Michael Moore exposed, again

The first story I've ever read at mtv.com is a good one. I'm not 13, so I usually don't like anything associated with MTV. Check out this review of Sicko:

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18 million people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. The American health-care system is in urgent need of reform, no question. Some 47 million people are uninsured (although many are only temporarily so, being either in-between jobs or young enough not to feel a pressing need to buy health insurance). There are a number of proposals as to what might be done to correct this situation. Moore has no use for any of them, save one.

As a proud socialist, the director appears to feel that there are few problems in life that can't be solved by government regulation (that would be the same government that's already given us the U.S. Postal Service and the Department of Motor Vehicles). In the case of health care, though, Americans have never been keen on socialized medicine. In 1993, when one of Moore's heroes, Hillary Clinton (he actually blurts out the word "sexy!" in describing her in the movie), tried to create a government-controlled health care system, her failed attempt to do so helped deliver the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives into Republican control for the next dozen years. Moore still looks upon Clinton's plan as a grand idea, one that Americans, being not very bright, unwisely rejected. (He may be having second thoughts about Hillary herself, though: In the movie he heavily emphasizes the fact that, among politicians, she accepts the second-largest amount of political money from the health care industry.)

People not spellbound by Moore's chatty, near-clever attempts to push socialism have known about him for a long time. He takes the worst possible statistics, then twists them like a pretzel, then invents some from scratch, and throws everything on screen in an almost whimsical way. The only thing more comical than his formula is watching the people who fall for it. Shortly after Fahreneit 911 came out, I was sitting at a coffee shop hearing lefties speak of the film like it triggered some sort of awakening in them. "I knew Bush was a bad guy, but I didn't know the full extent of it!" It was funny and nauseating at the same time.

A little while ago a pair of documentary filmmakers tried to make a nice documentary on the Rotund One himself, but didn't like what they saw, so the film was titled Manufacturing Dissent. See my post about it here.