Many of my regular readers whose personal views lean
toward the left end of the political spectrum often argue that
my conservative mind has never given Michael Moore a fair shake.
Despite the fact that I wrote fairly mixed reviews of Bowling
for Columbine and Roger & Me, said readers (who I
receive angry e-mails from time and time again) contend that I
have never walked into a Michael Moore “documentary” wearing an
unbiased pair of eyes. They would claim that the only reason
that I have attended all of Moore’s films either at
pre-screenings or on opening day is that my apparent and
seemingly open-minded patronage of his efforts allows me to get
off easy when I later calculatedly bash whatever points Moore
makes during the picture in question.
Let me make this clear: I watch all movies with a
conservative mindset. Anyone who checks his or her personal
beliefs at the door when attending a screening doesn’t
understand the very purpose of film itself (a medium which, like
all forms of art, lends itself to audience response). However,
this does not mean that I am in any way not open to what
Moore has to say in his films; it simply implies that I know
what I believe in as an American and, for Moore to change my
mind, it would take one hell of a good argument. In truth, I’m
actually a far more legitimate critic of Moore’s work than any
liberal who is eager to agree with him at all costs; after all,
if art doesn’t challenge us (a notion which Moore’s
carefully targeted pictures usually ignore), then it isn’t
really valid art at all.
Although Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and
Fahrenheit 9/11 both slightly ruffled my feathers, I never
hated the filmmaker for making either movie or viewed
them as dangerous to the American Public’s well-being (despite
some ludicrous trademark-Moore fact-fudging here and there).
After all, both pictures functioned as legitimate
representations of the views of a great many Americans. I might
not have been able to agree with the basic principles that Moore
extolled in both films, but I at least came out of them feeling
more knowledgeable on the views and concerns of the American
Left. Moore’s latest picture, Sicko, on the other hand,
is a different story. It’s a complete abomination and, as far as
I’m concerned, an ill-conceived and mean-spirited push for the
institution of radical communism in the United States.
Part of the reason why Sicko is so dangerously
anti-American is because of its seemingly docile and agreeable
subject: the wrongdoings of the American Healthcare Industry. At
one point of another, every American has encountered his or her
fair share of problems with a doctor, a hospital, or a pharmacy
in the U.S., making the subject instantly identifiable. Moore,
of course, uses this connection with the audience to affect
viewers when depicting strong extremes of the Health Industry
gone wrong, such as the death of a man who was denied coverage
for a blood marrow transplant that could’ve saved his life and
the death of a child due to an insurance company refusing to
cover her at a certain hospital.
Heavy-handed examples in tow, Moore first tries to make a
case for the socialization of medicine. All right: I can accept
this. I believe that socializing medicine would be thoroughly
detrimental to the United States and would threaten the
capitalistic society that the country supports, but I am willing
to acknowledge that a solid percentage of Americans and
Congressmen believe that this might be the right thing to do.
(Likely future President Hillary Clinton, who the film actually
bashes in an attempt to seem more balanced, is one of the most
vocal advocates of a universal-healthcare system for the U.S.)
At this point in the film, despite the clear emotional
manipulation under way, I was willing to accept what Moore was
dishing at me and walk with it. After waiting an hour in line to
get into the pre-screening, I at least wanted to see what he had
to say about the matter.
But this exact moment in the film—right when Moore has
the audience’s disbelief at his fingertips—is when things begin
to take a turn for the worst. Moore proceeds to question why
people are afraid of socialism in the first place, providing an
eerie montage of the paranoia surrounding the form of
government. Moments later, he basically concludes that socialism
ain’t that bad after all, and asserts that he believes that
representative government would be a good thing for the United
States to abandon in favor of a more equalized and centralized
form of rule. Moore decides, in a seemingly logical (but totally
loony) manner that college education and several other services
should all be socialized in addition to healthcare. He argues
for full-scale domestic income redistribution, basically
commenting that communism and Marxism wouldn’t be so bad for the
U.S. to embrace in the contemporary age. He’s so assured and
comfortable with this dangerous thought that inattentive or
uneducated viewers might actually buy his suggestions, which is
why Sicko is ultimately such an irresponsible assault on
the Constitutional values of America.
Moore later decides to prove that variants of socialism
have worked in other countries by traveling to Canada, the
United Kingdom, and France and interviewing citizens, healthcare
professions, and politicians in the various systems. The
segments in Canada and the U.K. are rather short, but are
nonetheless totally manipulative. Moore skirts over the central
conservative arguments against socialized medicine/government
programs altogether. He merely makes a mockery of the high
taxation rates in the countries that finance socialized
programs, never asking the interviewees what they actually think
of the high taxes they pay (rather, he phrases the question
comically, in ways like “You must just be drowning in taxes!?”,
as if that would illicit any kind of serious response in
his subjects). Conveniently, the one middle-class couple he does
interview has a combined income of roughly $90,000 per year,
which provides for a cheap-shot argument that they are able to
get by even with the high taxes created by socialized programs.
