Roger Smith, CEO of GM Passes Away

In this morning’s news:

Former GM chairman, CEO Roger Smith dies
Automaker exec was subject of critical Michael Moore documentary
The Associated Press
updated 7:49 a.m. HT, Fri., Nov. 30, 2007
DETROIT - Roger B. Smith, who led General Motors Corp. in the 1980s and was the subject of Michael Moore’s searing documentary “Roger & Me,” has died, the automaker said Friday. He was 82.
Smith died Thursday in the Detroit area after an unspecified brief illness, GM said.
He was appointed chairman and chief executive on Jan. 1, 1981, and led the world’s largest automaker until his retirement on July 31, 1990.
During Smith’s tenure as chief executive, Detroit-based GM introduced its first front-wheel-drive midsize cars, formed a joint venture with Toyota Motor Corp. to manufacture cars in California, created the Saturn brand and acquired Electronic Data Systems and Hughes Aircraft Corp.
“Roger Smith led GM during a period of tremendous innovation in the industry,” current GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said in a statement. “He was a leader who knew that we have to accept change, understand change, and learn to make it work for us. Roger was truly a pioneer in the fast-moving global industry that we now take for granted.”
Smith also served GM as an executive vice president and a member of the board of directors beginning in 1974.
Moore has become an Oscar-winning documentary maker, but he became famous with “Roger & Me,” which explored how GM’s plant closings and layoffs affected his hometown of Flint.
The 1989 film chronicles Moore’s fruitless attempts to interview Smith about the devastation in Flint, although magazine articles and documentaries have alleged that Smith granted interviews to Moore prior to the film’s release.
Moore has acknowledged a five-minute interview with Smith about a company tax abatement at a 1987 shareholders’ meeting, but said that was before he started working on the movie.
Smith often faced questions about the documentary, which contained interviews of people who said they lost their homes after GM plant closures in Flint.
One woman said she had to start killing rabbits for food after GM shut down the plants, eliminating 30,000 jobs in the city of 150,000.
“I haven’t seen it,” Smith told reporters shortly after the film was released. “I’m not much for sick humor, and I don’t like things that take advantage of poor people.”
At the time, Moore said he arranged with Warner Bros. to reserve a seat for Smith at every showing of the movie across the United States.
Smith was born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1925 and served in the Navy from 1944 to 1946. He received a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1947 from the University of Michigan, and a master’s degree in business from the school in 1953.
His career at GM began in 1949 as an accounting clerk. He became treasurer in 1970 and vice president in 1971. In 1974, he was elected executive vice president in charge of the financial, public relations and government relations staffs.
He led the company as import brands began to expand their market share and as GM grew its global business and dealt with tough U.S. environmental and safety standards.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Roger Smith Passes Away

I thought this was an important story considering how Moore hounded Smith and made claims that Smith was dodging him and afraid of him.  Of course this was later proven untrue when it was discovered that Smith had granted Moore an interview.  It’s funny considering how this seems to have set the pace of the rest of Moore’s films in which he continued to cherry-pick info and even omit quotes or take them out of context to serve his own purposes.

I liked Smith’s comment, “I’m not much for sick humor, and I don’t like things that take advantage of poor people.”

If only Moore believed the same thing.

I’ll be checking in on Moore’s site throughout the day to see if he even mentions this recent event or if he continues to only address his self-promotion of “Sicko”.

Considering that it was really Roger Smith who even gave Moore his first break into fame, I would think he owes the guy at least a sidebar on his site!

UPDATE

Well shut my mouth and call me Suzy!  Moore actually featured Mr. Smith on his site:
Roger Smith on Moore’s Site

Not to be too critical of the big guy, but I noticed he didn’t have anything to say about the passing of the guy who really put Moore on the map in Hollywood.  Granted, he put a nice photo of Smith smiling and provided info for those who wish to donate to the Roger B. Smith Memorial Fund to Benefit the Fight Against Cancer, but I don’t know there’s something a little off.  A little fishy.  A little suspect about it all.

Maybe it’s because of how Moore villified Smith in his film and in all of his interviews regarding Roger and Me.

Maybe it’s how Moore has a history of using the suffering and deaths of others for his own advantage without any kind of respect or compensation for those people.

Maybe it’s how Moore promotes socialized medicine while also seeming to support private donations to medical causes (something that seems to go against the idea of socialized medicine)

or maybe it’s just that Moore is so shady, so snake-like and so sneaky that anything he does that appears to be charitable or humane always has the underlying stench of self-promotion and ulterior motives wafting up to greet those who are not fooled by his sleight of hand and propaganda.

‘Tis The Season

With Thanksgiving having passed last week and Christmas right around the corner, I would like to ask all of the regulars here at Moorewatch to share with each other what they are thankful for this year.  It’s been a crazy year with the war still being fought, legal battles, celebrities going wild, Michael Moore making propaganda and using people for his own gain, etc.  A cynic could have a field day with all of the negative media out there.  So let’s try and put a positive spin on it and find some things to be thankful for.

The Pancreatitis Chronicles

Take a moment and refresh your memory by reading this post, specifically the update to it.  I just received a follow-up email from the author of that update, and I’d like to post it here.

Lee I am the guy that had the Pancreatitis that you featured in your post on right-thinking and morewatch.

I just wanted to let you know how the billing for this went. After spending 3 days in the hospital - in a private room none the less. After getting infused with bag after bag of drugs to get my body back on track and getting more morphine than an addict on the street for the pain I got the bill for the treatment.

$12,625.35

A hell of alot more than I can pay thats for sure. Hey your co-admin has Michael Moore to thank, I have the City and County of Denver and it’s taxpayers. I was told to go to the finacial aid office and after all is said and done guess how much I owe?

