The Moore Standard

I happened to fall into this trap the other day, criticizing Michael Moore for attacking Chris Dodd. But I want you to name one other documentary filmmaker, on the left or right or center, whose films are routinely subjected to fact-checks by major news organizations. If the DC media spent as much time fact-checking everything thrown out as "news" as they did Moore's movies, they would not have enough time to do anything else. And yet this is seen as perfectly normal, as if anyone else gets this kind of scrutiny. Glenn Beck? Sean Hannity? The ACORN dynamic duo? No. Michael Moore needs a point-by-point rebuttal, down to whether the best boy in the credits is really a good boy.

Michael Moore Smears Chris Dodd

I haven't seen Michael Moore's new movie, but Howie Klein has, and while he praises it he excoriates Moore for dredging up the discredited Chris Dodd Countrywide story, which has been picked over to death, with nobody finding any impropriety.

First, everyone who has seriously looked at the claims of a sweetheart deal has dismissed them: the Senate Ethics Committee; an independent compliance firm; the (not exactly Dodd-loving) Hartford Courant. And not once, but twice.

This is not the definition of the word "is." The man got a mortgage. He was told that he would get enhanced customer service, and assumed it was because of his good credit score. He got the exact same mortgage rate that anyone else buying a mortgage at the time would have gotten. He didn't know the CEO of Countrywide, nor anything about a Friends of the CEO program [...]

Why does this feel like, in the interest of being able to sit on Leno and say, "I went after Democrats too!," Moore passed up the real story here? It would have been really powerful if he made the connection between the bullshit allegations about Dodd and the banking industry desperately wanting to put the breaks on important housing and foreclosure legislation that Dodd was championing in the Senate at that very moment. Well, mission accomplished assholes, excuse me, the Sheriff is here to foreclose on my house (is it possible its the same one from Roger and Me? Oh, the irony) [...]

All in all, still love Moore, still want everyone to see the movie, but kind of wish he hadn't decided to jump ugly with one of the most progressive Senators in the Senate -- the guy responsible for the Family and Medical Leave Act, the Credit CARD Act, who voted for cramdown, worked to make that disaster of a bankruptcy bill better, then voted against it twice, voted for a 15% cap on interest rates, and is co-sponsoring another cap that is likely to come up again, is a leader on direct-student-loan reform, is in favor of a consumer financial protection agency and stripping the fed of some of its regulatory authority, and just last week introduced legislation to reign in the diabolical overdraft fee practice-- all stuff, if you are keeping score, which Moore clearly wasn't, that banks would rather paint a hammer and sickle on their walls than accept! I wish Moore hadn't got played like a three dollar harmonica. He should donate the 10 grand to Dodd's campaign.

It appears that the premise of Moore's film is that banking interests have taken over the government and prevented any meaningful regulation on the industry. Dodd's case can be an example of that, but not in the way Moore thinks. The banking lobby has consistently kneecapped him, with old charges that have a Whitewater quality to them, with all the same innuendo and the same lack of factual detail, right at the moments when Dodd was trying to get things passed to crack down on them. Dodd could have given away the Banking Committee Chair to completely-in-the-pocket Tim Johnson, but he didn't. And in the last few days, Dodd has introduced the aforementioned legislation to end the practice of banks charging overdraft fees on debit cards automatically, with 1000% interest, instead of giving customers the opportunity to have a transaction denied; introduced a plan for a single bank regulator that is at odds with the Obama Adminstration and his House counterpart Barney Frank, as well as being hated by the banking industry; and has taken the lead on weakening the power of the Fed, which is deeply desirable. In other words, despite the many slings and arrows, Dodd is basically doing the job Michael Moore would expect someone in his position to do, and doing it with gusto. He should be commended and not smeared.

There's Bankrupt And Then There's Bankrupt

It was practically the same scene at the White House today, the same anxious tableau behind a President making the claim that the bankruptcy of an American auto giant actually signals a new beginning and a road to profitability and respectability.

