The journalist in me has a major problem with Michael Moore: he distorts the evidence. Roger & Me is built around him never getting an interview with the CEO of General Motors (he did), while Bowling For Columbine saw him walking out of a bank with a new gun immediately (in real life he needed to wait a few days), following up an interview with Matt Stone with an animated short intentionally designed to mimic South Park (and which sounded like it was narrated by Trey Parker), and doing an inflammatory “interview” with Charlton Heston, cutting it so that it looked like Heston was walking away from the story of a gun-related tragedy – and that’s just what I caught on my first viewing.

Perhaps stung by the criticism, he backed up a lot more of his evidence in Farenheit 9/11, but still found time for outrageous narration like “I’ve been hanging out with the wrong crowd. Which one of them screwed me? Was it the man my daddy’s friends delivered a lot of weapons to? Was it that group of religious fundamentalists who visited my state when I was governor? Or was it the Saudis? Damn, it was them” over footage of George W. reading My Pet Goat to a group of children (did it not occur to anyone he simply didn’t want to frighten them?).

The socialist in me also has a problem with Michael Moore: while I agree with his politics, I’ve been in enough debates to know that inflammatory statements don’t earn you anything. You’ll receive cheers from your supporters, but as all good left-wingers know, the point of muckraking isn’t preaching to the choir, it’s to change things. And you won’t change people, convince them of your side, by implying that, say, the president of the United States knowingly sold arms to his enemies.

The activist in me, however… the activist in me is happy to have him. After all, Michael Moore at least does more research than Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, Pat Buchanan, and the late Jerry Falwell put together. And since America isn’t going to cease glorifying its highly publicized, often ignorant rallying figures on the right, I’m glad they have at least one highly publicized, occasionally ignorant rallying figure on the left.

The most head-shaking moment in Sicko, in theatres today, occurs when Moore calls Hillary Clinton “sexy,” without mentioning that her universal health care plan was actually supported by many of the insurance companies he’s railing against – in a manner similar to the control exerted over banks by the Canadian government, Clinton’s plan would have placed health insurance in the hands of only five or six major corporations, and we all know how good Canadian banks are at acting in the public interest.

He’s also come under fire for presenting Canadian emergency rooms as having low wait times (a maximum of 45 minutes? Really?) and plenty of staff (not once do we see a Canadian waiting room with more than 10 people). He ignores touchy subjects like how Canadians pay for all that stuff (strangely enough, he never meets a single Canadian who resents losing 40% of their paycheque to taxes), or how Britain can afford 6.95-pound medicine – not to mention both countries’ two-tier health systems, where someone with money will be seen a lot sooner than someone without.

At one point Moore talks about how he sent an anonymous cheque to the webmaster of the most virulent anti-Moore website, who was nearly forced to shut down due to his wife’s health problems. It comes off as a self-congratulatory pat on the back; I’d be more interested in knowing whether he helped any of the numerous other subjects he documents with their HMO problems.

But you know what? He has a point. Every Western country except the U.S. has some form of socialized health care, and in every Western country except the U.S. if you need help, more often than not, you’ll get what you need eventually. The Canadian system isn’t perfect, but (for the working class at least – and face it, that’s most of us) it’s a lot better than the U.S. In every other western country (and even some Third World countries, if the film’s snapshot of Cuba is to be believed) health care is administered by a governing body whose ultimate purpose is to help people. In the U.S., it’s provided by a series of companies whose ultimate purpose is increasing the bottom line. As long as that remains, things won’t become better.

The film perfectly articulates its major point: while the right believes in the individual helping themselves and freedom of choice, the left believes in a collective. What the right doesn’t see is that for many people there is no freedom of choice; they start at a lower rung of the ladder, and are lucky if they can earn enough to pay the rent and medical bills, let alone move ahead.

As entertainment, Sicko is first rate. Moore hasn’t lost his touch for arranging interviews or compelling stories, and as a platform for an important issue, it gets the job done. But by brazenly ignoring the other side (the Cuba segment especially is laughable – it implies that people there have access to first-rate medical treatment in a third world country with numerous human rights abuses and where everything filmed must pass inspection by the government), Moore misses out on his chance to sway conservatives. As a central component of its own argument, Sicko fails.






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