Check out this excellent video where Blitzer leads into an interview with Moore with a classic teardown piece (which Moore later discredits - see link at end of article) centered around his new film.
The trap totally backfires on Wolf, when Moore launches into a scathing reprimand of CNN and mainstream media in general, for all the crap they’ve pulled in the recent age of commercially dominated journalism, especially their woeful negligence around all aspects of the Iraq war.
I’m by no means a die hard Moore fan (and please let’s not turn this into a debate around any of the subjects of his films - I’m not interested), but I have to give him major props for this one.
UPDATE - the page does have links to the followup pieces as well. Part two is great also, when Wolf brings up some obscure, out of left field rumor about a Sicko showing in Iran, and Michael responds brilliantly.
3 Comments
I suggest comments off for post like this. You know where I stand on these pantloads.
Moore was absolutely right about Doctors preferring the social medical service of Medicare or medicad rather than most any HMO. When I worked at St. John’s I continuely heard this from almost every physician and it’s worse for doctors in the hospital because the majority of them don’t have offices or staff to do the billing for them.
I’m really glad to hear what was said but Moore does need to chill a little bit. Yelping only encourages the supporters and increases the hate for the others, more importantly the people on the fence see more action than fact.
Jason: I really don’t. I can only assume.
Yeah, I did really think about turning off comments on this one, because of the tangents and arguments that could easily branch off, but I decided just to keep myself under control and let others speak their mind if they want to. Hopefully it won’t deteriorate.
As for the chilling out, I do agree that he did get a bit excited, and that maybe it wasn’t the most proper presentation of his points that he could have made, but then again, I don’t know whether a calmer approach would have been any more effective; I suspect not.
Like you hinted at, the supporters will continue to support, and the haters will continue to hate, and IMHO most of the fence sitters will probably continue to sit there until someone shakes them up with a little sensationalism. This is just my opinion / observation, but I think (very unfortunately) the number of people in today’s culture that are willing to sit and listen to a calm and reasonable debate (much less with an open mind, willing to reconsider their own positions) is too few for CNN or Moore to worry about catering to in their presentations.
In then end, the main point of this one was Moore calling out the media for falling down on their jobs, particularly in the area of asking the hard questions. If you didn’t catch the Iran “war drums” reference in part two, be sure to check that out too, it was great.