If Michael Moore wins an Oscar Sunday for his controversial documentary "SiCKO," it seems certain Hollywoodans and the left will try to use the moment to advance universal healthcare in this country much as they did last year with Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and global warming.

Yet, as media gush over Moore and his socialist healthcare philosophies, will they point out how antagonistic he is to the two Democrat presidential candidates?

In particular, will they address a recent unfriendly exchange between Moore and Hillary Clinton reported by The Hill late Friday evening (h/t NBer Par for the Course, emphasis added throughout):

As if America hadn’t overdosed on media attention of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Al Gore last week, the former vice president donated his latest efforts to the cause.

Gore managed to find time amidst celebration this past weekend to post a series of videos on his peer-to-peer video sharing site, Current.tv – including one calling for “government-funded” health care. He is chairman of Current.tv.

Looking more like a bored college student making a video in his dorm room or a clip from Saturday Night Live, Gore was shown proclaiming that health care in America “ought to be a matter of right,” addressing what he thinks to be an “immoral” health care situation.

Is Cuba threatening ABC News? Why won't the media report that ABC's John Stossel stated the Cuban government's Central Committee “called members of the ABC Cuban bureau in for questioning?” (emphasis mine throughout)

After Stossel challenged “Sicko” director Michael Moore's claims that Cuba's health care system is superior to America's, which resulted in a stammering Moore reversing years of crowing about the island's excellent “free” universal health care, Cuba showed its true totalitarian colors.

According to Babalu Blog's Henry Gomez, Stossel posted an email on his “20/20” page that revealed Cuba's meddling:

Anyone who follows the MSM knows that Cuba is a virtual paradise. A land of free health care, universal literacy and low infant-mortality rates where, as Andrea Mitchell has explained to us, kids don't care about freedom and the only big problems are those caused by the U.S. Yes, Cuba is the sort of place no one would ever want to leave. Certainly not to go to live in the United States, where, as everyone knows thanks to Michael Moore's "Sicko," health care is so bad that 9-11 heroes are forced to seek help from Havana.

And yet . . .

According to AP: Defection fears to keep Cuban boxers at home

In addition to insisting the U.S. needs universal health insurance, Michael Moore introduced another plan to help Americans on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" July 26.

He urged audience members to use threats and intimidation with his new "SiCKO health care card:"

Michael Moore is having trouble maintaining his own hyperbole. The filmmaker who claimed in “SiCKO” that “nearly 50 million Americans” are without health insurance, has been dropping the number.

I doubt it’s because he read Business & Media Institute's expose on uninsured statistics that proves his number to be absolutely wrong.

Michael Moore claimed in his movie “SiCKO” that there are 50 million uninsured Americans, according to his own Web site. But he’s wrong.

He’s certainly not alone though. So were President Bush, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) as well as The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, CNN, CBS and ABC just to name a few.

“It’s really indefensible that we now have more than 45 million uninsured Americans, 9 million of whom are children, and the vast majority of whom are from working families,” said Sen. Hillary Clinton in a May 31 speech.

ABC medical expert Dr. Tim Johnson cited the incorrect data as he praised a "bold" and "politically brilliant" universal coverage plan on the April 26 “Good Morning America.”

The battle is over and the troops are withdrawing. No, I'm not talking about Iraq, but something much more entertaining: Michael Moore has decided to end the standoff between himself and CNN, saying he's willing to "move on." As you know, Moore had a live hissy fit with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "The Situation Room," in response to a taped critique of his movie "Sicko" by CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

"I trust the intelligence of the American people," Moore told The Associated Press. "I don't think there's a whole lot more to do with this other than I and others are going to be a lot more skeptical with what I see on CNN."

Michael Moore is still waiting for an apology from CNN. On July 13, he released a letter that threatened to become the cable network’s “worst nightmare.”

“Think again. I'm about to become your worst nightmare. 'Cause I ain't ever going away. Not until you set the record straight, and apologize to your viewers. ‘The Most Trusted Name in News?’ I think it's safe to say you can retire that slogan,” wrote Moore.

Ironically, in the letter Moore admitted to being treated well by CNN in the past.

Given Michael Moore’s anti-war tendencies, you wouldn’t envision him to possess so much rage.

However, following his well-publicized dustup with CNN last week (please see Business & Media Institute reports on the subject here and here), the controversial schlockumentarist has published an open letter threatening the network with reprisals.

Although likely not his intent, Moore's screed was actually funnier than any movie he's made to date.

