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Audacity of Truth
"Change" You Can Believe In:
"Nixon didn’t try to do that. They couldn't control (the media). They didn’t try. [...] What the hell do they think we are, puppets?"
- Liberal opinion writer Helen Thomas, describing the Obama admin's penchant for heavily scripting public appearances & press conferences - 7/1/09
Michael Moore plays fast and loose with the facts – again – in his latest anti-America ‘documentary’
And this time, it’s Canadians who are letting him hear it:
Michael Moore is handing out fake bandages to promote his new film Sicko, an exposé of the failings of the U.S. health care system.
But he may feel like applying a couple to himself after the mauling he received yesterday from several Canadian journalists – present company included – following the film’s first viewing at the Cannes Film Festival.
“You Canadians! You used to be so funny!” an exasperated Moore said at a press conference in the Palais des Festivals.
“You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?”
We Canucks were taking issue with the large liberties Sicko takes with the facts, with its lavish praise for Canada’s government-funded medicare system compared with America’s for-profit alternative.
While justifiably demonstrating the evils of an American system where dollars are the major determinant of the quality of medicare care a person receives, and where restoring a severed finger could cost an American $60,000 compared to nothing at all for a Canadian, Sicko makes it seem as if Canada’s socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo.
Moore makes the eyebrow-raising assertion that Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans because of their superior health care system.
I suggested to Moore that Sicko makes Canada’s health system look so great, it wouldn’t be surprising if Prime Minister Stephen Harper – of whom Moore is no fan – handed out DVD copies of it as campaign material in a future election.
Other Canadian journalists spoke of the long wait times Canadians face for health care, much longer than the few minutes Moore suggests in Sicko. Moore, who has come under considerable fire for factual inaccuracies in his films, parried back with more questionable claims.
“You’re in a longer line than we’re in because you get to live three years longer than we do. Why is that?” Moore said. “Why is it that a baby born in Toronto has a better chance of making it to its first birthday than a baby born in Detroit?”
Moore later back-pedalled on some of his praise, saying neither Harper nor regular Canadians should pat themselves on the back too much.
His latest crockumentary was, incidentally, well-received at the Cannes film festival Saturday, which isn’t exactly surprising:
Moore is a Cannes favorite. His last film, the war-on-terror documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11″ won the festival‘s top prize, the Palme d‘Or, in 2004. “Sicko” is screening out of competition — Moore joked that he didn‘t want to appear like a “typical American” by greedily seeking another trophy
Once again, as is the case with Jimmy Carter, I’m struck with the hypocrisy of it all. How much do you want to bet some of the same elites who routinely heap praise on the America-hating Bush-bashing Moore at Cannes in spite of his blatant disingenuousness would rather spit on than give the same benefit of the doubt to the Bush administration?
Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter:
Two peas in a pod.
On a related note, Don Surber examined Moore’s claim about the French healthcare system supposedly being the cat’s meow and found it lacking. Blue Crab Boulevard points to a Swedish study which challenges Moore’s claims about healthcare in both France AND the UK.
Interestingly enough Roger Friedman at Fox News thinks the movie shows Moore’s ‘maturity’ as a filmmaker. Hmmm. Well, if lying were one of the chief indicators of maturity, Friedman would be right on.
Update/Related: Canada might not be warming up to Sicko too much, but the same can’t be said for Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth, which has become ‘required watching’ for some schools there, so much so that one student has claimed that he’s been shown the movie in four different classes.
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8 Responses to “Michael Moore plays fast and loose with the facts – again – in his latest anti-America ‘documentary’”
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I fully expect “Shrek the 3rd” to contain more facts than anything that Moore creates.
So where are the facts that he supposedly got wrong?
All I see is a lot of empty assertions. You really think you can dismiss this so easily? Why would you want to anyway? Have you given a moment’s real thought to what the problems in American health care are, what the good points and problems of other systems are, and whether we could, in fact, learn something?
Or is this just knee-jerk liberal derangement syndome?
Showing little grasp of statistics, Moore mumbles (between stuffing handfuls of Twinkies down his gullet):
Um, maybe because American doctors are more likely to go the extra mile to save endangered infants.
If you just let a seriously ill baby die at childbirth, it’s not counted as a live birth, and doesn’t go against the infant mortality rate. If you deliver the baby alive, fight to save its life, and fail, you’ve added to the number of babies that don’t make it to the first birthday.
Again, NC Cop and Great White Rat are right on the money.
Fat ass moore is insane and now he has pissed off Canada, how cool is that.
Tano, yes I have.
I even live with one of the healthcare system Moore praises as being so great. I haven’t read about what he talks about, I live it.
I’ve seen going for months with chest pains, waiting to get an appointment with a doctor.
I’ve seen people walk on crutches for years because the doctors dont think it’s serious enough to fix.
I’ve seen people denied healthcare because “you’re too old, it’s not cost effective”.
And that’s just the top of it, and none of the really bad stuff that happens.
You see, when government takes money from you, and use it to pay for your healthcare, then government gets to decide when you get healthcare, and what kind of healthcare you should get. You dont have a say in it, because the government pays the bills. Of course the elite get to go to special hospitals, so they’ll have no problem. (Do you actually think Moore would go to public healthcare clinics if he lived here??)
I’d rather have an american health insurance and travel there every time I got sick. If I pay for it, I get some say in it, and at least then I’d know I’d get to see a doctor if I get sick…
Of course the elite get to go to special hospitals, so they’ll have no problem.
And therein lies the problem. In a government managed and rationed health care system, the “coin of the realm” to get better health care is influence, who you are or who you know that can get you better treatment. In the US type of free market care, that “coin” is actually coin, that is money. Money is far more egalitarian than influence. Anyone can get money, borrow, charity, earn it, buy your own insurance, it’s not denied based on position, power, or influence. No system is perfect, but the free market system is more accessible than a regulated and restricted/rationed one.
I’m sorry to hear about the chest pains, and the delays Erik, I hope it works out alright. By contrast, here in the US, I know a person who developed angina, saw a doctor the same day, had a stress test the next day, an angiogram the day after, and two days after that was undergoing cardiac bypass surgery. Less than a week from chest pain to surgery, and he’s doing well now.
Tano, Moore’s so called “documentaries” have been nothing more than pre-arranged, anti-American, propaganda. His 9/11 movie as well as bowling for columbine were dissected and ripped apart by several experts.
Our health care system is far from perfect, but people still come here from all over the world to get medical treatment.
Please get some information before you go spouting off about things you know nothing about. It may save you some embarrassment and you may actually learn something new.
I dunno about the peas in a pod. Have you seen the trailer for Moore’s next sequel *Beneath the rabbit hutch*? *We are all equal* was discarded due to Mooron’s “woefully uneducated, self-congratulatory, self-laudatory” impression of his highness.
Someone upstairs screams “QUARTER!” every time this idiot lays his marble filled head down as the hollow sound of a pool hall break gone awry echoes and the clue ball bounces on the basement floor and rolls away.