$100.10 Thats it $12,525.25 paid for by some unknown persons somewhere. I did not ask where they get the funding for this program. But thats not the case. The 100.10 that I am paying are proccessing fees! Fees that cannot be waived and that I must pay. So actually this financial assistance paid the ENTIRE BILL!

Who the hell says we don’t have free health care when it is required? And as I said before my care was top notch (allthough I was asleep most the time) in a state of the art hospital KNOWING I COULD NOT PAY THE BILL!

I can send you copies of the bills if you need them.

No, that won’t be necessary.  I’ve had the same thing happen to me.  When my father was admitted to the hospital in in severe cardiac failure, one of the first things my mother said was that we didn’t have insurance.  The head doctor, a world-renowned cardio-thoracic surgeon, said to my mom, “Don’t worry about the bill.  Your husband will get all the treatment he needs.  We’ll worry about the bill later.”

Not exactly the “dumped at Skid Row” scenario that Moore paints, is it?  Now, the Skid Row dumping in Los Angeles absolutely happened, and it was disgusting.  But he painted at as the norm, when it is clearly the exception, and the public was outraged about it when it came to light.  (Oddly, that aspect of the case didn’t make it into the movie.  What a strange coincidence.)

Someone Who Gets It

After the weeks of never-ending hate mail we have been receiving from Moore fans, it was an absolute delight to receive this one from C. Chrisp of Alberta, Canada.

Dear Jim and Lee;

I just watched ‘Sicko’ this weekend and I enjoyed it. Before you delete this email and thereby execute ties with a new supporter of yours, please note that I feel the need to explain why I enjoy Moore’s films before I start my tirade (which is surprisingly not directed at either of you, but rather toward the hate-filled rageaholics who festively decorate your inbox with colourful language and inventive grammar).

Let me begin by saying that I am a 26 year-old Canadian woman, and I don’t agree with everything Moore said about our healthcare system. Everyone I know has endured sickeningly long waits, and I myself have camped in hospital waiting rooms for hours at a time. The shortest I have ever spent in an ER waiting room is an hour and a half. I’ve never been sent away or denied treatment, but our system is by no means perfect. People are misdiagnosed here, too. Doctors are overworked and underpaid, and it’s not uncommon for me to have to remind my family doctor which member of my family I am, because a sixteen-hour shift can make his brain a mite fuzzy.

Michael Moore has presented his version of the facts in a few films now, popularizing a new style of documentary. For that, I curtsy in his general direction.

I have always been a fan of the documentary in its many forms, but find that a poorly executed documentary can be a bit of a snoozefest. Thus, it was with a sense of amused relief that I watched ‘Bowling for Columbine’ in 2002, because it was the first entertaining documentary I had ever seen. Others have followed, including “Supersize Me,” which was another entertaining, alternative view of the ‘facts’ we are more commonly fed by the mass media.

So yes. I like being entertained while I watch my documentaries, and Moore does that in spades. I fully agree that he has dumbed his shamelessly biased central messages down to a digestable pablum for the masses, but I don’t agree that I am a moron for watching his films. My opinion is simply that he feels passionate enough about certain issues to create these films, and he goes about convincing us in the same way the media does - using any angle or technique that will wrangle the populace over to his side. Moore’s need to take his interviewees on a wee fieldtrip in every film he makes is becoming insulting to my intelligence, though (try the zoo, next time, Mikey - it’s less likely to get your friends shot at).

I joined the lineup to your site after seeing ‘Sicko,’ because I wanted to see what you were all about before I decided to hate you. After reading a few pages on your site, I sensed a certain democracy in your intentions, and that is where you’ve earned my support. You are simply holding Moore’s feet to the fire, making him aware that he is and ever will be questioned on his facts. This is what democracy is all about! Free speech is great, but so is the freedom to question what is being said. All you’re asking for is some balance, and while your site may not be suitable for the kiddies, at least you’re honest and referenced!

To address the less-objective of my fellow Moore fans out there, I can only apologize to you as a person would for the drunken uncle at Thanksgiving. I’m sorry that so many of us are of the “shoot first and ask questions later” variety. I wish we read enough to know that Moore called before his film was released to identify himself as the source of the “anonymous” donation, and that Jim was respectful enough to thank him SEVERAL times for his help. I wish we would understand that the money was not a bribe to be silent forever more, and that taking the money is what ANYONE in Jim’s situation would do, source be damned. These “how could you!?” responses you’ve been getting on your site are a pathetic joke. How could he NOT? is the question I would ask these people.

I laughed wholehearteldly at that crazy ALL CAPS, APESHIT-CRAZY RANT from the loopy Mia Jones, and the response about Hippocrates had me giggling for at least a few seconds longer. She had to use the death of her child to try and guilt you into some sort of...what? Fear of her and her craziness? At least you are asking important questions instead of just sitting back and nodding your head! You actually source your information, and so it’s clear to this little Liberal that you two are not talking out of your backsides. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Mrs. Jones and her violent husband.

That said, I wanted to write to support you because I think that what you’re doing is important. I think that Moore’s work is important in that it reveals another side of a given issue. His arguments are by no means all-inclusive, but humans being what they are, it can be difficult to remain objective on issues one feels strongly about. Also, notoriety sells. Make the grass look as green as possible on the other side, and people will begin to crap on their own lawns, so to speak.

The beauty of freedom is that we can say our piece and other people can disagree with us. One problem with Moore dumbing down the facts is that people like you will get hate mail from god-fearin’, gun-totin’ HIPPOCRATES who want to unleash unholy hell on you for asking important questions.

I suppose the point of this small novel I’ve written is to express my heartfelt sympathy that your cause has to contend with people who are too stupid to realize that important issues are more like a die than a coin, and that condemning you to a hell you don’t even believe in with craploads of profanity only serves to fortify your point in all of this, as well as your opinion that Moore fans are at least partially retarded.

We need you two to round out the argument and debate, and hell - you’re at least as entertaining as Michael Moore.