With that in mind, here are some lowlights for your Saturday entertainment pleasure (emphasis added throughout, h/t Dan Gainor, better remove liquids from your proximity):

(h/t Katie Favazza of Townhall.com)

Townhall.com's Josue Sierra's blog today shares with readers just how "SiCKO" the state of Cuban health care is.

Not every Cuban gets the Potemkin village treatment Michael Moore gave 9/11 workers featured in his latest documentary.

Click on this link to see how ill-equipped and run-down the average Cuban hospital is. Sierra links to the original blog post by Stefania Lapenna at "Free Thoughts." The photos were taken by one Dr. Darsi Ferrer.

Pity the journalist who dares accuse Michael Moore of “fudging” facts.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta offered a “SiCKO” reality check for CNN viewers, and CNN brought Michael Moore on “The Situation Room” to rebut the segment.

“That report was so biased, I can’t imagine what pharmaceutical company ads coming up right after our break here,” Moore lashed out against Wolf Blitzer on July 9.

Apparently in Moore’s vocabulary, biased means it doesn’t agree with Moore’s views.

Video (1:33): Real (2.54 MB) or Windows (2.87 MB), plus MP3 audio (702 kB).

Moore’s rant continued for more than 10 minutes – and at some points he was practically shouting at Blitzer:

“If you can find money to kill people [referring to money spent to fight World War II], you can find money to help people,” said Tony Benn, a former Member of Parliament, in Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko.”

Contrast that thought with the eerie statement told to Canon Andrew White , a senior British cleric working in Baghdad, by an al-Qaeda leader in Iraq – “Those who cure you will kill you,” according to the Times (U.K.)

The Times said that the eight suspects involved in the recent British terror plots, “are all young, Muslim and connected to the medical profession. But they come from Jordan, Iraq, other Middle Eastern countries and India …”

Tavis Smiley's interview of Michael Moore, aired June 29 on Smiley's eponymous PBS program, is just another reminder of the ridiculous lack of credible journalism which goes on at the taxpayer-funded network.

The interview was nothing more than Smiley lobbing softball after softball straight over the plate while Mr. Moore hit his talking points out of the park on everything from the "far right"to a wage gap between whites and African-Americans.

Smiley’s ceremonial first pitch was enough to clue in viewers that there would be no attempt on Smiley's part on conducting an unbiased or challenging interview. “You have done it again,” Smiley gushed to the veteran political filmmaker.

Not only does Moore advocate for socialized medicine, he also gets to let loose against what he calls the "far right" (anyone who doesn't think socialized health coverage is the answer) and portrays himself as someone who just wants to enlighten America on the "facts."

Below is part of the interview (emphasis mine), followed by my analysis:

This is a little old as it was published last Thursday, but MTV's Kurt Loder (pictured at right) did a yeoman's job in dissecting Michael Moore's paean to socialized health care, in a movie review on MTV.com entitled, "'Sicko': Heavily Doctored."

While Loder conceded that Moore's handpicked stories of bureaucratic madness are "horrifying, and then infuriating" and praises scrutiny of HMO manager Kaiser Permanente, the MTV personality quickly turned to slamming Moore for a one-sided propaganda film that failed to present viewers with a command of the complexities of providing health care to a nation of some 300 million people. Portions below in bold are my emphasis:

Unfortunately, Moore is also a con man of a very brazen sort, and never more so than in this film. His cherry-picked facts, manipulative interviews (with lingering close-ups of distraught people breaking down in tears) and blithe assertions (how does he know 18,000* people will die this year because they have no health insurance?) are so stacked that you can feel his whole argument sliding sideways as the picture unspools. The American health-care system is in urgent need of reform, no question. Some 47 million people are uninsured (although many are only temporarily so, being either in-between jobs or young enough not to feel a pressing need to buy health insurance). There are a number of proposals as to what might be done to correct this situation. Moore has no use for any of them, save one.

On Friday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta examined the accuracy of the claims presented in Michael Moore's film Sicko. Gupta found that while there are complaints about America's health care system, "you won't find medical utopia elsewhere." Although Gupta did not show much skepticism in reporting that life expectancies in Cuba are about equal to those in America despite being outspent by American 26 to 1 in health care, the CNN correspondent did report that in countries with tax-funded universal health care, that "even higher taxes don't give all the coverage everyone wants."

Gupta discussed the waiting lines that exist in some industrialized nations, and found that "Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures," although he also found that "only Canada was worse than the United States when it comes to waiting for a doctor's appointment for a medical problem." After informing viewers of the higher taxes paid in other countries, he also relayed that "even higher taxes don't give all the coverage everyone wants" as health analyst Paul Keckley informed viewers that "15 to 20 percent of the population will purchase services outside the system run by the government." (Transcript follows)

The June 27 edition of "MSNBC Live" was sponsored by liberal filmmaker Michael Moore.

