In a democratic (perhaps more appropriately, postdemocratic) society, the media holds an important responsibility in that they are to expose corruption, fairly discuss political topics and provide a dissenting voice to the rhetoric of the elite. Of course this has become essentially impossible in the United States as it is less a democracy and more of a country that revolves around the concept of capitalism. As such, the media has become nothing more than a commodity for those in power, particularly economic power, as well as an outlet that strives for dominance over competing networks and communication outlets by exercising fear and entertainment. The result has been the elimination of true watchdogs, leaving us with only small hope in underground internet news sources, which unfortunately simply do not have the funds to properly compete with their corporate competitors, therefore providing restricted and inadequate news reports.
This travesty allows for a true power of the individual. In a country that allows itself to be driven by economics above all else, there are those with enough capital- or the connections to enough capital- who have the opportunity to discuss that which must be discussed. This is the role that many prominent authors and journalists play, sometimes finding ways to slip through the hundred dollar bills and bring pertinent issues to the public eye. Examples of this include the success of authors such as Noam Chomsky, John Perkins, Peter Singer, Cornell West, Norman Finkelstein, Howard Zinn, etc.
The problem with power of the individual is that there are those individuals who should not be successful by the standards of our system (ie: all of the aforementioned authors are professors at prestigious universities with expertise in the fields in which they have written, minus Perkins who has simply exposed his previous occupation with which he became very familiar over a number of decades). These are the people who have no expertise, no real-world understanding; those who have simply become literal millionaires by writing books with disproved "facts", based largely on opinion and have no concrete and/or reliable sources. There are a number of figures on the Right who fit such a description: examples include but are in no way limited to Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Hannity & Colmes and Wolf Blitzer. Yet the Right is not alone in this flaw; they share the company of many liberals, among all others Michael Moore.
As is Coulter with the contemporary conservatives, Moore is the personification of contemporary liberals. The major problems of the Democratic party are all transparent in Michael Moore: scandal, the manipulation of factual material, making note of relevant information and problems without providing a real solution, being as wealthy as the wealthy he condemns, etc. Like Coulter, Moore even resembles the mindset associated with the Democratic Party. He is milquetoast, she is aggressive. Ironically, Coulter has balls and Moore is a pussy. In turn, Michael Moore, like Coulter for the conservatives, has been effective and significant in only one light: he has further weakened liberal credibility in the United States.
Reviews have been rather kind to Sicko, Moore's latest work and a documentary on the major flaws of the American healthcare system. The film is powerful, they say, and exposes a sad truth that must be acknowledged. I concur with Moore on the issue of healthcare in the United States; it is a miserable excuse for a system that should have the intention to heal. Yet Moore and I differ on this perspective in that he does not believe this to be a fault of capitalism. I do.
In many other democracies, the healthcare system has been socialized. This means that people pay high taxes so that if something ever goes wrong, the cost of a patient's medical assistance and recovery has already been covered thanks to the people of the state. Some Americans see a problem with this but I for one would rather be paying taxes than funding the United States military in their operations of blowing up dogs and sheep near Puerto Rican neighborhoods.
Moore never addresses the tax issue in Sicko because he is working solely in the field of capital-deriving propaganda. His intention is not to expose the truth and then revolutionize or even reform the system, but rather to make money off of doing so. This means that his books and films are not about the truth in its fullest sense, rather he will discuss only that which supports his argument. This devalues the argument in that it leads to inevitable holes and the opposition will then ask about these questions which could have easily been attacked at the forefront.
Yet a more important issue regarding Sicko is that it is not a film that ever needed to be released. The systematic manner in which the healthcare system works in the United States is no secret, nor are the ills that it produces. The profit-before-lives element of this system was effectually captured in the Denzel Washington film John Q. And, as an individual who advocates vigilantism and militance, I can honestly state that I am more motivated by a fictional film about a father with a gun so that his son can get a heart transplant than a fat man telling me what's wrong with American healthcare.
