[boojiboy7]

lol

lolling because it took two posts for dracko to imply stupidity in someone else. welcome back dude, where you been?

[Corinth]

[Mr Mustache]

You started off really well Ratoslov :[

I haven't seen the movie yet, but my general impression is that if it can help bring health care to the forefront of our national "discourse", then it has done us a valuable service, regardless of whether or not fascist pricks think it is comprised of socialist lies.
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The people are like wool to me

[Dracko]

[slipstream]

[boojiboy7]

[Dracko]

[boojiboy7]

[Dracko]

That was a general "your". It doesn't matter which side of the fence you're on, it doesn't even matter which fence it is in the first place, there'll always be morons out there to make it look dumb.
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[boojiboy7]

ok, i can agree with that, but i hope you can see how it might be misinterpretted, yes? also, you are still calling something stupid, so the LOL still stands.

[Dracko]

Whatever floats your dinghy.
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[108]

[The Troops]

I watched a lot of The Awful Truth.

They ran a Ficus plant against an incumbent representative and won.

[CubaLibre]

Man I didn't even see it yet and by reading the comments I know what I already knew, which is that Moore would misrepresent the current health care system and put up single-payer as the only viable alternative. Bleh.

The real fact isn't that our health care system is crushed by capitalism, but that it is an unholy hybrid of capitalism and socialism that manages to incorporate the worst parts of both with the advantages of neither. We could actually go either way and it would be better than what we have now. An interesting documentary would explore the consequences of going either way, and lay out the choices: propose a dialogue.

Grandstanding though has lost its sting with me. As long as it moves health care - truly our most broken system, except perhaps Social Security - into the limelight, I guess it's okay.
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Let's Play, starring me.

[Adilegian]

I've thought this about Moore for some time, and the construction of SiCKO sort of validates the idea: Moore's documentaries are hyperventilating counters to the hyperventilating propaganda that he opposes. It's an interesting medicine, and perhaps it's ultimately more useful than a fair and balanced film.

This hit me most strongly when SiCKO showed selections from the older propaganda films against socialized medicine. (I'll need to check to see if those are actual propaganda films, of course, and not simply faux-propaganda films created for the sake of SiCKO--but they're at least representative of the collective warnings against socialized medicine.) Those films push all the possible faults of a socialized medicine program to the most extreme consequences, and they give a nightmarish vision of what we'd endure under a socialized medical system.

Moore's documentaries contrast this by giving an opposite, dreamlike (maybe even wet-dreamlike) vision of operating socialized medical systems. It also includes plenty of other snips from propaganda films, particularly (I recall) Soviet propaganda. The inclusion almost strikes me as a confession: an admittance of the formal (maybe even genre) context that his work fits.

But, like I wrote, this might be more useful than a fair and balanced look at the system. When I think about proposed solutions to social problems, I don't think, "What films give an answer to this problem?" Film isn't the best argumentative medium; those are and public debate and print. In the face of one sensationalist vision of health care, Moore builds an opposite sensationalist vision. The first sensational vision gave us an unreasoned notion of the state of health care, and, without an opposite vision, most people won't expend the imagination to consider an alternative. Moore's opposite unreasoned notion creates that alternative, hopefully in the interest that people will choose neither out of hand but realize that things could be different.

One of my friends got hit (simultaneously) with kidney stones and a stroke. Insurance companies successively denied him coverage, and he was denied care by seven hospitals before convincing the director of one hospital that the facility's principles were a sad joke. (The place claimed that it would turn no one away who was in need.)

If nothing else, SiCKO at least uses its emotive techniques to give hope.
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[Dracko]

Two wrongs do not make a right.
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[Dracko]

Two wrongs do not make a right.
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[Dracko]

Two wrongs do not make a right.
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[Adilegian]

[haze]

it's a vicious cycle (the increase in sensationalism) but I suppose I'd have to choose results over principles in this case.

[Mr Mustache]

[winkerwatson]

[boojiboy7]

dracko, that was a perfect double post.

also, Tim, I really need to take that idea into account when watching a moore doc. might make them much more enjoyable.

[slipstream]

[CubaLibre]

[Broco]

[Mr Mustache]

Iraq wasn't so bad before the invasion heir Broco.
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The people are like wool to me

[Adilegian]

So just how much does the U. K. government take for taxes to support the NHS? (I'm thinking of England's branch, specifically.)
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[showka]

[rf]

I haven't seen F9/11 in a long time, but the idea that "everything in Iraq was like this 24/7, because have these five minutes of video" is so ludicrous that I doubt that's what he was trying to say. It's more like, he's verbally making the point at the time, and he needs some sort of video to go along with it. Given that he's not going to, like, quote statistics and show you graphs on the screen (though that would be better, I admit), it's not like he could do that much better than showing some clips, from Iraq, of the kind of thing he claims was prevalent (with substantiation other than the clips, ostensibly). It's like background music, almost.
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[Broco]

Although it's a moot point now, at the time that F9/11 was released the civil war hadn't yet picked up steam (remember the days when Iraqis fought only Americans, not each other?) and it wasn't clear that the invasion had in fact made things worse for Iraqis.

Yeah I know Moore wasn't seriously intending to claim that Iraq was a paradise by showing that brief clip, even though that's the only possible impression one could take away from it (wasn't there peaceful music too?). It was just more of his cheap hyperbole for emotional effect, like when he listed the Coalition of the Willing while conveniently omitting Britain. I don't know how misleading it is to most people, probably not too much, but at any rate it's just cheap, crude sniping that isn't (shouldn't be) funny or convincing because it has to deny reality in order not to lose its punch.


Anyway I guess what angered me most about F9/11 was that the theater I watched it in was filled with left-wing "critical thinkers" that laughed and clapped enthusiastically at his every cheap attack and transparent manipulation, while I seemed to be the only one sitting there fuming. A very alienating experience.

I think that Moore's goals notwithstanding, F9/11 may have had the net effect of pushing a few votes towards Bush, because its energizing of Democrats may have been outweighed by its angering Republicans. Heck after that film I almost wanted to Bush to win just so Moore would be pissed off.