General Motors filed for bankruptcy on Monday morning, submitting its reorganization papers to a federal clerk in Lower Manhattan in a move that President Obama said marked “the end of an old General Motors and the beginning of a new General Motors.”The bankruptcy of a once-proud auto giant that helped to define the nation’s car culture and played a part in creating the American middle class immediately rippled across the country, part of a process that the president said would take “a painful toll on many Americans” but lead ultimately to a strong company ready to compete in the 21st century.

Then comes the fine print. General Motors apparently had $82.3 billion in assets and $172.8 billion in debts. $172.8 billion! I don't know how you rack up that much debt without it carrying over through years if not decades.

We're still talking about the closing of over a dozen plants and factories, which will ripple through the supplier market. 21,000 union workers will lose their jobs. 40% of the dealers will close. The retiree health care fund will now be partially composed of stock that right now is trading for pennies.

The government will drop another $30 billion into the car company on top of the $20 billion already dropped, winding up owning 60-70% of the company, and while officials predict a recoup of that investment within five years, I don't think anyone would stake their life on that. With a collapse in wages and wealth, and no more home equity ATM, new car sales just won't rebound without serious prodding from government (like a cash for clunkers deal).

This has been coming for a long time, of course. Michael Moore, who owes a lot of his prominence to GM, in a weird way, with his first major film Roger & Me about the shuttering of a plant in Flint, warned about this 20 years ago.

It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes [...]

Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?

Moore has some very smart suggestions, including one I've made for a while - converting the auto production lines to create clean mass transit vehicles and high speed rail cars, fighting climate change while funding a real economic recovery that is tangible and creates infrastructure. Other factories could be retooled to produce wind turbines and solar panels. He wants a massive increase in the gas tax to pay for it, but we could do just as well using the $30 billion we're about to dump into GM and profiting from the economic growth of added production and jobs.

To the extent that there's any hope from this bankruptcy, it's that we can at least start to move away from the obsessive car culture that has poisoned our planet and cannot sustain itself. Any increase in economic activity will be accompanied by a spike in oil prices - heck, we're already seeing a spike because of less bad economic news. We need to start adjusting away from the oil-based economy, and the collapse of two major car companies can provide at least an impetus.

Celebricabinet

There is good news and bad in the proposed selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General in an Obama Administration. The good news is that a high-profile choice like Gupta, much bigger and more well-known than any Surgeon General in decades, could begin a new conversation on public health in America, with a great deal of authority. One of the biggest problems with our health care system is that it's a disease care system and not a health care one. Our lifestyles are too sedentary, our diets are too high in fat, our attention is not paid to what goes into and through our bodies. Gupta can have an impact on that. Here's Ezra Klein.

But Gupta is not leaving CNN and Time to give out medals. The surgeon general has an informal role as the country's leading medical and lifestyle educator, and it's that role the Gupta is uniquely positioned to fill. There's not a doctor in this country with half his media training and experience, nor one with a rolodex of editors and reporters a tenth as large.

Expect Gupta to be doing more than health education, though. According to Howard Kurtz, Gupta has negotiated "an expanded role in providing health policy advice." And if he's advising the project, he'll almost certainly be advocating for it, too. Which means Sanjay Gupta, arguably the nation's most trusted health care authority, will back on TV screens arguing for Obama's universal health care plan, lending it his credibility as a doctor, a trusted media presence, and the nation's surgeon general. It's a far cry from the days when Ira Magaziner and Hillary Clinton were reform's best known advocates.

The bad news is that Gupta is at the least an adjunct Villager, and his most controversial moment in recent years consisted of shouting down Michael Moore, mainly because he was Michael Moore. It was unpersuasive and abrasive, and does not portend well.

You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion.

Gupta's role on Obama's health care bill will probably be just to publicly elucidate the policy. But if he treats it with the same disrespect for the facts, that would not help the cause. Stick to lifestyle reports, Sanjay.

