The business of spin
Michael Moore’s Sicko covers the U.S. health-“care” system
By Beth Capper
Published: July 5th, 2007 | 3:40pm
Back in the day when jokes about George Bush were still funny, Michael Moore was well liked by the relatively few fans who followed his career after the cult success of his debut documentary Roger & Me. His incendiary comments about the Bush administration, both in his books and in his 2002 film Bowling for Columbine, provided a much needed voice of dissent for liberally minded Americans in the madness that followed September 11. Liked because he’s precisely the opposite of most political commentators — dressed in blue jeans and a lumberjack shirt and constantly making sarcastic jibes at government officials — Moore is living proof that the “everyman” can engage with the political world, and, occasionally, even come out on top.
In 2005, when Fahrenheit 9/11 gave Moore’s meteoric rise the final shove it needed to catapult him into the mainstream, something changed. Embarrassed by Moore’s seeming inability to present facts unclouded by emotion, and a little bitter that their cult discovery is no longer unknown to a wider general populace, one-time fans now not only dislike Moore — they hate him.
Hate, however, still sells an amazing amount of movie passes; a fact which Moore found out when his latest film Sicko recently grossed $69 thousand in box offices on opening weekend. As you probably know from the media ho-hah it’s already generated, Sicko is about the U.S. health-“care” system, although Moore wants to make clear from the outset that it’s not about the numerous people in the U.S. who can’t afford health insurance — it’s about those who can.
As a starting point, it’s not a bad one, allowing Moore to elucidate many interesting facts about American HMOs. One such fact is that HMO directors make more money per year if they deny care to more of their clients. In short, HMOs are run in much the same way as all the other corporate entities in America — by a bunch of crooks.
It would be easy to detail all the ways in which Sicko — like all of Moore’s previous efforts — grossly manipulates facts and statistics to demonize America’s health-insurance providers and pharmaceutical companies, glorifying the systems of other countries in the process. But, really, what would be the point? If the American public gave two shits about well-balanced facts, they wouldn’t watch the Fox network for their news. Michael Moore, like every news channel in America, is in the business of spin.
The difference between him and them is that there is some truth to what he’s saying.
Issue #35
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