I was waiting to hear from the man with a family of five mouths
to feed who makes $20,000 per year, but he apparently wasn’t
meant to fit into Moore’s convenient mold of deception used to
prove Moore’s points. Sicko, like previous Moore efforts,
graces over every imaginable counterpoint in the Book against
socialized medicine, pretending as if the only individuals in
America who oppose universal healthcare are the representatives
receiving pay-outs from HMO-lobbyists.
France, the country that offers the highest amount of
socialized programs in the film, is featured for the bulk of the
time Moore spends overseas in Sicko. Throughout the time
he spends there, Moore glorifies just about every program that
the French government offers and that of the U.S. does not: free
nannies, free 24-hour house-visit doctors, and, of course, free
healthcare. But Moore again uses this occasion to grace over
several pertinent facts regarding the matter, deliberately
blindsiding the viewer and providing a half-heated argument that
doesn’t hold-water when further analyzed. He conveniently
ignores the fact that the French recently elected a very
conservative Prime Minister, who promises to oust many of the
socialist policies of the country. It’s also never mentioned
that France’s unemployment rate under Jacques Chirac (who
created many of the programs he raves of) last year was roughly
9%, nearly 5% higher than that of the free-market United
States. I dunno about you, but I’d rather have a job and use my
income to pay for a solid healthcare plan (Moore pretends as if
these do not exist, but that’s only because many Americans would
need lower taxes to be able to afford one, an idea his
clearly-socialist being can’t stomach) than have no job and a
receive a government-paid euthanasia injection when I suffer
from starvation due to a lack of funds to pay for food.
The segment of Sicko that seems to be getting the
most publicity (and the one that the United States government is
supposedly criminally investigating) involves Moore taking a
group of 9/11 rescue workers to receive proper medical treatment
for their ailments in Cuba, after American health insurance
companies reject them. Moore does make one good point here: the
despicable terrorist inmates at Guantanamo Bay receive full
healthcare from the American government, and yet several 9/11
rescue workers have ironically and tragically received no help
at all. But, here’s the true fact of the matter: if the men and
women involved in the segment hadn’t been doing a service for
the government (let’s say they suffered lung injuries working in
construction due to exposure to asbestos instead), then the
rational audience wouldn’t feel that the government had an
obligation to treat the workers. Yes, these 9/11 volunteers
should be provided free medical treatment for their injuries,
but this has nothing to do with providing universal-healthcare
for the rest of America. The two subjects are entirely
unrelated, in fact. Moore simply exploits the workers in order
to somehow prove that Cuba (where they do receive treatment) is
a superior nation to the United States. Knowing that he would be
rejected entrance to Guantanamo Bay, Moore planned the illegal
trip to Cuba as a publicity stunt, in which the workers would be
beautifully cared for by a “caring” team of doctors and nurses.
(A salute to the workers after they receive treatment by a Cuban
firehouse proves particularly ridiculous and manipulative, given
Fidel Castro probably had all of the firemen executed later in
the day for doing so.) Moore uses the whole setup as a way to
suggest that ‘ol Castro isn’t such a horrible dictator after
all, and that maybe the United States should follow his
communist-example when it comes to certain areas of government.
This is when the movie is at its most dangerous; Moore’s
practical handling of the situation is so low-key that his
opinion is highly easy for one who is not well versed in the
subject-matter to take at face value and believe to be correct.
In the past, I have admired Moore as a businessman and a
filmmaker, if not a political activist. He found a built-in
audience (liberals, more specifically the older-hippie crowd)
made films for them, and reaped millions of dollars in the
process. I no longer feel this way about him after this film.
The sale of tickets to Sicko is essentially a perverse
form of prostitution, with Moore and the executive-producing
Weinstein Brothers the pimps and America the mutilated hooker.
Moore may be willing to sell America out to half-baked theories
and powerless intentions, but I certainly am not. The liberal
press will love Sicko by default, but I hope and pray
that Americans on the whole are not stupid enough to fall for
its manipulative antics. This is a dangerous film, quite
possibly the Birth of a Nation of our time. It’s
skillfully calculated and assembled, but offensive and vile in
its intentions. Moore has fashioned a true insult to the hard
work and freedom that feed American Capitalism and allow the
current domestic system to thrive.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 6.29.2007
Screened on:
6.16.2007 at the Landmark La Jolla Village in La Jolla, CA.
Sicko is rated PG-13 and runs 123
minutes.
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