There is no such thing as bad publicity, they say. Whoever they may be, they are unquestionably right. Mel Gibson has proved it exceedingly well, making an outlandish and, as most viewers agree, boring opus into a center of a heated public brawl for months before its first screening. And no matter how many eggs were thrown in his face, his bank account paid for all the detergent necessary to do a thorough cleaning job.
And here comes another wannabe Mel, creating another brouhaha around an opus that, frankly, I am not going to hold my breath for:
Cannes is smacking its lips in anticipation of filmmaker and provocateur Michael Moore’s latest jeremiad against the US administration, which receives its premiere at the film festival today. Sicko, a documentary tackling the state of American healthcare, focuses on the pharmaceutical giants, and particularly on health insurers.
That Cannes is smacking its lips goes without saying. Anything showing US in a bad light will have the Cannes public in throes of a multiple orgasm. And of course, who else but the esteemed expert in weaving half-truths into another provocation that will appeal to the right kind of public?
The Gibson prepared by the fatso and his producer this time is definitely a new one:
Now, according to movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose Weinstein Company is behind the film, the US government is attempting to impound the negative.
And what, pray, would be the reason for such an extraordinary move by the ‘US government’?
In March, Moore travelled to the Caribbean island with a group of emergency workers from New York’s Ground Zero to see whether they would receive better care under the Castro regime than they had under George Bush. He had applied for permission to travel in October 2006 and received no reply.
In a letter dated May 2, the treasury department notified Moore that it was investigating him for unlicensed travel to Cuba, or, as the missive put it, engaging in “travel-related transactions involving Cuba.”
Do you see in the above any reference to the movie? Is it the movie that has broken the law or its “creator”? Why in the whole blue world should the treasury decide to impound the movie, instead of bringing a forklift to transport Mr Moore somewhere for investigation?
And, as it is widely known, quite a few Americans travel to Cuba for this or another reason, sometimes just out of being ornery, and I do not remember seeing American jails overflowing with the inmates who has stepped over this particular line.
Anyways, if the whole story does not smell fishy to you, it may have something to do with an olfactory impediment. Otherwise, it is a lame Gibson, if you ask me. And the best proof is:
Weinstein appeared to be enjoying the brouhaha that the film is stirring up before it has even screened. “I’ve already told the Treasury that they are saving me money on advertising.”
Indeed. Now to this new troublesome child by the trailblazer of the “new age of documentary”.
To say that American health care system is perfect and does not have its woes would be stupid. Anyone who has experienced the insurance companies’ tender care knows what it is all about. But what is the alternative touted by Moore? Even Charlotte Higgins, the author of the article, seems to have been taken aback by the idiocy of that:
The health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, may be surprised by Moore’s ringing – if strictly speaking, factually inaccurate – endorsement for the NHS. “The poorest Brit is healthier and lives longer than the wealthiest American,” he said.
Strictly speaking, indeed. Strictly speaking is not the term one would use in relation to the Moore’s “documentaries”, that’s true. But this overwhelming comparison to the British NHS, hilarious as it might be, is just an appetizer. You see, it is the shining example of Cuban health care system that Moore had in mind embarking on this new venture.
The three sources: Wiki, CANF (the Cuban American source) and its opposite – the Cuba Solidarity site – will give you a general picture of goings-on in Cuban health care system, try to reach your own judgment. But the result is not pretty, and to expect that an already indoctrinated person will come back, after his charges receive a preferential treatment in one of the Cuban clinics for the privileged, to present an objective picture, would be a bit too much…
And let us not forget for a second the inimitable style of Mr Moore:
Of his journalistic style, he said: “It’s the op-ed page. You don’t say that’s not journalism. I present my opinion, my take on things, based on indisputable facts. They could be wrong. I think they’re right.”
If a person challenging the fatso’s bluff were looking for a better way to demolish him, I doubt that this person could have found a better way than just quoting the above confession. Indeed, “indisputable facts that could be wrong” summarizes the whole body of work by Moore better than anything else ever said or written.
However, let’s not forget the author of the article, Charlotte Higgins. In her haste to publish she, how to say it gently, was a bit too free with her facts:
The rightwing backlash has spawned a number of documentaries questioning his methods, including Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk’s Manufacturing Dissent.
Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk would be mightily surprised reading this, Ms Higgins. In their worst dreams they did not see being classified as a rightwingers.
Melnyk and Caine have stated that when they first sought to make a film about Moore, they held great admiration for what he had done for the documentary genre and set out to make a biography of him. During the course of their research, however, they became disenchanted with Moore’s tactics.