He Has Every Right To Be Disgusted

How the hell would you like it if, before every appearance or every mention of your name, a long story is run trying to verify the truth of every word you've ever said? This is the position Michael Moore finds himself in, he's the most relentlessly fact-checked man in America, and God bless him for taking it out on Wolf Blitzer. Why is there never, say, a long story fact-checking Bill Kristol before every media appearance? After all, he's been wrong about virtually everything he's said since he came out of the fucking womb. How about Ken Pollack? Or Robert Kagan? Or David Broder? Nope, only Michael Moore comes with this disclaimer of "he's a lying liar peddling agitprop." There's literally nothing that the elite pundit class can do to discredit themselves, and yet they fall all over themselves to discredit anyone outside their hermetically sealed tent.

Good for you, Mike. Watch the video.

Accuracy Watch

It somewhat annoys me that Michael Moore is practically the only filmmaker or political writer that elicits a spate of fact-checking stories. How come there's never a "Actually, everything Sean Hannity says is bullshit" expose on CNN or in a magazine? But Moore apparently passed the test, although the word "mostly" had to be squeezed into the assessment of SiCKO as "accurate" for the sake of balance.

Moore covers a lot of ground. Our team investigated some of the claims put forth in his film. We found that his numbers were mostly right, but his arguments could use a little more context. As we dug deep to uncover the numbers, we found surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film. In fact, most pundits or health-care experts we spoke to spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film.

Sorry that a two-hour film didn't have the context that would normally be required of a 1,000-page research paper. How about somebody checks if CNN puts things in the proper context?

It's just truly infuriating to have to go through this "shockingly, Michael Moore isn't lying" nonsense every single time.

Can't Stop Writing About SiCKO

Ezra Klein's review of SiCKO makes the good point that Michael Moore's position is essentially an idealistic and patriotic one. He believes that his country ought to be good enough to care for all of its citizens, ought to be concerned enough with its fellow man that they can ensure they'll never go untreated or hungry or sick.

Every story, every tale, every vignette asks the same question: "Who are we?" Who are we that our fellow citizens have to decide which fingers they'll pay to get reattached? Who are we that our hospitals push the ill and indigent into cabs, and drop them off, disoriented and clad in a paper-thin gown, on skid row? Who are we that we let insurers deny coverage to our neighbors because they are too tall, or have too many seasonal allergies? Who are we that we don't guarantee paid sick leave, or vacations, or child care, leaving that all instead to the whims of employers? And most of all, who are we to have let national pride blind us to these better alternatives, and let moneyed interests and powerful lobbies construct a country that best serves their needs rather than ours?

It is possible, of course, that Americans will see this movie and disagree with its implications. They will not think that the volunteer rescue workers who shredded their lungs inhaling the debris of the 9/11 attacks should be given health care. They will not think that all working Americans deserve paid vacations. They will not think that health care would be better if the first thing the hospital biopsied was your broken ankle, rather than your wallet. But Moore clearly doesn't believe that. This is not a movie of arguments, but of examples -- of practices Moore thinks more humane, and more in accordance with his countrymen's preferences. In that way, his critique of America is, itself, dependent on a glittering view of the country. In the end, he is an idealist, and a patriot -- confident that if he can just remind us of the forgotten America, it will be forgotten no more.

Of course, this does cut against the "rugged individualism" that is also a characteristic of America. The question is whether people watching will be stirred by a sense of compassion and humanity, or whether they'll be repelled by all those lucky-duckies in France who are getting health care and sick days without earning it.

On a completely different note, the Washington Post gives us this interesting vignette behind the scenes of the film.

Michael Moore is getting a lot of mileage out of the hit he takes on Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in his provocative new movie "SiCKO," which made its Washington premiere Wednesday night at the Uptown theater.

Moore said after the premiere that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, a personal friend and supporter of the Clintons whose company financed the film, "begged" him to remove a scene exposing Hillary Clinton as the second-highest recipient of campaign donations from the health-care industry.