Kind regards;
C. Chrisp

Allow me to make one point explicitly clear.  People are not inherently morons for watching Moore’s films.  They’re not morons for agreeing with what he says.  What qualifies them as “Moore-ons” is when they passionately, utterly accept what he says as being the gospel truth, yet have no ability to defend their own beliefs other than to say that Michael Moore told them it was true.  Disagree with Jim and I all you like, that’s the pure essence of free speech.  But be able to do so intelligently, with the facts on your side, rather than simply accepting the word of a portly propagandist. 

People who implicitly trust and believe everything Michael Moore says are just as bad, if not worse, than people who implicitly trust and believe George W. Bush.  At least Bush has the degree of trust implied by the office he holds, where as Moore has, what, a known track record of gross lies and distortions throughout his entire career, beginning with the Flint Voice and his brief stint at Mother Jones, then culminating in his stream of Leni Reifenstahl-like propaganda movies promoting the all-seeing, all-powerful benevolence of government.  (Unless it’s in matters like war and defense, which have been regarded since the beginning of time as legitimate functions of government.)

As I’ve said a million times, people who write us calm, intelligent letters will be responded to with calm, intelligent responses. (As much as possible, anyway—answering every email we receive, good or bad, would be a full-time job.) People who send us hate-fill diatribes, especially those filled with errors in grammar, spelling, and fundamental sentence structure, will be posted with names and emails to be publicly ridiculed.

On a personal note, thank you to C. Chrisp for “getting” what is it Jim and I are trying to do here.  It’s a rare pleasure.

Update As if right on queue, here’s another email from another Canadian, named Tim.

Apologies

I would like to apologize to JimK for allowing my previous post to turn into a personal argument between myself and Lee.  It was never my intention to cause a problem especially after not posting here for such a long time.  I thought that a little break from the constant posts regarding Moore’s recent failure “Sicko” was a good idea and only wanted to initiate some constructive debate and discussion.  I have always been a person who can take constructive and respectful criticism and critiquing.  But when someone comes at me with aggression and seems to be personally attacking me, they should expect a response other than retreat.  I have always been the kind of person who has also stuck up for others who are being attacked for no reason on this site, and have always done the same thing in real life.  If someone addresses me man to man and tells me that it is their opinion that a posting is not appropriate or perhaps off topic, I am more than willing to listen to them and take their thoughts into consideration.  But when someone takes swipes at me and uses foul language, I do not respect that and will let the other person know.  Those of us who have been posting comments here have seen our share of the trolling moonbats who come in just to verbally attack and offend us just to slither away back into the shadows of cyber space.  And we have seen many of them blocked because of their behaviors.  The last thing we need to do is stoop to their levels.
I for one will take JimK’s example and take the higher road and I suggest others do the same.

UPDATE I have deleted the previous post out of respect for the site administrators.

Update by Lee: I have un-deleted the post.  One strict policy Jim and I have had on this blog is that we don’t delete things, ever.  Michael Moore is notorious for doing that, deleting history when it suits his purposes.  We don’t stoop to his level.  Our thoughts and words and changing opinions are a matter of public record, and once something is posted here it stays here, for better or worse.

Besides, with the previous post deleted this post wouldn’t make any sense.  It would be your response to me without anyone being able to read what I had written.  Not to mention the fact that you deleted words written by both Jim and I, something I’m sure he appreciated about as much as I did.  I didn’t “take a swipe” at you, I didn’t even mention you by name, referring to you as “the author” specifically so it wouldn’t come off as a personal attack.  If you’re going to accuse me of taking a cheap shot at you, then the least you can do is leave my words up so others can see if they agree with you.

The previous post stays, as does this one.

Those Tolerant Muslims!!

In a disturbing story out of Khartoum, Sudan, a British teacher has been arrested for the incomprehensible crime of blasphemy by using the sacred name of Mohammed in such a way that she now faces a possible three months in prison.  Granted, it’s a light sentence, but still the sin itself is so heinous that one shudders at the audacity of the woman!  What was her crime exactly?  Read on…

KHARTOUM, Sudan - A British primary school teacher has been arrested in Sudan, accused of insulting Islam’s Prophet by letting her class of 7-year-olds name a teddy bear Muhammad, her school said on Monday.

Colleagues of Gillian Gibbons told Reuters they feared for her safety after receiving reports that young men had already started gathering outside the Khartoum police station where the Liverpool woman was being held.

Teachers at Unity High School in central Khartoum said Gibbons, 54, made an innocent mistake and simply let her pupils choose their favorite name for the toy as part of a school project.

Police arrested Gibbons on Sunday at her home inside the school premises, said Unity director Robert Boulos, after a number of parents made a complaint to Sudan’s Ministry of Education.

Boulos said she had since been charged with “blasphemy,” an offense he said was punishable with up to three months in prison and a fine.

A spokesman from the British Embassy in Khartoum said it was still unclear whether Gibbons had been formerly charged. “We are following it up with the authorities and trying to meet her in person,” he said.

Boulos said he had decided to close down the school until January for fear of reprisals in Sudan’s predominantly Muslim capital. “This is a very sensitive issue.”

“We are very worried about her safety,” he added. “This was a completely innocent mistake. Miss Gibbons would have never wanted to insult Islam.”

Boulos said Gibbons was following a British National Curriculum course designed to teach young pupils about animals and their habitats. This year’s animal was the bear.

Gibbons, who joined Unity in August, asked a girl to bring in her teddy bear to help the second grade class focus, said Boulos.

The teacher then asked the class to name the toy. “They came up with eight names including Abdullah, Hassan and Mohammed. Then she explained what it meant to vote and asked them to choose the name.” Twenty out of the 23 children chose Muhammad.

Each child was allowed to take the bear home at weekends and asked to write a diary about what they did with the toy. Each entry was collected in a book with a picture of the bear on the cover, next to the message “My name is Muhammad,” said Boulos.

