Some Random Thoughts On ‘Sicko.’
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- July
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Good film but…
That’s the way it always is with Michael Moore. I’m always entertained. I always laugh. And I always get angry.
Moore is a master of emotional manipulation, and this is not necessarily a knock. We need guys like this to irritate, prod and fully expose the greedy power brokers who exploit, lie and rig the system to steal. He effectively raises the issues to raise hackles.
But you have to go in knowing that Moore, just like the people who hate him so much, is not going to stray from the message. Moore is not in the objectivity business. His game is hyperbole.
He’s got his theme and he’s sticking to it, and he uses all the tricks of his trade to pile on. Funny outakes from a deplorably inarticulate George Bush, inserts from old silent comedies, creative graphics and sobbing victims are all signature weapons in the Moore arsenal.This isn’t Frontline. What Moore is presenting is opinion mixed with facts as seen from the perspective of someone who grew up in a union household in a depressed Michigan town and was raised on Charlie Chaplin, Looney Tunes, Frank Zappa, etc.
I saw “Sicko” at the Bronxville movie theater. It cost 10 bucks a ticket, which tells you how expensive ticket prices have become—though nothing is going through the roof like health care insurance and college tuition.
I liked “Sicko” but if you haven’t seen it, here’s some caveats going in:
—Moore makes a big deal about how successful socialized medicine is in countries like France and England. He gives no downside to this. No mention is given to how high our taxes would have to rise to do the same thing in this country, nor is there any counter-balance tales of horror about the quality of health care in those countries. Is it really that great in England?
—Moore says that free health care in those countries is an outgrowth of the fact that the people don’t fear government. Government fears the people. In the U.S., he says, it’s the opposite. Seems simplistic to me. Especially when you consider how many paralyzing public strikes go on in England and how France is petrified of its growing immigrant population. In his film, Moore shows hordes of people in France and England protesting in the streets to, I guess, get the point across. But it looks like anarchy to me.
—Moore goes to Cuba with some ailing 9-11 rescue workers, who desperately need care. He presents a positively Utopian health care system in the land of Castro.
Red flags should immediately go up on this one…pun not intended. Reading between the sprockets, I smelled the propagandistic hand of Fidel, or whoever is running things in Cuba these days. You just know that the Americans got the red-carpet treatment per orders of the highest governmental authority. Who does Moore think he’s kidding here?
—Give Moore credit on at least one thing. He slaps Hillary Clinton by pointing out that she’s the second larget recipient of campaign contributions from the health insurance industry, behind only Rick Santorum.
—One more thing about Moore. He’s fat, real fat. Tellingly, there is no mention in his film about obesity in America and how that’s effecting the rising cost of health care.
Despite these reservations, go see “Sicko.”
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on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 11:55 am by Phil Reisman.
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Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
Why do people always worry about high taxes when it comes to universal health care in this country but never when it comes to going to war in some chicken-squat foreign country? Is it against the law in the U.S. to show the same concern for are own as we do those in foreign lands? Or is the corporate medical establishment that powerful? I once asked a British nurse to compare health care between England and the U.S. She just smiled and said there isn’t any comparison. England, hands down. By the way, does Moore mention the effect smoking has on health care?
No, there is no mention of smoking either.
Let us now finally (and tragically) put this Moore in his true perspective.
Far be it for me to interrupt the masturbatory dreams of unsuitable societal misfits… they have a heavy enough burden to bear without my added searchlight…. and yet…...
Estimate, each of you, how many times this Moore has had sex.
Envision it, if you can (my deep apologies).
This is a misfit. A geek, if you will, a masturbatory scatological gadfly unaware of the passions igniting normal life, and so, tragically contemptuous of them.
If we had ever wondered just what the ugliest among us thought of our sports, our wars, our leaders, our victories, Moore has the answer.
To Moore, and the rest of the damned, All our normal lives are crap, not attainable by the pimple cream fringe, so not worthy of seeking.
And yet, it’s just not so.
That this insufferable twit of a geek thinks normal folk are good only for mocking, yet those of us who live real lives, who get laid, who make families are indeed the real America, and we don’t need a beyond-gay fatboy misfit misreading history for us.
Any scatological sniping from the subhuman Moore is tolerated only as the ranting of a sludge of a man, a non-man. A broken thing, fit for incarceration, and reprogramming, and definitely not adulation.
Or am I wrong somehow?
Jeeze, sounds like H.P.Lovecraft crawled up your butt and died all over again. I’d prefer not to envision Moore having sex, thank you. Then again, to each his own.
You always know where Artisan stands…whoa.
Anyway, not long ago somebody told me that Moore enrolled in the Pritikin health program in Florida and lost 50 pounds. Looks to me, he still has a long way to go.
I’ve watched all of Moore’s films and take away some information that is useful and try to discard all the obviously biased things. This particular one I can’t watch simply for the trip to Cuba. My family is Cuban and I know all too well the desperate calls (when they can get through) and letters (whatever hasn’t been edited by the communists) pleading for medicine. One aunt was dying of cancer and the only medication available for her pain was aspirin. Heck of a health care system in Cuba.
I’m not surprised…thanks for the comment.