"I said, 'No, Harvey. I gotta do the right thing.' He understood."

Clinton comes off as chastened after her health care plan failed in the early 1990s. And then, as the blurb notes, bought off. Now, Clinton has been strong in her campaign in saying that it's time for universal health care. However, she is trying to build a consensus from all of the players on the health care stage (other than the insurers, against whom she's been pretty strong). So I don't know exactly how damning the contribution list really is, actually. Even single-payer advocate Sheila Kuehl is trying to build support among hospitals and doctors. Do they factor in as the "health care industry"?

I worry that Clinton will end up releasing a plan that keeps the status quo and tries to reform instead of overhaul. In fact, that's what her ORIGINAL health-care plan was all about. But the whole campaign donations thing might be a bit of a red herring.

UPDATE: Lots of anger over this LA Times article trying to sow tension between single-payer advocates like Moore and the more modest plans of top Democrats. It is true that the major health care plans by Democrats are not single payer. However, having seen the film, Moore doesn't explicitly argue that, though he supports it, and has criticized proposals that don't go that far. But IN THE FILM he doesn't lay out any specific plan. It's more designed to provoke discussion.

In California, there's a debate in the Legislature between half-measures and single-payer. This article is really pegged to this quote from the CNA, which reflects the debate here.

Advocacy groups are already planning to use the film to pressure the Democratic hopefuls.

"The candidates haven't sensed the political fever in this country that fundamental change is called for in the healthcare system," said Rose Ann DeMoro, executive director of the California Nurses Assn. "What we are going to do is call on the candidates to reconsider their positions."

It's actually really GOOD to have single-payer advocates out there pushing the whole debate to the left. Far from a problem for Democrats, it can be a great boon, because then a universal plan along the lines of Edwards' (putting private and public plans in competition with one another), which would be seen as radical not long ago, can become the sensible middle.

A Couple Other Things About SiCKO

• Michael Moore has affected this sing-songy voiceover delivery somewhere along the line. He sounded like a normal person in Roger & Me, for example, but in this film he too often sounds like he's delivering a nusery rhyme. I think there was a point to the technique in Fahrenheit 9-11, like he was talking in the manner of George Bush or something, but now it just annoys.

• There's a real rousing sequence from the British Labour stalwart Tony Benn, where he talks about how societies that are demoralized are easily controlled. I do think that's a key feature of the way political power manifests itself in this country, where far too many people don't vote because they don't feel like it makes any difference. Indeed, political consultants have a vested interest in keeping voter turnout low and confined, so the electorate is knowable. In other words, politicians have a directive NOT to inspire.

• In the production notes, Moore laments that John Edwards' health care plan "gives tax dollars to private insurers." I think that's a gross misreading. In fact, Edwards would regulate the insurance industry through guaranteed issue (allowing anyone to sign up for insurance regardless of pre-existing conditions), and would use tax dollars to build a public system that could compete with the private for-profit system in the free market (and it would win, because it wouldn't have any fealty to shareholders).

OK, that's it.

SiCKO To My Stomach-O

I spent a good portion of the day at a screening of Michael Moore's SiCKO (finally, this blogging thing gets me a perk!). It's definitely going to get this country talking. One thing I always say about the health care debate is that you cannot easily fool the country into thinking it's going well. Unlike Iraq, which only is happening in news reports and doesn't impact the lives of anyone without a family member or friend over there, everyone in this country has participated in the giant ball of crap that is our health care system. And so the horror stories Moore collects will be quite familiar.