The bear itself was not marked or labeled with the name in any way, he added, saying Sudanese police had now seized the book and had asked to interview the 7-year-old girl.

Boulos said the first he knew about the course was last week when he got a phone call from the Ministry of Education, saying a number of Muslim parents had made formal complaints.

One Muslim teacher at Unity, who also has a child in Gibbons’ class, said she had not found the project offensive.

“I had no problem with it at all,” the teacher said. “I know Gillian and she would never have meant it as an insult. I was just impressed that she got them to vote.”

The country’s state-controlled Sudanese Media Centre reported late Sunday that Gibbons had been arrested for “insulting the Prophet Muhammad.” It said charges were being prepared “under article 125 of the criminal law” which covers insults against faith and religion.

No one was immediately available for comment from Sudan’s ministries of Education or Justice.

Unity, an independent school founded in 1902, is governed by a board representing major Christian denominations in Sudan, but teaches both Christians and Muslims aged 4 to 18.

British teacher held over teddy bear name

That’s right folks!  She actually let some school age children name a TEDDY BEAR the name that is so sacred, I dare not repeat it for fear of having a Jihad placed on me! 

So how does this relate to our corpulent buddy, Michael Moore?  Well, I’m glad you asked!

First off, let’s start with his constant reminder of what an oppressive country we live in where he alleges our civil rights are constantly threatened and being taken away on a daily basis.  Now compare that to a country where a school teacher is arrested and jailed for allowing her students to practice democracy and vote for a teddy bear’s name.  A vote that results in the name Mohammed.  Also, consider how many men there are in the world with the name Mohammed or Muhammed!  Where is the outrage from Moore?  Where is his rise to support and defend this teacher?

Second, let’s consider the fact that we are talking about a TEACHER!  A profession that Moore himself has claimed to support and has acknowledged as being an underappreciated and underpaid career.  Where is his support for this particular teacher who is now being imprisoned for only trying to educate young minds?

Finally, let’s also look at how Moore has refused to acknowledge the barbaric beliefs and so-called “legal” practices of the muslim world!  For a man who paints himself as the crusader for the downtrodden and the oppressed, he seems to remain extremeley silent when it comes to the women of the muslim world who are persecuted, oppressed and subjected to the worst kinds of human rights violations in the world.  Instead, he screams and rants and raves about our government wire-tapping terrorist suspects in order to protect us from another 9-11 type terrorist attack.

I think this story should be printed and posted and broadcast in every college classroom and every television to remind people of how great it is to live in a country where you can mock, ridicule and berate any and every religion in the world without the fear of legal punishment or imprisonment.

That is, unless the ACLU comes after your butt!

Update by JimK I have moved the argument to the extended section as this is getting to be a physically long post!

Update by Lee:

Cocksucking Moron

There’s nothing I find more entertaining than people who write me hate mail telling me how stupid I am, and do so in an email filled with spelling errors.  Note “your” and “fowl” and the use of “U” in this email from .

I’m gonna make this short and quick so that I dont waste too much of my time

YOUR A MORON

Yes yes I hate moore too his movies are one sided and point out benefits but no problems. A horrible debater and anyone who argues with him is in for a treat

HOWEVER, you and your friend run the biggest anti moore site, but your just as bad as moore, if not worse. U never combat moore fans with real facts, instead telling them they are stupid and mindless (or cocksuckers) and then bask in curse words and fowl langeuge as you point out they are a moore fan, hence they are stupid

My friend I’ve done this arguement with a moore fan many a time but I gotta say man, your as bad, and by doing that, your making us all look bad

cocksucking moron…

I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck that our good friend Jordan is indeed a Michael Moore fan, but that’s not really the point.  Jordan has obviously never read the site before.  For the past—what, five years now?—Jim and I and the other contributors have posted VOLUMES of data and arguments against Moore’s claims.  My guess is he saw the movie, went to the site, and read the first two or three posts, which lately have been dealing both with the copious amounts of email that Jim and I have been receiving from Moore fans and the general level of illiteracy and ignorance that they display.  Note that in this post I specifically detailed and responded to some of the intelligent email critiques that we have received.  And we’ve done this numerous times over the years.  Good letters making good points are responded to politely with logical refutations.  Hate mail is posted to be ridiculed and laughed at.

So, to Jordan and anyone else who may read this, do yourself a favor and spend more than five minutes skimming the top two posts.  The entire point of this site was to act as a single-source repository of sorts for people wishing to make factual refutations to Moore’s claims.  Jim and I joke that we’re the most uncredited media source in the world, for we have no doubt that members of the press doing Moore research monitor this site.  Jim and I have both done media interviews.  I was interviewed by a reporter for the Times of London once for over an hour, and while I wasn’t directly quoted for the piece, many of the points and issues I raised did indeed make it in. 

On the right hand side of the front page are the categories for each post.  If you want to view posts relating to Sicko or F9/11, for example, you can do so.  If you want horror stories of people having to pull out their own teeth with pliers because they couldn’t get an NHS dentist, or a woman who had to make a mixture of fake blood and pretend she was vomiting it up in order to get admitted to hospital, you can find them there. (Both these stories came from the UK, one of Moore’s socialist healthcare utopias.) If you want to see arguments eviscerating the idea of gun control there are hundreds of them, studies and scholarly articles and the like.  If you saw Sicko and wonder why the US can’t have a wonderful tropical healthcare wonderland like the tiny communist island, you can find photos of Cuban patients sitting in pools of their own excrement, or Donna’s excellent series of articles on Reinaldo Arenas.  The data are all there, but you have to spend more than two seconds on the site looking for them.

Basically most people expect this site to be like some kind of magic encyclopedia, where they can close their eyes, grab a volume off the shelf, open to any random page, and presto! find the information they’re looking for.  It doesn’t work that way.  Information here is presented in a linear fashion, from most recent posts to the oldest, so if the issue you are looking for isn’t recent then you might have to dig a little.  You can search the site using both Google and the software’s built in search capabilities.

