uneducated about hormone replacement or support for people like Bin Laden.

Pointing out that a tv show promotes PC answers that either aren’t factually true or that come across as manipulative doesn’t make one a conservative.

5

IMO, the producers didn’t blow the Fountain of Youth show, the guy’s wife did. She completely freaked out at the news that sperm production had dropped to nothing. I’m not being insensitive about the situation the guy was in, but she started acting as though he was about to die. She actually said something like, “We can’t risk his life for this show.”

She was also a more than a little miffed about the really hot, young, hot, thin, hot trainer they got for him, and did everything she could to get her away from him. (Did I mention this babe was hot?)

6

I’m glad to see that he’s still able to work with that liver damage he got from eating at McDonalds for 30 days…

7

The episode on living on minimum wage was … I don’t know.

Him and his SO both had minimum wage jobs, and got an apartment in a fairly low rent area. OK so far, they were struggling to be sure. But Morgan stressed his wrist digging turf at his landscaping job. Just a sore wrist. So he goes to the emergency room. His SO had some malady (more serious than a sore wrist IIRC) and she also went to the emergency room. So both of them made trips to the ER in the 30 days.

Now they got furniture, bedding, clothes, etc. from various charitable orgs, and they were just barely getting by check-to-check. The ER visits of course put them about $2K in the hole.

While I can sympathize with the plight of the minimum wage working poor, the show came across in the end as a healthcare reform infomercial (not that I disagree that healthcare needs reformed).

I don’t want to sound like i’m pitting the working poor who need emergency medical care, but IMHO his “injury” wasn’t all that and if he did it on the job he should have reported it to workers comp. They were actually debt free after 30 days save the “emergency medical”, and had gone to a movie with his niece and nephew, eaten out, etc. I know, not high on the hog, but not in debt, either. To me it looked like they needed to get some medical bills in there to bust the budget. And again, I realize that the minimum wage working poor could very easily have to have emergency medical treatment, but a workers comp claim shouldn’t be one. The overall “vibe” I got from the episode was that they just put that in there to make their point (and of course it’s a point that can’t be argued), because there really wasn’t any way to show that a minimum wage couple could actually start from nothing and be debt free in a month.

And again, I’m not saying that a minimum wage working couple should be satisfied with scraping by for a month with one movie and a meal out as all to show for it, and medical care looming to put them in debt. Not at all, just that the way the program presented it seemed contrived. Of course the end result would be the same no matter if it was contrived, so just an observation.

8

Bill O’Reilly says the same thing. :wink:

As with the Michael Moore critics, I think it’s the onus of his critics to give cites and demonstrate his inaccuracies.

The thing is, it wasn’t clearly established where he got the injury from; it may have been a preexisting condition that was aggravated from the heavy labor. And besides, when you wake up at three in the morning or whatever and feeling really bad, you’re probably not in the mood to sit down and slowly work out all the options.

Let’s remember that Morgan had to take two full-time jobs for them to even come out ahead (before the medical bills) by the end of the month; if he and his wife had only worked one job each, they’d still be in the hole by the end, even without the emergency bills. And considering that the “day out” with the kids consisted of a dollar theater ($1 per person), some drinks, and a minor row over 50-cent crullers or whatever, I wouldn’t characterize that as spendthrift in any way. Like Morgan, I really wonder how his co-worker with four kids manages to get by.

Well, she was! :smiley:

9

They tried going to a free clinic to save money once, but found that you had to get there so early to get seen before they closed for the day that it would have meant taking a day off from work. And it wasn’t just a “sore wrist,” it was seriously swollen, and I think he said that he was worried he might have broken it. Taking a day off to go to the clinic might have lost him the job, so he went to the ER.

10

Indeed. Much of my early working life was dedicated to heavy labor. I know quite a bit about working in pain, waking in pain, living in pain. I never visited the ER during my heavy labor phase, but luckily I was making enough to have been able to pay for it had the need arisen.

It wasn’t my intent to make light of Spurlock’s plight (I tried to make that point), if he felt he really need an ER visit due to his wrist, that’s his call. I was appalled at the amount of his bill, and if bringing awareness to such outlandish charges was the intent of the show, they did a fine job.

Once again this thread, as did the show, is focusing on the healthcare aspect of the premise. If that was actually the point of the whole show, then I was whooshed. No way should a couple of ER visits cost more than what, 3months (I don’t recall their budget) of other total expenses.

11

My girlfriend pointed this out to me, but I thought it was interesting:

After Super Size Me was unofficially based on the book Fast Food Nation, Spurlock’s section of 30 Days was more or less based on the Nickel and Dimed.

I didn’t see it, but if it was as horribly idiotic as Super Size Me was I wouldn’t believe a minute of it either.