The film's genesis is from a segment on Moore's old show The Awful Truth, when he held a mock funeral out in front of an HMO for a man who was denied an organ transplant. Actually there are almost no confrontations like that in this film. Yet Moore is ever-present, more visible than in Fahrenheit 9/11, despite the fact that many of these stories tell themselves. Yet there is a raw power in hearing from regular people run down by a for-profit health care system that values the bottom line over human life. A lot of the tales are familiar - Blue Cross of California retroactively cancelling anyone who dares to use their insurance coverage for treatment; LA-area hospitals dumping homeless people who couldn't afford to pay their bills at Skid Row in front of social services centers; 9/11 rescue workers contracting respiratory illnesses and having trouble collecting any benefits from the city. There's not much about the drug companies, surprisingly, and little about the value of preventative care. But the fact that we have a broken health care system does shine through. In fact, Moore plays this amazing clip from the Nixon tapes about the origins of the HMO system that almost reads like a parody:

John D. Ehrlichman: “On the … on the health business …”

President Nixon: “Yeah.”

Ehrlichman: “… we have now narrowed down the vice president’s problems on this thing to one issue and that is whether we should include these health maintenance organizations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing. The vice president just cannot see it. We tried 15 ways from Friday to explain it to him and then help him to understand it. He finally says, ‘Well, I don’t think they’ll work, but if the President thinks it’s a good idea, I’ll support him a hundred percent.’”

President Nixon: “Well, what’s … what’s the judgment?”

Ehrlichman: “Well, everybody else’s judgment very strongly is that we go with it.”

President Nixon: “All right.”

Ehrlichman: “And, uh, uh, he’s the one holdout that we have in the whole office.”

President Nixon: “Say that I … I … I’d tell him I have doubts about it, but I think that it’s, uh, now let me ask you, now you give me your judgment. You know I’m not to keen on any of these damn medical programs.”

Ehrlichman: “This, uh, let me, let me tell you how I am …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”

President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”

Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

Stunning.

When Moore visits other countries (Canada, England, France, Cuba) to look at their not-for-profit systems, the film is on slightly shakier footing. It was a little odd to see a few minutes of the likes of Bill Frist and Duncan Hunter extolling the great medical care at Guantanamo for detainees (I guess they need it after a full day's torturin'). I understand why he did it, to play on their field and say "Why do we have this great care for Al Qaeda but not for these 9/11 heroes," but it didn't ring true. It also was strange to end the film with this portrait of the great Cuban health care system, when in a graphic earlier in the film of the top countries at delivering health care (the US is 37th), Cuba is BELOW the United States. The stuff with the expats in France, who seemed to be trying to one-up each other ("We get free laundry! We get 10 weeks off! No, 13!") looked odd as well. But there was a great truth in there, where a woman says "In France, the government is afraid of the people, but in America the people are afraid of the government."

This is very true. And the final message of the film, that we are all in this together, that we must think in terms of "We not me" and care for our fellow man, is in the spirit of the common good that underlies most of the progressive movement. Moore tells his tales with a blunt instrument, and yes, he blurs the edges a bit. But not everyone is going to sit and read the 300-page report that underscores the failed health care system in America and the need to adopt a better plan similar to those abroad. We do need to see health care as a basic human right, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as something that is inalienable, and work to provide it to all of our citizens no matter what. And I think this film will inspire discussion along those lines.

SiCKO Sicking Out The Insurance Industry

There are a lot of reviews on the Web about SiCKO, Michael Moore's newest film about the health care industry. Maybe it's because a lot of what I watch are the news shows, but the ads seem to be ubiquitous and the movie is two weeks from wide release. And Moore barnstormed through Sacramento this week, trying to leverage the message of the film into meaningful legislation on reforming the broken health care system, both in California and across the nation.

So it's no wonder that this film is seen as a 800-megaton bomb among the gatekeepers who want to maintain the health care status quo.

Fans of Michael Moore's movies aren't the only ones eagerly awaiting the release of "Sicko." The U.S. health-care industry has the film's late-June premiere circled on its calendar as well.

For-profit providers of health care are the controversial and award-winning filmmaker's latest target.

"I don't think Michael Moore set out to make a balanced movie," said Karen Ignagni, president America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. "He set out to make a movie about government-run systems and imposing them on the United States as the solution to the health-care crisis."