It’s not difficult.  It’s all there.  But “your” going to have to be more than a “cocksucking moron” to find it.

On the Road for Freebies

A reader from Canada makes an excellent point about Canada’s free healthcare system, one which never really dawned on me until brought up in this email.

Hello Lee,

My name is Eric and I’m from Canada, the magical land of super awesome health care. I been reading Moorewatch for a while and I totally agree with the things you say about Moore. Like a lot of other people I was made aware of this site by Sicko, which I thought was extremely entertaining for a movie but sub-par for a documentary at best. He really goes out of his way to make the Canadian system seem all encompassing and great but omits a lot of serious problems like very long waitings lines, the lack of equipment and treatment options, most of which you have mentioned prominently on Moorewatch. I thought the Boobies for Capitalism was interesting today because it actually reflects another more insidious problem that’s hurting quite a few people in the Canadian Health care system, and that’s traveling fees.

This may sound a big insignificant at first but when considering the geographical magnitude of Canada and the fact that certain types of treatment are only available in certain areas (ie. Vancouver or Toronto). So if you’re a rural family living in the outskirts of Saskatchewan who has a kid with cancer or some other serious disease, the best option for your kid would probably be the Vancouver Children’s Hospital. Since you’ll probably have to stay at least several weeks to get everything sorted out, your not only paying for plane tickets but also probably a month’s worth of living costs while generating no income during that time. It might seem manageable if you had savings, but Vancouver is probably one of the most expensive Canadian cities to live in (a recent study shows that people who earn about 100k annually Barely qualify as middle class in the city so if your only making 40-50 grand a year your pretty much somewhere between lower middle class and homeless) and those expenses will easily rack up to the thousands in a few weeks.

Of course since the current system doesn’t cover such costs despite the fact that many people incur them while seeking treatment it can take a serious toll on people who have to travel to different cities and provinces to receive proper care. This is probably one of the lesser talked about problems when we discuss healthcare over here but its definitely an important one that I wished Moore would have addressed.

Thanks for reading this and I hope your having a blast in China, if you ever get a chance to go to Tian Jing (it’s pretty close to BeiJing) make sure to check out their dumplings, its what the city is really famous for.

Best Regards,
Eric

That’s a great point.  Canada’s lack of things like MRI scanners has been documented many times on this site.  (There are more MRI scanners in the city of New York than in the entire country of Canada.) So while the healthcare may be “free” in some respects, you may have to incur astronomical fees in order to travel to obtain it.

This one hits particularly close to home.  When my father was dying I had to go on three months unpaid medical leave.  It damn near bankrupted me.  I maxed out my credit cards, I had to take out emergency high-interest loans, and I had to cash in my 401k and all my savings.  When he died I was flat busted, so I know just how expensive not working for a few months can be.  We had to drive an hour each way to get to the hospital, and we sometimes made this trip twice a day, so we were going through a tank of gas (roughly $60) every day or two.  That’s about $6,000 in gasoline expenses alone, let alone buying meals at the hospital every day, and this was on top of all the regular bills—my rent, the mortgage on my parents’ house, and every other bill which still needed to be paid.  At the very least Houston, the city where this took place, has some of the finest hospitals in the world, and so I didn’t have to travel to a different city for treatment.  As this letter indicates, while Canada’s healthcare may be “free,” you might have to spend a hell of a lot of money to be able to receive it.

Boobies for Capitalism

Remember, according to Michael Moore everyone in Canada gets all the super awesome healthcare they could ever possibly want or need.

Toronto is set to become a Canadian centre for breast reconstructive surgery thanks in part to a high-profile boost from politician and breast cancer survivor Belinda Stronach.

Stronach said today she has raised $1 million to establish an academic chair at the Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation, to ensure that state-of-the-art techniques are available to Canadian women.

She also committed to raising an additional $1 million for the initiative with the hopes of making Toronto a world leader for breast reconstruction.

Stronach was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent surgery in the U.S. earlier this year. [Emphasis added]

Fascinating, isn’t it, that Stronach would leave the healthcare utopia of Canada to seek care in the evil, greedy, heartless, for-profit United States? 

Health and Capitalism in Communist China

As many of you may know, I recently moved from California to Beijing, China.  Today I had my tour of two of Beijing’s western medical facilities.  The first was the United Family Hospital and Clinic.  Their website is here, so take a look through it and see for yourself.  I was met by the Marketing Operations Manager (note the word “market") who gave me a guided tour of the entire facility.  A few brief points:

• This hospital was as professional-looking as just about any US hospital I have ever been in.
• All the rooms are private.  They have regular rooms, which are nicer than most US hospital rooms, and they have VIP rooms, which were nicer than the hotel room I stayed in for the two weeks before I found my apartment.
• All the rooms had en suite bathrooms, and the couches all converted to beds in case family members wished to stay in the room with the patient.
• They are a full-service hospital.  They have a neonatal intensive care unit, MRI scanners, anything you could ever need. 
• They have a full pharmacy.  I had brought along the medications that I take to treat my OCD.  I spoke to their head pharmacist, who looked at the bottles and stated that they had every one of these drugs.  Some of the dosages the pills came in were different than the US, but getting the correct dosage wasn’t a problem, I’d just have to take two or four pills instead of one. 
• I saw one of their maternity rooms.  Everything, from labor through to the birth and follow-up care, is done in this room.  Right down the hall is a surgical room in case a c-section is necessary.

Now, allow me to introduce a couple of the doctors.  First there’s Dr. Chickering.

Complexity

The best political magazine in the world, Reason, has an interview with documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman.  You’ve probably never heard of him, so here’s the introduction to the piece.