"'MSNBC Live' is brought to you by 'SiCKO', a Michael Moore film in theatres everywhere Friday," read the announcer dipping into a commercial break about 14 minutes into the 10 a.m. block of MSNBC programming.

Video (0:18): Real (486 kB) or Windows (569 kB), plus MP3 audio (115 kB).

My colleague Amy Menefee at MRC's Business & Media Institute has an article today dealing with the media's role in promoting Moore's pro-socialized medicine propaganda.

Michael Moore's new documentary, Sicko, challenges U.S. healthcare. Yet in the coverage of the film, some interesting facts about Moore appear to be ignored. These facts are addressed on page 53 of the bestselling book by Peter Schweizer, Do As I Say (Not As I Do):

[Moore's] IRS forms make for interesting reading. Over the past five years, Moore's "savings account" has included such evil pharmaceutical and medical companies as Pfizer, Merck, Genzyme, Elan PLC, Eli Lilly, Becton Dickinson, and Boston Scientific. "Being screwed by your HMO and ill-served by pharmaceutical companies is a shared American experience," he recently told the Detroit News ... He may savage HMOs in his film Sicko, but he has also owned shares of Pharmacia Corporation and Tenet Healthcare. He may have liked their price-to-earnings ratio.

 

There is yet another example of the mythology of Michael Moore growing with the complicity of the media. Time's article by S. James Snyder, “Michael Moore: 'I'm Mainstream Now' ” read like another example of an incurious journalist who bought into Moore's PR and joined in with some covert activism. For the past month or so, finding bias in an article about Michael Moore has been about as easy as it is to find "creative editing" in Moore's films, and this article was no exception.

The most significant untruth in this article was Moore's carefully vague and misleading claim that he didn't intend to go to Cuba “in the first place,” and only after being turned away from his real destination, the Guantanamo Bay detention center, by that heartless US military, did he go to communist Cuba (bold mine throughout):

Finally, a review of Michael Moore's “Sicko” that addressed the problems with his Seigfried & Roy style of filming and his one-sided view of health care systems. USA Today's review, by Richard Wolf, did not ignore the problems with US health care, but it put “Sicko's” view into perspective and notes the tricks and gimmicks he used to frame an image of a health care system that is worse than those in the third world (emphasis mine throughout):

Sicko is sure to prompt a healthy debate about the U.S. health care system. But it tells only one side of the story.

Michael Moore's latest documentary is partly a diatribe against insurance companies and drug makers. It recalls outrageous examples of treatments denied that led to death, disfigurement or bankruptcy.

New York Times movie critic A.O. Scott again defended (in a markedly defensive manner) dubious left-wing documentarian Michael Moore in his glowing review on Friday of "Sicko," Moore's new documentary on the U.S. health care system. Scott thinks it's Moore's "least controversial and most broadly appealing" movie, and "the funniest."

That's pretty strong praise from Scott. After the fatally flawed "Fahrenheit 9-11," Scott called Moore "a credit to the republic."

"His regular-guy, happy-warrior personality plays a large part in the movies and in their publicity campaigns, and he has no use for neutrality, balance or objectivity. More than that, his polemical, left-populist manner seems calculated to drive guardians of conventional wisdom bananas. That is because conventional wisdom seems to hold, against much available evidence, that liberalism is an elite ideology, and that the authentic vox populi always comes from the right. Mr. Moore, therefore, must be an oxymoron or a hypocrite of some kind."

As we all know, Andrea Mitchell having told us so, Chris Matthews is no liberal. However the Hardball host did emphatically state on this afternoon's show that, at least when it comes to health care, he agrees with Michael Moore.

Matthews had just aired an impromptu interview that MSNBC's David Shuster had snared with Moore when the filmmaker appeared on Capitol Hill today on the occasion of this week's release of his latest work, "Sicko," regarding health care in the United States. In both Shuster's depiction of Moore's views, and in Moore's own statements in the course of the interview, Moore made clear that he wants to eliminate private-sector participation in health care insurance.

As Shuster put it: "in this movie, Moore calls for the end, the end, of for-profit healthcare."

In the aired interview, Moore described private-sector insurers as a "racket" and said "I want private insurance companies out of the equation."

So how did Matthews react to Moore's call for the killing of private-sector health care?

HARDBALL HOST CHRIS MATTHEWS: You know, I gotta agree with him on this stuff. I gotta agree with him. He's got a case. Healthcare in this country is not working.