This is the kind of rhetoric that could only come from a frightened interest group. There's no way that an industry with a vested interest in keeping things exactly the same is going to be balanced either, nor are they going to see a recitation of the facts about the broken system as balanced, either. So the trades have no choice but to go on the offensive, and attack Moore instead of defending what everyone knows is a crime in health care.

Industry concerns have also been aired in public. Managed-health-care provider Amerigroup Corp.'s chairman and chief executive, Jeff McWaters, in his remarks at a recent investment-banking conference, listed the film's coming release among the "headline risks" for the industry overall.

The trade group that represents the drug industry, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, issued a statement last month deriding both the movie and Moore himself.

"A review of America's health care system should be balanced, thoughtful and well-researched to pin down what works and what needs to be improved. You won't get that from Michael Moore," the group's senior vice president, Ken Johnson, was quoted as saying. Johnson also called Moore a "political activist with a track record for sensationalism."

Moore "has no intention of being fair and balanced," Johnson said.

Neither do insurers, because for them, it's a matter of survival.

Michael Moore is not always the best vehicle for this kind of issue-based advocacy. He makes his points with a blunt instrument that elides the complexities and smooths over the rough patches (like health care in Cuba, for example). But he's dead-on right when he says this, and it's why the insurers are scared to death:

Nonpartisan or not, though, Moore is hoping the film will have a significant impact. "I'm hoping that the candidates will come forth with plans that provide true universal health coverage, free of charge, to every American, and plans that eliminate the private health-insurance industry," he said.

He also hopes, he said, that the film sparks a movement "to eliminate private, profit-making health-insurance companies.

"There's absolutely no room for them in this country," he said.

I don't think this will happen overnight, and welcome solutions that move us in that direction, like John Edwards' plan to put public and private plans in competition and mount studies to remove patents for breakthrough drugs that make the pharmaceutical industry billions. But ultimately, this is the answer that works in every industrialized nation on Earth, and it can work here.

More on Moore

So the Michael Moore "anonymous" gift to his biggest critic is apparently in the movie SiCKO. Moore had planned to call Jim Kenefick of Moorewatch.com before the Cannes premiere, but by then word had leaked out about it.

Moore makes his points with a blunt instrument, and they're designed to provoke a response. I still think this was a shrewd and somewhat brilliant maneuver, and the carping from Jim Kenefick after taking the money smacks of ingratitude. But I think you can certainly say that it wasn't an act of altruism. It was an investment in the production of a movie with a definitive slant.

If we had a functioning health care system in this country this would be a moot point. And we could do it without anyone having to rely on $12,000 gifts.

Moore the Single Payer

Jim Kenefick is one of the several making a cottage industry out of hating Michael Moore. He runs Moorewatch.com, so his entire life (online at least) is consumed with the award-winning director.

Well, take a look at this story and see how it clearly illustrates the difference between liberals and conservatives.

Filmmaker Michael Moore has come to the rescue of his harshest critic.

For several years now, Jim Kenefick has been railing against the Oscar-winning director on Moorewatch.com. Recently, Kenefick wrote about the difficulty he was having paying his wife's medical bills. Fellow conservatives guided him toward a cheaper health insurer, but Kenefick said he still had trouble making payments.

"Someone e-mailed me and asked if an 'anonymous' benefactor could offer to pay my first year's premiums - $12,000," Kenefick wrote on his site.

He was skeptical when the check arrived. "I opened a whole new account at my bank, waited for it to clear, checked twice with bank personnel to make sure it wasn't a scam, and waited a full 60 days before spending the money. At that time, I started drawing on it and paying the monthly premiums until it was gone."

We can now confirm to Kenefick that his secret benefactor is none other than the dreaded, detestable, loathsome Michael Moore.

What conservative friends of Kenefick's were willing to do was give him some other options and say "pay the man." YOYO - You're on your own - is the guiding principle there. Not so for Moore.

Moore didn't contact us. We heard it on our own. Yesterday, his reps said they couldn't reach the director, who is in France getting ready for tomorrow's screening at Cannes of his new movie, "Sicko."