It has been 40 years since the premiere of Titicut Follies, a bleak and scathing documentary about an asylum for the criminally insane. The audience at that first screening saw a cascade of disturbing images of mistreatment and neglect, most notoriously a brutal force-feeding of a naked inmate. As the prisoner is fed through the nose, a guard tells him to “chew your food”; the tube itself is lubricated with grease, and a doctor dangles a burning cigarette over the funnel.

But the most grotesque detail may be the follies of the title: an annual musical revue put on by the prisoners and guards. The revue frames the film, which begins with a row of madmen with pompoms singing “Strike Up the Band” and ends with the cast crooning “So Long for Now.” It’s a strange and darkly comic performance, part Ziegfeld and part Bedlam.

The movie was both a landmark piece of journalism and a landmark work of art. It made the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater one of the most infamous madhouses in the country, and it is now one of the most celebrated documentaries of the ’60s. It is also notable for two reasons that have nothing to do with its merits. It was the first picture to be directed by Frederick Wiseman, a former law professor who at age 37 was beginning a long series of rich and challenging films. And it is the only movie in U.S. history to be banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security.

Inevitably the subject of Tubby Riefenstahl rears its head.

Reason: There’s a recent trend toward documentaries in which the filmmaker makes himself a part of the action. Obviously that’s very different from your style. Sicko and Hospital are both about American health care, but their approaches are just poles apart.

Wiseman: Well, I haven’t seen Sicko, but generally speaking I’m not a fan of Michael Moore’s.

Reason: How come?

Wiseman: I think he’s an entertainer. I don’t think he’s interested in complexity.

I’m not against the filmmaker appearing in a film. I think some of the greatest documentaries I’ve ever seen have been made by a filmmaker who’s present in the film. I don’t know if you’ve seen any movies by Marcel Ophuls—The Sorrow and the Pity or Hotel Terminus. Ophuls is a great filmmaker because he’s a great interviewer and he has a very sharp and analytical mind. In the case of Michael Moore, I don’t see any particular filmmaking skills, and I think his point of view is extremely simplistic and self-serving.

One of my goals is always to deal with the ambiguity and complexity that I find in any subject. Even the simplest human act can be subject to multiple interpretations or have multiple causes. In Titicut Follies, for example, there are scenes where you see a guard or a doctor or a social worker being cruel to an inmate. But there are other situations where they’re being kind. Some of them are both kind and cruel, if not simultaneously then serially.

“He’s not interested in complexity.” That’s about the most accurate critique of Moore I’ve ever read.  It’s a point Jim and I have made here a thousand times. 

Sicko has NOTHING to do with healthcare.  Absolutely nothing.  Sicko is a two hour informercial for socialism, and healthcare is merely the context in which that infomercial is presented.  The issue of universal healthcare is unquestionably one of the most complex facing human society today.  As the baby boomer generation ages, where are we going to get the money and resources to provide unlimited free healthcare?  Is it fair to saddle the current generation with a massive mountain of debt to do so?  Is single-payer government-run healthcare the best or most efficient means of providing universal healthcare?  Should we even have universal healthcare?

The questions are endless, as are the possible solutions.  Note that NOTHING in Sicko would ever lead the viewer to question whether socialism is the solution.  The reason for this is simple:  the movie exists to justify Moore’s socialist political beliefs, not to lead a debate on finding solutions to the questions that face us.  Socialism is presented without critique, Santa Clause and government all rolled up in a sugar-coated ball of dreams, while any solution involving competition or the market is shown as hateful, evil, greedy, heartless, and so on.  It’s an either/or solution, two sides of the same coin.  Capitalism evil, socialism perfect.  America evil, Europe perfect.  And the Cuba segment speaks for itself.

For the record, once again let me state the obvious.  Both Jim and I believe (a) that universal healthcare is possible, (b) that the American system is a complete disaster, (c) that the socialist model Moore glamorizes is just as bad, if not worse, and (d) that we as a society need to have the courage to look for different, novel solutions.  Moore has no interest in actually solving the problem, he wants the problem solved using the socialist system he has clearly believed in since he was a teenager. 

Think of the issue of race in America.  Two people who benefit the most from race relations are Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  Do any of you out there honestly think that either of these men want to see the end of racism in America?  Of course they don’t, because if there were no racism then there would be no need for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.  So they foment that which they claim to oppose because it is the source of their power.  This is the exact situation with Moore.  He needs sick people, because he needs a reason to justify socialism.  There is no problem for which socialism isn’t the solution. Socialism is perfect.

Don’t you think that someone tackling an issue as complex as universal healthcare should have an interest in complexity?

Lee and Jim:  Fathers of Medicine - UPDATED

I really don’t want to turn the blog into “post every hate mail you receive,” but this one was too good to pass up.  It so perfectly encapsulates the abject stupidity of the average Michael Moore fan that it simply had to be shared.  From :

