Stuck In the Middle With You

From a reader:

I can sympathize with the position you found yourself in. While Moore’s donation did good for your wife he twisted the situation in a way that completely eliminated anything positive he could have taken from it. Your wife deserved to get better, you did not deserve to be humiliated in the public eye. As much as I enjoy Michael Moore films, what happened to you was deplorable.

Your site helps give a much needed counter perspective on the work of Michael Moore. I love what Moore is doing and how he sheds light on subjects that are long overdue for attention but, in the end, he has become a monster in the same way as those he aims to degrade, depose, and defame through his documentaries.

As usual, as with most other things in life, the solution to our problems lies somewhere in the middle. Moore in a way is the drastic counter-weight to a big-business driven government that has made profit for the few a priority over the well-being of the majority. Someone is going to have to get into the mud to wake everyone up and expose what our government is doing to us. Moore is the perfect person to do it. My regret: His questionable methods may ultimately overshadow his message and destroy the credibility he has built. Who will pick up the torch if he drops it? I have yet to see anyone out there who has been able to reach so many and drive awareness in the way that Michael Moore has.

Keep up the good work, I just read your site for the first time today and will keep coming back for a fresh perspective on what Moore is doing.

See, here’s the thing.  It’s not like Jim and I think that the US healthcare system is perfect.  You’d have to be a moron to look at a system this flawed and hold it up as an example to emulate.  There are a lot of really good things about our system and also a lot of really bad things.  The same goes for socialized medicine.  Moore, rather than create a film which will initiate debate on the state of healthcare in this country, merely made a 90-minute informercial for socialism.  There are so many things wrong with the Canadian, British, and French healthcare systems that books can (and have) been written about it.  Moore treats these countries as if they’re some fantastical mystery lands, with rivers of chocolate, where children laugh and dance and play with gumdrop smiles, knowing that all the healthcare they could ever want is right there at their fingertips for the taking.

Moore will claim that he’s interested in initiating debate. Far from it.  The debate is already going on, he just wants to skew it towards his side.  (Which is fascinating in an of itself.  Michael Moore is a guy who thinks that the same government which can’t be trusted with your library records should be trusted with your health records.)