One friend of Moore's did say, "We sure are happy Jim's wife received the care she needed."

Kenefick admitted the $12,000 "was like manna from heaven at that time. ... My business was almost dead, my wife was very, very ill, and I was racking up a few little health problems of my own. That money made it possible for us to begin to turn our lives around."

My thoughts about Michael Moore are somewhat conflicted, but there's no doubt that he cannot be beat when it comes to these kinds of matters. A vociferous critic of his was struggling with a problem that is the subject of his next movie. What better way to show how a more rational health care system can lift people up and give them the ability to succeed that to do this? It might be used in the movie, it might not. But it doesn't matter; it's illustrative of his entire point while also being completely disarming.

But get this, Kenefick still isn't happy with Moore.

Having suspected Moore might be his secret patron, he contends that his bete noir made the gift just to publicize "Sicko," which takes aim at America's health-care system and, we've heard, touches upon Moore's covert generosity.

"I knew he was using me," said Kenefick. "Moore is going to try to make me into one of his little puppets."

Kenefick wants it known that "I'm not an idiot. I know when to say yes to something, even if the string attached is obvious. What kind of moron turns down a free 12 grand?"

Does this sound completely bogus to you, or does Kenefick just have Moore on the brain all the time that he would naturally assume that he was the benefactor? And should I admire Kenefick for the fact that his appreciation cannot be bought, or should I consider him maybe the most ungrateful person of all time?

Either way, Moore has done it again. And there's a larger point. A society that's not constantly fretting about how to pay for medical bills is a BETTER SOCIETY, and the "magic benefactor" can easily be a single-payer system that would cost less than we pay for health care now, and provide better quality service. Moore is a genius at finding real-world ways to illustrate his point of view. This is an excellent example.

(h/t Filmick)

Michael Moore Is Fat

This documentary questioning the tactics of Michael Moore, finding him impossible to reach for an interview himself, and revealing that he actually held on-camera interviews with Roger Smith during the making of "Roger & Me" and left them out of the final cut (which was really about him trying to interview Roger Smith and getting stiffed), will undoubtedly get a lot of play on the right. But this is kind of a well-known thing; I remember a Might Magazine article in 1995 about this exact same subject. They even dressed up a guy like a gorilla and followed around Moore, trying to get an interview with him, a tactic Moore then used HIMSELF for TV Nation.

Michael Moore is pretty deeply flawed as a filmmaker and an individual, something he knows; in The Big One, he shows himself flying first-class while the crew flies coach and signing a book deal with a major publisher the likes of which he criticizes in his work. His films are polemics and he structures them purposefully to further his goals. He's known to be fairly belligerent to his staff.

And, so? Michael Moore speaks for himself and doesn't even speak that loudly. Since Fahrenheit 9/11 he's pretty much gone underground. Moore is a filmmaker who rabble-rouses to get publicity for his films. But even the filmmakers of this hit piece on him recognize his impact:

The two were and still are fans of all his movies — including the polarizing "Fahrenheit 9/11," which grossed over $119 million and won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival — and initially wanted to do a biography on him. They traveled to his childhood home of Davison, Mich., visited his high school and traced his early days in politics and journalism.

"The fact that he made documentaries entertaining was extremely influential and got all kinds of people out to see them," said Melnyk, whose previous films with Caine include 1998's "Junket Whore." "Let's face it, he made documentaries popular and that is great for all documentary filmmakers."

"All of these films — `Super Size Me,' `An Inconvenient Truth' — we've all been riding in his wake," said Caine. "There's a nonfiction film revolution going on and we're all beneficiaries of that. For that point alone, he's worth celebrating."

It's not Moore so much as the other fine creators of documentary filmmaking - who have been there all along, but only now can get people out to the theaters - that are the real threat to conservative propagandists. They focus on Moore because he's an inviting target, easy to caricature and therefore dismiss, and there are some legitimate criticisms. But he's an individual who speaks for himself alone.