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,

I AM NOT A MORON OR AN IDIOT!!!!!!!!!! I AM A PERSON WHO HAS THE RIGHT TO MY OWN OPINION AND AS I WATCHED SICKO IT DISGUSTED ME TOO SEE THAT AMERICA, THE LAND OF THE FREE AND HOME OF THE BRAVE, TREATED THE SICK SO BADLY! BEFORE I HAD BCBS, WHEN AND I STRESS WHEN MY SON WAS ALIVE , WE HAD TO HAVE GOVERNMENT INSURANCE FOR HIS ASTHMA, THE DOCTOR DID NOTHING TO HELP HIS SICKNESS ONLY BUT A BAND AID ON IT, ON TUESDAY JUNE 3, 2001, I FOUND MY SON NEAR DEATH AND TRIED TO REVIVE HIM WITH CPR. WELL IT DID NOT HELP, NOR COULD THE DOCTORS. YOU WANT TO KNOW WHY, BECAUSE IT WAS TOO LATE, THE GOVERNMENT WOULDN’T PAY FOR THE SPECIAL SHEETS, BEDDING, FLOORING, ALLERGY SHOTS AND OTHER THINGS NECESSARY FOR MY SON TO BE HEALTHY. SO AT ELEVEN YEARS OLD I LOST MY SO. SO SCREW LOSING YOUR ADULT LIFE, WHAT IF YOU HADN’T LIVED LONG ENOUGH TO EVEN DRIVE!!!!!!!! WITH TEARS IN MY EYES IT MAKES ME MAD THAT YOU HAVE THE BALLS TO TAKE MICHAEL MOORES MONEY, AND THEN CURSE HIM IN THE OTHER HAND!!!! ARE YOU CHRISTIANS??????????? DO YOU THINK GOD APPROVES OF WHAT YOU DO??????? AND IF YOU THINK YES THEN YOU SHOULD BE STRUCK DOWN BY LIGHTNING, BECAUSE IT SAY THAT ONLY GOD IS IN JUDGEMENT OF US. SO YOU COUNT YOU BLESSING YOUR ALIVE, WHILE MY ELEVEN YEAR OLD SON IS IN THE GROUND. HOW DARE YOU, WHO DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU ARE, YOU SHOULD STOP THIS. BUT AS MY HUSBANDS ALWAYS SAYS, PEOPLE CAN’T MIND THERE OWN FUCKING BUSINESS AND ALWAYS HAVE TO BE IN OTHERS, HE SAYS “ MIA THEY TALKED ABOUT JESUS, SO JUST LET THEM TALK!” CAR MA IS A BITCH AND WHAT COMES AROUND GOES AROUND. SO I SUGGEST YOUR WIFE TAKES CARE OF HERSELF, BECAUSE MICHAEL MOORE MIGHT NOT BE THERE TO TAKE CARE OF HER AGAIN IF SHE GOES INTO REMISSION, IT MIGHT SOUND CRUEL, BUT ARE YOU REALLY BEING NICE BY TALKING ABOUT SOMEONE YOUR DAMN SELF!!!!!!!

HIPPOCRATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MIA JONES

1. hypocrite (noun) a person who indulges in hypocrisy. 
2. Hippocrates was a Greek physician born in 460 BC on the island of Cos, Greece. He became known as the founder of medicine and was regarded as the greatest physician of his time. He based his medical practice on observations and on the study of the human body. He held the belief that illness had a physical and a rational explanation. He rejected the views of his time that considered illness to be caused by superstitions and by possession of evil spirits and disfavor of the gods.

Hippocrates held the belief that the body must be treated as a whole and not just a series of parts. He accurately described disease symptoms and was the first physician to accurately describe the symptoms of pneumonia, as well as epilepsy in children. He believed in the natural healing process of rest, a good diet, fresh air and cleanliness. He noted that there were individual differences in the severity of disease symptoms and that some individuals were better able to cope with their disease and illness than others. He was also the first physician that held the belief that thoughts, ideas, and feelings come from the brain and not the heart as others of him time believed.

Hippocrates traveled throughout Greece practicing his medicine. He founded a medical school on the island of Cos, Greece and began teaching his ideas. He soon developed an Oath of Medical Ethics for physicians to follow. This Oath is taken by physicians today as they begin their medical practice. He died in 377 BC. Today Hippocrates is known as the “Father of Medicine”.

Update from Lee: Here’s my reply to her.

Mia, do you watch American Idol?  If so, do you recall when Simon Cowell tells someone that they could be the worst singer in America?

In exactly the same manner, you could possibly be the stupidest person who has ever written to me.  And I’ve literally received tens of thousands of pieces of hate mail over the years.  Your letter is amazing, and has been posted on the website so that the entire world can bask in the brilliant glow of your stupidity.

http://www.moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/comments/lee_and_jim_fathers_of_medicine/

I was having a lousy day until now.  Thank you for cheering me up.  It’s people as ignorant and stupid as you that make this whole blogging thing worthwhile.

I wasn’t being facetious.  The fact that there are people this monumentally ignorant about the world around them is why we continue to write this blog.  It sure as hell isn’t for the money or the fame.  It’s because two fucking jackoffs from nowhere want to make sure that there is a repository of information to rebut Moore’s lies and distortions.

Update by JimK

First of all, it’s absolutely a tragedy that this woman lost a child.  That doesn’t give her the right to attack me, however.  She is sending me more all-caps, off-the-rails email.  She’s wished me dead three times, told me her husband would kick my ass, and called me about 26 different names.  The emails are all in caps, with a simply ridiculous number of exclamation points.  She can’t seem to figure out why I won’t, and I quote, “EXPLAIN AND ANSWER THE QUESTION ASSHOLE!!!!!!! STUPID BITCH!!!”

Seriously.  That’s cut and pasted from her follow-up.  As is “JUST BE A MAN AND ANSWER THE FUCKEN QUESTION. IT GOOD THAT PEOPLE CAN SAY THINGS TO OTHER PEOPLE WITHOUT SEEING THEM FACE TO FACE. BECAUSE MY HUSBAND WOULD REALLY KICK YOUR ASS!!!!!!!!!!!” I don’t even know what the fucking question is that she wants answered.  If I’m a Christian?  If God approves of what I do?  Given that I am agnostic, those questions don’t apply to me.

That’s actually pretty common, and something I should have listed in this post; Many of the Moore-ons that send hate mail automatically assume that I am Christian, and therefore a hypocrite because I don’t want everyone to give away all their money to care for “the poor.” Sometimes, for added flavor, they think I’m a big, big fan of Bush.  Not a normal Bush fan, though.  A fan so devoted that they think that - in addition to wuvving him and wanting to snuggle-wuggle wif hims - I believe in the “coming apocalypse” and want the Rapture to happen yesterday, like he allegedly does.  It’s weird enough that they believe he believes that, but somehow the fact that I do not trust Moore’s every word as gospel - and have a website that has documented his lies on numerous occasions - automatically makes me some mythical Rapture-loving Neoconpublicanaziunicorn.  Also, the neocons are controlled by Jews, but the Rapture is a Christ thing so I’m really confused and my brain hurts now.

