News at 11: Mysterious Horsemen Spotted in Holden

Yo, you guys, what is up with me liking the hell out of Michael Moore these days?

If you read this blog, chances are good I have emailed you the clip of Jon Stewart ripping the Crossfire boys a new one for, and I quote, "hurting America" by pandering to politicians and not asking tough questions of them, which Stewart says (correctly, I think) is in direct contrast to their stated point, that being a news outlet. Let's just review the awesomeness of that rant.

And let us also reflect on how freakin' hot Jon Stewart is.

Soooo anyway as you have probably heard by now, Michael Moore pulled a Stewart on Wolf Blitzer the other day, and took him to task about the segment that ran before Moore's appearance (which refuted several of the claims in SiCKO) and then proceeded to go on about a variety of things, including the number of claims in Farenheit 9/11 that turned out to be true after the movie's release, and a similar concept to what set Stewart off on Crossfire, that the mainstream media doesn't report news so much as what their sponsors want them to report on.

It's freakin' GOOD, y'all.

Now, Michael Moore has historically irritated the crap out of me, because I feel he has a tendency to step all over his own valid points and stretch them too far. PLUS, the bastard is a compelling filmmaker, so he does this in a very convincing manner, which means millions of people go see his movies, start parroting the over-stretched points, and thus provide groundswell support for the...development of a system that ensures I'll spend every Conservative vs. Liberal argument explaining that the people swallowing that stuff whole are crazies who don't read enough and thus do not have the whole story. Then I have to explain that I am not in fact one of the crazies, and as a bonus, Rush Limbaugh gets his Crazy Liberal Spank Bank refilled so he has more fringey, ill-informed nutbars to point at all "LOOK AT THE CRAZIES THEY WANT YOU TO BE ON WELFARE AND HAVE ABORTIONS AIIIIEEEEEE."

Thanks, Mike.

But I went to see SiCKO - and wrote about it here - and holy crap you guys, he learned to shut up. Now, SiCKO's argument is not perfect, although I personally do think we should have universal health care, but for a scant two hour feature film, it covers an awful lot of ground and makes an awfully strong case for the benefits of universal health care. But god, watching a Michael Moore flick without the annoying snitty voiceovers, and without Moore's goofy face in front of the camera all the time...thing of BEAUTY. THIS IS HOW TO DO IT, MICHAEL! KEEP IT UP!

PS - SiCKO brings up a lot of interesting etymological issues in my mind, although they are not mentioned in the film. It's interesting to watch people's knee jerk reactions to any reference of socialized health care...the SECOND you throw the S-word in there, people freak, and of course this is why its detractors always use it in their rhetoric. I know I connect every damn thing to the Horrible State of Education in This Country but I really do think that the virulent reaction to mere words like socialism, communism, etc. says a lot about the way history is taught here. I believe that American schools teach a certain degree of propaganda in this regard - big bad horrible countries like RUSSIA are communist, not AMERICA. We haven't really tried the Great Communism/Socialism Experiment on a large scale here in the US, so there's no bad taste in our mouths that could trigger the reaction, nor are socialism or communism INHERENTLY evil bad concepts...just probematic ones. Why do we get so scared and angry, then, when someone mentions the idea of socialized ANYTHING? It's because of the countries and regimes we associate them with, and that's not where we should be. We should be able, as an enlightened society, not only to accept that you can have care/things for all citizens without turning into a bunch of pinko commie fascists, but also to realize that a thing can fail without being evil.