Sicko Update

A liberal Canadian paper publishes the following:

Like the kid who chops his father's prize roses to give his mother a bouquet, Michael Moore delivers his films with dirty hands.

He sparks valuable debate about such serious issues as gun abuse, politicized terror and corporate chicanery, yet he does so with little regard to factual accuracy or even simple fairness. He is a crusader without conscience.

His latest work, Sicko, a probe into American health care, is occasionally enlightening, frequently amusing and constantly engaging. Viewed strictly as satire, which is how all his films should be seen, it does a good job of mocking a system that's clearly in need of an overhaul.

Sicko is also completely lacking in journalistic rigour, presenting only the negatives of for-profit U.S. health care and only the positives of the government-run Canadian, British, French and Cuban Medicare programs. As always, Moore makes unsupported assertions and uses out-of-context edits. The film is not a documentary, if that term is to mean anything more than unvarnished propaganda.

I love the line about Moore's condescending and absurd depiction of Canadians: "the cheery hobbits of North America."