Anyway, back to Mia.  You know what my favorite part of her original screed is?  The fact that she took the time to tell me “BUT AS MY HUSBANDS ALWAYS SAYS, PEOPLE CAN’T MIND THERE OWN FUCKING BUSINESS AND ALWAYS HAVE TO BE IN OTHERS.” First of all, how many husbands does she have?  Secondly, Holy Lord Jesus, the irony.  Could she be any more “IN OTHERS” business with this campaign of crazy threatening emails?

Couple that with what seems to be a pro-universal healthcare stance - even though it was Medicaid that failed to provide her with what she needed - and I am getting really, truly confused.  According to her, the government failed her and contributed to the death of her son, and the answer is to listen to Moore and have the government in charge of everyone’s health.  So they can kill more kids, adults, old people...everyone.  There are no successful entitlement programs.  None.  Not a one.  Mia’s grief has driven her to a strange place, where she is attacking someone who wants a system that would have helped her, and she;s defending a man who would put the same government that has already failed her in charge of even more children.

There are none so blind…

AGAMEMNON!

Update from Lee: I’ve been getting the same ALL CAPS profanity-laden hate-filled emails from her this morning, too.  She keeps asking me to “answer the question,” and, like Jim, I have no idea what she asked, due to her astonishingly poor grammar, spelling, and sentence structure.  That being said, during a re-read I think I figured it out.

“BLOG THIS YOU DECAYING OLD BITCH!!!!! YOU CAN DISH IT OUT BUT YOU CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT, CAN YOU? YOU NEVER ANSWERED MY QUESTION. HOW CAN YOU JUDGE SOMEONE ELSE? THAT IS GODS JOB!!!!!”

So the question is, how can Jim and I judge Michael Moore, because it is God’s job to judge people.  Considering Jim and I are both completely non-religious, making a religious argument with us is beyond stupidity.  I can’t believe I actually have to write something so blindingly obvious, but if judging people is God’s job, who the hell is Mia to judge Jim and I?  If there is a God (which there isn’t) then I will one day stand before Him and be condemned to an eternity in hell.  Mia will be right there with me, because she has been judging Jim and I in the harshest, most vile, hate-filled manner for a couple of days now. God is watching, Mia. 

It’s a shame, really.  I’m sure her son is in heaven and would like to spend eternity with his mother.  Too bad she’s so judgmental and full of hate that she’s going to deny him that.

Interview with Debbie Melynk, director of Manufacturing Dissent

I’ve just finished watching a wonderful and lengthy interview with Debbie Melnyk, the director and one of the producers of Manufacturing Dissent. It’s an incredibility insightful piece that discusses both Melnyk’s views on Moore’s techniques as well as delving into her own views on film making. In the interview Melnyk truly hammers home the point that in a documentary it is important to accurately and fairly represent all sides of an issue, something she rightly points out that Michael Moore does not do. She also discusses at length the need to present all subjects fairly and to never misrepresent what they say or how they have said it; again, something at which Moore frequently fails. I personally was quite impressed with how Melynk, a former Moore fan, was able to shed such clear light on why Moore’s techniques discourage people thinking and researching issues for themselves and how that can be intellectually unhealthy. Personally, I truly hope Manufacturing Dissent will encourage people to re-examine both Moore and his films so that his fans might come to a similar conclusion as Ms. Melnyk - that blindly following a pied piper without question can be a bad and dangerous thing.

Here is the interview with Debbie Melnyk, broken into two parts:

LOOSER

Perfectly encapsulating everything Jim and I wrote in the preceding two posts, I just received this hate mail not five minutes ago from .  The formatting, spelling, capitalization, and sentence structure are exactly as they were received, I have not altered so much as a single pixel.  If you haven’t read Jim’s post yet, do so before continuing.  Or, re-read it so his comments are fresh in your mind.  Then read on.

A Collection of Emails

Allow me to follow up for a moment on Jim’s brilliant post below.  As the recipient of an astonishing amount of hate mail myself, let me state for the record that I agree with everything Jim wrote, and every word of what he said is true and accurate.  I’d like to focus on the few intelligent critiques we get.  First there was this one, which Moore fans will undoubtedly accuse me of inventing myself.  The author’s first name is Lauren, and if she gives me permission I will post her full name and/or email.  The subject of her email was “Sometimes, closed minds can be opened.”

A pattern emerges

Michael Moore’s Sicko came out on DVD this week, and let me tell you, my inbox has been like a minefield of stupid.  It’s amazing how little people think for themselves these days, or are willing to look up the simplest of details.

Let’s do an exercise.  Let’s say there was this film. 

NYT’s Numbers on the Dark

Libertarians, conservatives and health-care wonks have been disputing the numbers supporting Michael Moore’s Sicko thesis for some time. But, of course, those objections aren’t real until a Harvard Professor writes about them in the New York Times:

WITH the health care system at the center of the political debate, a lot of scary claims are being thrown around. The dangerous ones are not those that are false; watchdogs in the news media are quick to debunk them. Rather, the dangerous ones are those that are true but don’t mean what people think they mean.

Here are three of the true but misleading statements about health care that politicians and pundits love to use to frighten the public:

STATEMENT 1 The United States has lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than Canada, which has national health insurance.

...

STATEMENT 2 Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.

...

STATEMENT 3 Health costs are eating up an ever increasing share of American incomes.

HIs refutation of each statement should sound familiar. We’ve been making these refutations on Moorewatch all year long. But it’s nice for the NYT to finally get with the times. Stay tuned for the NYT to be shocked, shocked!, to find that there are long waits for surgery in the UK.