I have a rant.
First, let me give you some YouTube links! Here’s Michael Moore flipping out on Wolf Blitzer:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=JpKoN40K7mA
Now, here’s Dr. Gupta and Mike Moore head-to-head on Larry King Live.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjvlGRfozss
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoiyJ1LPtdc&mode=related&search=
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAEBYO_MSOQ&mode=related&search=
I don’t quite know where I actually stand on Michael Moore. Do I agree with him? I’d say a good 95% of the time. Does he entertain me when I get to see him on live TV? Vastly! Do I think that sometimes that entertainment value comes at the expense of actually furthering what might otherwise be a meaningful and substantive debate? Hmm.
I’m a member of what I might refer to as the disgruntled leftist minority in America. Which, as of this past November, became the majority, capturing the organ of government that the Founding Fathers intended to be the most powerful (or at least the most significant) of the three opposing branches. Even with that victory, however, I’m still stuck in a minority mindset. I guess that’s just my psychologically-scarred cross to bear; I’m so used to rooting for my side as the perennial underdogs I’m not quite sure how to handle a real, tangible victory. (and neither, it seems, is the Democratic Party establishment — but that’s a rant for another time)
During the heady days of lefty underdogism, mainstream media pariahs and lightning rods like Moore were welcome allies in a greater cause. They were sources of inspiration and morale to people who genuinely believed in the tenets of the modern American progressive movement (which used to be called modern American liberalism, before the right made “liberal” a four-letter word). Moore and a handful of others like him were able to say things that no one else could say, and no one in a real position of power would say for fear of losing that position and that power, and thereby cost left wing America (by way of its default proxy, the Democrats) even more of their say in our government. But now that Democrats actually have some power, and can (if they put their minds to it) use it to affect real and lasting policy changes, and maybe even recapture a little bit of the squandered and lost prosperity of the Clinton years, I think it might be time for somebody to tell Moore to (with respect) take a chill pill.
At one point during the above-linked rant, Moore tells Wolf that he does not do recorded interviews. If he’s so insistent on only pursuing live television appearances, then maybe the least he could do is prepare some talking points before hand. In all of the video segments above, I find Moore to come off as unfocused and even a little bit insane. The stammering, meandering style of debate he practices — which always, without fail seems to go back to the Iraq War — ill-serves whatever purpose Moore is presently championing. And while the tangent he forms between Iraq and health care — that of the staggering and unjustifiably high cost of the former precluding more prudent spending on the latter — the messenger, in this case, ends up coloring the message: rather than contributing to a rational debate on the topic at hand, he just makes himself look like the deranged blathering nutjob that the right so dearly wants us to see him as, willing to spare no expense and make any excuse to go after the President.
It is said a wise general picks his battles, pragmatically, in a fashion that best wins the larger war. That said, why on the baby Jesus’ lush and verdant planet Earth would Michael Moore choose to attack, of all networks, CNN? In the Larry King linked videos above, Moore and Gupta spend half their airtime quibbling over numbers that are never more than $2,000 apart, and otherwise sparring over the differences they have in their shared opinion. I almost feel bad for putting up links to those videos, because *I* surely wasted my time watching them, and have therefore wasted the time of everyone who is choosing to read me right now. Picking a fight with Sanjay Gupta is a most decidedly unwise move in a quest toward opening up the debate on health care in this country: that much is clear from watching the videos. But it goes beyond Michael Moore, and into the larger context of the dialogue that’s happening in this country right now. Everybody acknowledges we have a problem with our healthcare in this country, and it seems to stem largely from the preponderance of Americans without coverage, as compared to those with. There is no debate on this much, it is a fact. We all agree that a lot of people are uncovered. The “debate” we are having right now seems to boil down into two camps. One camp is more-or-less in favor of beefing up Medicare, or maybe replacing it with universal healthcare coverage. The other camp’s argument is basically “No, let’s rather not do that,” and then a ten minute rambling transition into a soundbyte or off to some other topic without much redirection to presenting an alternative.
It’s said that we’ll need to pay a lot more in taxes to have the kind of socialized medicine (gasp! did I just use the “s” word?) found in the rest of the industrialized world, regardless of which specific nation’s model we choose to use. Moore rightly points out, however, that as compared with the range of charges we end up dropping for our HMOs and health care plans such that they are, a tax increase could potentially mean less money paid overall for the same (or increased) level of health care service. What goes unsaid in Moore’s response, however, is some form of addressing the numbers of uninsured who don’t have to worry about co-pays or deductibles, who would end up paying more with a tax increase anyway. That problem speaks to the general stagnation of working wages over the past decade, and while Moore would surely be in favor of a substantial living wage increase across the board for all middle and lower class Americans, it’s an example of how this problem ties into the confusing, twisted jumble of tangled cords and tangents of all the other problems.
… Yes, Mike, including Iraq.
I’ve yet to see “Sicko.” I ended up not seeing “Farenheit 9/11″ until maybe a year after it was released. The thing about Michael Moore’s rants is that I already know where I’ll stand on his main thesis without having to hear him talk for an hour and a half. I just generally don’t know if I want to spend the time to sit through his theatrics if I’m already in the choir.
