More Sicko.

Not surprisingly, Michael Moore's Sicko turns out to be one of those films that needs a "live" entry for weeks on end, so this one follows the Cannes entry, "June 29," the one pointing to John Pierson's open letter and, of course, the week-of-release entry, last updated on 7/5.

Even less surprisingly, the buzziest of the most recent items comes from Moore himself, who passes along a leaked confidential memo: "BlueCross VP [Barclay] Fitzpatrick seems downright depressed about the movie he just saw. 'You would have to be dead to be unaffected by Moore's movie,' he writes. 'Sicko' leaves audiences feeling 'ashamed to be... a capitalist, and part of a "me" society instead of a "we" society.' He walks out of the theater only to witness an unusual sight: people - strangers - mingling and talking to each other."

Updated through 7/13.

David Walsh makes the all-or-nothing argument you'd expect to find at the World Socialist Web Site: "To imply that health care is 'above class and above politics,' as Sicko does, is nonsense; it has everything to do with such matters. America offers some of the best health care in the world... for those who can afford it. No advance will be made in the direction of providing high quality medical treatment for the entire population without a radical, massive redistribution of wealth and change in social priorities."

Roger Rapoport, author of Citizen Moore: An American Maverick, asks in the Independent, "[C]ould Michael Moore be running out of steam?" As for the prospect of Moore turning to dramatic features, "It's as if the sheriff has decided to get out of Dodge City and take up macramé."

Updates, 7/9: Edward Copeland: "Moore asks pointedly at the end, 'Why can't we adopt better ways?' reminding us that we all sink or swim together. Still, many of the most salient points are made by [Tony] Benn, the Labour Party stalwart, reminding us that the government should fear the people, not the other way around."

In an entry entitled "Nearly Twenty Years Later, We're Still Talking about Roger and Me," AJ Schnack sorts through three widely varying yet related pieces in the Los Angeles Times and parses the discussion that's followed John Pierson's open letter. Then: "Few outside the rabid anti-Moore forces or the overly thoughtful docu-theorists (and I include myself in that category) care what Michael Moore did or didn't do five films ago. But it seems likely that for better (in my opinion) or worse, Moore and Errol Morris - the other doc filmmaker that dramatically burst onto the scene in the late 1980s - have, through their own dramatic loosening of the rules (not to mention their commercial success), forever changed the dynamic for every documentary filmmaker that came after."

Online listening tip. Jonathan Oberlander, "a political scientist with an expertise in health-care politics and policy," discusses health care in the US - and Sicko - on Fresh Air.

Updates, 7/10: An online viewing tip. Moore vs CNN's Wolf Blitzer, via Alternet's Adam Howard, who notes, "I have always noticed that Michael Moore only receives one kind of coverage from the mainstream media: the bad kind." This video "is really about the whole mainstream media getting called out on their bullshit, which makes it so much more satisfying. Naturally smug bigots like Lou Dobbs act amused by what they consider Moore's 'act.' Little do they know, they're the ones making asses out of themselves day in and day out."

There's more on Moore's site, of course, including the Twin Cities Daily Planet's James Clay Fuller commentary on the commentaries: "Apparently there is a rule in corporate journalism that every mention of Moore and his films, or Moore without his films, must contain at least two snide observations about his biases, his ever so naughty attacks on rich and powerful but somehow - in the eyes of the corporate journalists - defenseless people such as the chairman of General Motors, and, if you can slide it in, Moore's physical appearance."

Adam Howard follows up: "Sicko Truth Squad Sets CNN Straight."

From Susan J Blumenthal, Jessica B Rubin, Michelle E Treseler, Jefferson Lin and David Mattos at the Huffington Post: "US Presidential Candidates' Prescriptions for a Healthier Future: A Side-By-Side Comparison."

For Dissent, Theodore Marmor looks into the current state of the universal health care debate and asks, "Can we learn from the past?"

And in the Washington Monthly, Ezra Klein argues that "the 'laboratories of democracy' can't achieve universal health care." These last three items are all via the must-read blog at Bookforum.

"'I don't think Michael Moore set out to make a balanced movie,' said Karen Ignagni, president of the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, regurgitating the industry's key talking point," writes Terry J Allen for In These Times. "But truth is not always found in the balanced middle. ('Now, for the other side of Hitler,' ' Cannibalism: the pros and cons'; 'Sex with children: Don't throw out the baby with the bath water.') Not surprisingly, some groups staging responses to Sicko, including the Manhattan Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Pacific Research Institute, are hooked on pharmaceutical company funding, according to Sourcewatch. They are part of a system that is rotten to the marrow and should be put out of its, and our, misery."

Via Chuck Olsen, Joe Morgenstern's review in the Wall Street Journal: "When the government stripped Mr Incredible of his superhero status in The Incredibles, he was reduced to working in the claims department of an HMO, where his job was to deny claims. His testimony would have been a worthy addition to Sicko, though Michael Moore's argumentative blogumentary about health care is shockingly funny - and sometimes genuinely shocking - without him."

Updates, 7/11: Moore vs Blitzer, round 2.

Alternet runs an excerpt from Don Sloan's Practicing Medicine Without a License: The Corporate Takeover of Healthcare in America: "[W]ithout a healthy and literate people, a society cannot succeed. World history has proven that over and over again. Where then does America stand on the ladder of accomplishments when stacked up against the rest of the nations of the world? Sadly, with all of its opulence, power, wealth, and resources, nowhere near high enough."

"What kind of a movie is Sicko?" asks Stuart Klawans in the new issue of Film Comment. "The question echoes beyond the little circle of critics, with our mania for classification. People argue over whether to call it a documentary, an essay, a polemic, a piece of agitprop, or a work of performance art, because each name asserts something different about the film's relationship to truth. Everyone knows what Sicko is about - but once in the theater, nobody (myself included) can define what's on the screen."

Updates, 7/12: Michael Falcone, blogging for the New York Times, reports on Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's latest jab: "Michael Moore is an example of why the health care system costs more in this country."

Meanwhile, an NYT editorial begins: "Even those who have grown cynical over the Bush administration's relentless manipulation of scientific views to fit its political and ideological agenda must have been surprised at the sheer breadth of interference described by the former surgeon general, Dr Richard Carmona. The official job description calls for the surgeon general to serve as 'America's chief health educator.' But the Bush administration instead tried to turn Dr Carmona into a propagandist and political cheerleader, and when he refused to go along, it stopped him from speaking at all on a host of essential health issues."

Update, 7/13: More online viewing from Alternet's Adam Howard: [N]ow [Moore] finally gets to sit down with someone who's on his wavelength - MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. This interview is a virtual lovefest, but there are also some significant points made. The reason Moore's criticism of CNN hit such a nerve, is because so many of us are still angry with networks like them, who played such a crucial role in selling Bush doctrine nonsense to the public."

Posted by dwhudson at July 7, 2007 9:27 AM