See, Ms Higgings – you really don’t want to follow in Moore’s steps, publishing “indisputable facts that could be wrong”. Or do you?
Cross-posted on SimplyJews.
Frankly, a documentary should be done on the US health care system, as it is a disgrace. Not the research end, but the delivery of care. We have conditions that aren’t worthy of a first-world country, not with 40 million uninsured citizens. I’ve heard of people in the Midwest going around with teeth rotting in their mouths because they couldn’t afford dental care. My brother, a physician who was on a fellowship with the UN’s World Health Organization (and please don’t say “oh that’s the UN talking”), told me not too long ago that the US actually qualified as only a second-world country (ie , former Soviet bloc) in terms of health indicators like infant mortality, life expectancy, and so on.
So I think that a documentary should be made and widely distributed. However, it is a total shame that it’s Michael Moore who will be doing it. He will be irresponsible. He will lie. And if he’s comparing the US to Britain, forget it. The NHS is notorious, though, to be fair, part of the fault does like with Thatcher, who starved the service of funds. I knew an orthodentist who visited Britain (admittedly, this was in the 1980s) with a delegation of colleagues from the US. He said that there were only a handful of periodentists in Britain, that they were based at hospitals and only worked on extreme cases. Everyday orthodenture work was done by general practitioners, with predictably horrendous results. He told me that dentists proudly showed his group photos of their work. He said that, in the USA, the results would’ve been valid causes for law suits.
And Cuba? He has to be kidding. Sure, they have some showpiece programs that are touted all over the world, and Castro probably does more for his populace than your average Latin American dictator. But Cuba? As a model for anything? Why Cuba? Why not Germany or Holland, or a Scandinavian country or Canada (where you only have to wait for elective surgery, a problem that could be solved if they spent a little more of their GDP on health care), or Australia? From what I understand, these have decent health care. The choice of Cuba is ridiculous.
If you want to see a good documentary on health care, though it is dated, there was a Frontline one done by Walter Cronkite, from 1994, I think, just when Clinton was trying to enact a health insurance scheme. It compared the Canadian system with ours, frankly admitting the flaws in the Canadian one but rating it as far superior to our own. It was intelligently done, and just very good. There are some archives of tv programs around the country, including here in NY, or maybe one can order it. But it is dated.
I just wish someone other than Michael Moore would do this thing. They could still be incisive and inject humor. The results may not be as popular with audiences, though. A shame.
It’s entirely possible that Moore’s people got excellent and free health care in Cuba. Useful idiots who went to the Soviet Union likewise got the care lavished on the nomenklatura and weren’t impolite enough to ask what happened to the ordinary person.
When the Iron Curtain came down, of course, it should have been no surprise to learn that the actual standard of health care in the USSR was abysmal and the ordinary citizen enjoyed nothing like the care the elite did. It’s the same in Cuba.
And when the Castro regime falls the Moores of the world will waltz on to the next shining dream that awaits them.
The Canadian system is flirting with a ten month waiting period for a maternity bed. The only thing that keeps it going is that thousands of Canadians can come to the USA and get sophisticated diagnosis and treatment that is unavailable to them north of the border, or is available only with an unacceptably long waiting period.
If we instituted something like Canada’s system wher would US citizens go to get the treatment they needed, analogously to the Canadians who mow come here for theirs? The Candians have the advantage that most of them live very near the US border. It’s a much longer trip from Peoria to the Cayman Islands to get diagnosis unavailable in the USA now that the nationalized health service is controlling costs in the traditional fashion, by rationing care.
If someone is so worried about “40 million uninsured” then work with the insurance industry to find a way to insure them. The whole history of the 20th Century shows that getting the government involved in it, except at the level of public health services like ensuring sanitation, is the worst thing to do, the kiss of death to any hope of a decent level of health care.
I was thinking that one way to handle the uninsured would be to have all doctors serve two years in free clinics after they’re done with their residencies. In return, the government would pay off a certain amount of their med school debts. After the two years, the doctors go wherever they want, with less debt than they started.
It would also solve the problem with no doctors in rural areas.
The medical profession can’t be like every other profession. Not when lives are at stake.
The system is definitely not working. I was one of those people without health care. If I hadn’t finally gotten a contracting job that gave me health benefits, I’d owe $15k to my local hospital for my visit last summer. Instead, I paid $350 and my insurance company picked up the rest of the tab.
An interesting point comes up as follows. In many countries, infants that are listed as live births in the U.S. (and then die) are listed as still births. Thus, an infant that adds to the statistics of infant mortality in the U.S. is not counted in any other country.
Cuba vs. the United States on Infant Mortality
By Brian Carnell
Tuesday, February 19, 2002