Friday, May 25, 2007
Opinion

Michael Moore’s latest mockumentary

What would we do without Michael Moore?

Relatives of Cubans seeking political asylum in the U.S., and currently being held at the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba, gather in Miami. CREDIT: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

By Eric Von Haessler

What would we do without Michael Moore? In a country full of nothing but greedy and thoughtless leaders, at least we have Moore fighting for us, whether we know we need him or not. Shudder to think how morally bankrupt we would all be if we didn’t have the left’s favorite shock-jock to continually remind us what a colossal failure we are as a people and a nation.

In a stunt for “Sicko,” Moore’s latest “documentary,” the director shows up in the waters off Guantanamo Bay with a group
of Sept. 11 first responders, allegedly now diseased as a result of their work at Ground Zero, and demands passage in order to get his patients in front of the crack medical staff the military uses to treat the enemy combatants jailed at the facility. Surprise, surprise: He’s refused entry and heads over to Havana to take advantage of their far superior health care system. That’s right folks—Cuba’s great!

Oh, sure—they have a nasty habit of jailing and sometimes killing you if you try to open a newspaper critical of Fidel Castro, but who cares? The doctors are wonderful (which would explain that nonexistent migration from Miami every year to seek medical care there, right?) and the medical treatment is excellent (especially if you show up with a camera crew salivating to provide propaganda for an anachronistic despot whose time is literally running out). But don’t worry your little head over that detail. Surely all the citizens of the workers’ paradise get the same treatment given to American dissidents looking to embarrass Cuba’s longstanding enemy, the U.S.

In interviews surrounding the premiere of his film, Moore expressed shock that he and his sick friends weren’t allowed access to Gitmo. Is there anyone reading this column who would be surprised to find that their unannounced visit to a maximum-security government facility ended poorly? But Moore’s time-worn tactic is to act shocked when people don’t play along with his shenanigans. He then fashions their lack of willingness to participate as evidence that they simply don’t want to face him because they can’t handle the truth.

Moore is a political entertainer and a pretty good one at that. But political entertainment will always distort the facts in order to entertain. The so-called facts presented in every documentary he’s released so far have been shown more often than not to have been shaped to fit the narrative of the film, not the context of reality. According to early reviews of “Sicko,” Moore’s prescription is to “steal” from other health care systems—and mostly socialist systems—ideas that he, a man with no medical training, deems better than our own.

Really? Moore thinks we should adopt the system of a country whose patients are so happy with their health care that they are willing to construct rafts of sugar cane and take their chances with sharks and hurricanes to escape it?

“Sicko” is bound to feature some entertaining moments on its way to pretending to make a valid point about health care in America. But like his humorous but meaningless Cuban stunt, the rest of the film is likely to follow the same pattern of pranks that will make you laugh but don’t add up to much. Moore is funny, but he always misses the point.

For example, when was the last time a boatload of Americans crashed onto the island of Cuba looking for sanctuary, aside from in a Michael Moore work of fiction? SP

Eric Von Haessler, formerly of the Regular Guys, is a frequent radio commentator in Atlanta.