Michael Moore is perhaps the worst possible man to be walking around and discussing the failures of our healthcare system in front of a camera. It is undisputable that if more Americans were not in the shape that he is, then doctors would have a lot less to corrupt them in the first place. This is not a joke or even a trivial matter; Moore said he contemplated this while making Sicko and his since lost 35 pounds. 200 to go, Michael.
I managed to catch an interview with Moore on television during which he was accepting phone calls. At one point an uninsured American couple in their 60s called in and asked Moore what he was actually doing for them by releasing this film. He sat much like Bush did on September 11, 2001 when hearing the news of the Twin Towers (which Moore makes fun of in Fahrenheit 9/11), then stuttered and then uttered a worthless shibboleth about how making the movie was his part in reforming the system.
In all honesty, the people who didn't know about this don't care. They are well aware of an infinite number of unrelated problems in the United States, to which they responded with despair upon first being educated on the matter and then proceeded to do nothing about it- including simply ponder the issue. This is the role that corporate news now plays for us, the role that Moore and dozens of other authors like him, regardless of their political affiliation, take great pride in holding. Moore's motivation is money, the same motivation as too many doctors in the United States, too many athletes in the United States, too many American lawyers and anybody else who has the opportunity to make a lot of money through their occupation.
This is not a criticism of the upper class. In a capitalist system in which one does not set his or her salary standards, it would be unfair to critique him or her. But there is an important difference to analyze, the question, with doctors as the given example, is as follows:
Did the individual wish to become a doctor and has in turn earned a large sum of money?
OR
Did the individual wish to earn a large sum of money and in turn chose to become a doctor?
In essence, the analysis comes down to a mere question of motivation. Is the motivation to help others, to educate others, to entertain others, etc. or is it to generate capital? Michael Moore is no doubt the latter. Could one truly question whether or not this self-righteous and overtly pompous man would have released Sicko were he not to become extensively rich off of making such a film? Granted, he took a major financial risk releasing Roger & Me and Roger & Me was indeed relevant to documentary status but the question does not regard Moore's past motives, but rather those of the modern day.
It may in fact be impossible to find an utterly worthless human being; even Hitler provided example for leadership skills and potential, no matter how evil he may have been. Moore has certainly contributed some vital information, especially through Roger & Me, but this does not excuse his rude and selfish behavior, his economic motivation, his manipulation of facts or his downright stupidity. Even Roger & Me had major faults, particularly in his complaining regarding the film in later years in which he all but dismisses the value of the life of a rabbit who is brutally clubbed to death for, when it comes down to it, no real reason in the film.
The three films that followed, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, all deserve no credibility whatsoever as documentaries, nor as disclosures of vital information. Bowling for Columbine, a film about the issue of guns in the United States, leaves the viewer with nothing but recycled statistics that are easily accessible, the endorsement of hunting and complaints about school shootings and the ease of gaining access to guns in the United States. Fahrenheit 9/11 is more than likely Moore's most ridiculous and absurd film work to date, a reflection on what the attacks of September 11th have brought, the manipulation of the American people by the Bush administration and a dramatized rant about the overused and ridiculous "our-troops" phrase in Iraq.
The approach of all of his films is wrong; if one did in fact feel compelled to make such documentaries, they could all have easily been constructed in a more appropriate and professional manner. The recurring trend seen in all four of these films is a sort of pathetic relentlessness that Moore uses in an attempt to gain support. This, for one reason or another, always leads to confrontation and a worthless confrontation at that. In Roger & Me he goes to General Motors to discuss a massive layoff that has devastated Flint, Michigan. In Bowling for Columbine he chases Dick Clark who really has no obligation to put up with such stupidity. In Fahrenheit 9/11 he confronts Congressmen and asks them why their children are not in Iraq. In Sicko he continues this trend by bringing 9/11 rescue workers to Guantanamo Bay and asking why the detainees there have healthcare, while these heroes do not.
Needless to say, the blue-collar workers in Flint never got their jobs back, Dick Clark for a reason unknown to me and Michael Moore could do nothing about Virginia Tech, no legislation is going through Congress for sending one's own child overseas and the rescue workers are still facing crucial and devastating problems. This leads to the indisputable conclusion that Michael Moore has no political efficacy; he has not changed a thing, nor is he making any attempt to. A documentary is not supposed to take a side, granted they can and often should be biased, but the way in which one is to go about validating their argument is by displaying the discrepancies in the arguments of his or her opposition. This is in no way the goal of Michael Moore.
It is not just Michael Moore's movies that are a problem, it is everything about him. Having personally read two of his books, I am prepared to argue that there is no reason that they ever needed to be published. The material is that of an uneducated, feminist, regular man with tendencies to rant about things that are either completely unimportant or already known to the general public. Michael Moore's opinions on unions, global warming or corporate political influence are no more informed than the next guy. This may in fact be the reason that so many uneducated individuals find him so appealing.
The important thing to derive from Moore's material is the weakness of his arguments. Moore and I differ on several political platforms, which is of course fine, yet as an individual who extensively researches political material, I am confident in stating that Moore's attacks on my strongest opinions can easily be defeated. This is most clearly reflected in his sorry excuse for a book, Dude, Where's My Country? Near the end of the book Moore goes through a list of things that liberals are wrong about, things that, by his accord, must be acknowledged as wrong or conservatives will never be willing to listen to liberals.
Before I go further into this matter, this rash statement is nothing more than a false allegation, more than likely to further increases the sales of the book. The ideologies that are subsequently listed under this section have nothing to do with the platforms of mainstream Democrats or they would be subject to far greater media publicity. Liberals and conservatives differ on economic and social issues but considering that their representatives are almost exclusively rich white men, the issues that Moore lists are of no concern to these people who care only about taxes and the implementation of religious values into American law.
This list includes that all drugs are inherently bad, that it is wrong to have premarital sex (says the fat ugly high-school drop out) and that Nixon was one of the greatest contemporary United States presidents. While these are all of course stupid arguments, they are also all debatable with legitimate grounds for either side to argue. However, Moore chooses to begin and end this list with controversial notes on my two most passionate political views: Mumia Abu-Jamal and animal rights. Verbatim:
"Mumia probably killed that guy. There, I said it....(B)ecause we don't want to see him or anyone executed, the efforts to defend him may have overlooked the fact that he indeed kill that cop."
"Animals don't have rights.... And lay off carrying on about the milk, no matter how bad it is for you.... This shit just makes me wanna go kick my dog."
What's great about Moore's arguments is that he often cites them so that one can go to the original source. Indeed he cites his opinion on Mumia Abu-Jamal on the basis of Amnesty International's report on Abu-Jamal (in which they state the lack of fairness in his trial and declare him a political prisoner). This serves as a primary example of Moore's uneducated and brash arguments that have no true bearing. Perhaps if he knew more about the case, Moore would change his mind having learned that neither Abu-Jamal nor his gun was ever tested for residue or firing, that his confession was entirely concocted, that photographic evidence that could have initially spared Mumia from ever going through a trial was concealed, that there are endless holes in the case or that the judge presiding over his case, Albert Sabo, has handed out 32 death sentences, 24 of which have already been overturned. Knowing Michael Moore, probably not.
As for animal rights, Moore has no documentation for his argument (nor does he need to in this case) but such disregard for even simple compassion to animals is reflected in this statement, his defense of hunting and his history with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Clearly not everyone holds animals in as high a regard as I do but there is a line that Moore has purposefully crossed once again on the grounds of unsupported arguments and a quest for attention.
Regardless of one's stance on revolution or even reformation, it is hard to deny the essential role that those in the media have the potential to serve. Moore has disrupted that role and has done so at the expensive of far too many. Even worse is that he has produced no real results, made no logical demands or even made arguments based on respectable criteria. This shit just makes me wanna go kick a fat, ugly liberal.
