Sicko and Thicko

I sent off a link to friends a day or so back, to the CNN video where Wolf Blitzer and Dr. Sanjay Gupta run Michael Moore through the shredder over his new documentary film “Sicko.”

I liked it because Moore ripped right back into Blitzer over Iraq, and how the mainstream media have rolled over like puppies for the White House time and time again over the past 6 years ... and have yet to apologize.

One of my friends shot me back an email with his honest opinion that the CNN piece seemed balanced. He castigated Moore for his unsympathetic nature and “whiny delivery.”

I respect that. But at the same time, I definitely can’t agree.

The problem I have in the political climate of the past 6 years or so is that media monoliths like CNN will ALWAYS go after people like Moore, but almost never go after, for instance, Karl Rove.

Sure Moore is biased. Among his many motivations is the fact that he's selling a product, a bit of entertainment. But ... nobody will die from it.

On the other hand, Rove and Bush and company are orders of magnitude more dangerous, to all of us. But Wolf Blitzer, who owes a large part of his fame to his time in Kuwait during the first Gulf War with Iraq, can't seem to even focus on what might be happening. As Moore says, Blitzer will never be held accountable for previous mistakes, and will certainly never apologize.

We watched something similar after the release of The DaVinci Code. Here's this entertaining little fiction written by a novelist, and then here's the entire Catholic Church and all its little acolytes making a vast effort to "debunk" it. I saw at least two elaborate video productions, at least two books, plus countless articles, interviews and websites, aimed at just that. I kept going "Huh? Who cares?" but they hammered away at the book and the movie as if something of world-class importance was at stake.

If I wanted to sit down and pick nits at Michael Moore, I'd probably come early on to the fact that he looks like such a big slob ... but I'm not really all that interested in his faults. He does something useful. Well, yes, he has flaws. And yes his film has some mistakes. That's absolutely inevitable.

But if we have to have saints, perfect beings with ALL the facts, ALL the goodness, and NONE of the flaws, before we can criticize the White House, or the health industry, or the gun lobby, or the Catholic Church, then these vast enterprises will roll on and crush us blithely into dust.

Much has been made in recent years about the flaws of Thomas Jefferson, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But to me, the people picking at them miss the entire point of their lives. Did Jefferson keep slaves, and sire children by one or more of them? Did King have a mistress? Well, yeah, but so what?

Digging into such things is important to history, but ... compared to the good these men did, it's like walking out in a field on a sunny day and picking up a rock and crowing "Look! There's darkness under here! Ha - I knew it! The sun is NO GOOD!!"

On the other hand, you can easily imagine the reverse: Walking out into a thousand square miles of desert night, finding a single lightning bug, then producing a documentary about the wonderful illumination to be found out there.

Hitler supposedly liked dogs. In today’s media and political climate, he could kill a million Jews in plain sight, and yet still be the subject of dozens of books and TV productions lovingly detailing his wonderfully compassionate dog-loving nature.

Those same productions – and all the corporate media Wolf Blitzer-like talking head shows that followed – would take swipes at the fact that some Jewish Michael Moore documentarian frequently spit on the sidewalk in public and looked at web porn on several occasions.

The viewing public would come away thinking Hitler might have a few little peccadilloes, but overall he was a grand guy, whereas Michael Morenstein was an evil shit out to make a buck off phony, lying attacks on innocent dog lovers.

In America today, we have a political and media CLIMATE that actively and instantly attacks those who disagree with the houses of power. It’s a sickness that has already turned on its head one of our defining myths – that little David has a chance against Goliath.

Today’s Goliath would be defended by a legion of Wolf Blitzers and Bill O’Reillys, Pat Robertsons and Rush Limbaughs. Whereas David would be dragged over the coals for using the wrong-shaped rock, and having his sandals untied.

And we liberals and progressives would all weakly give ground, making feeble protests that started by AGREEING with them. “Well, yeah, he used the wrong-shaped rock and, um, okay, those sandals are a disgrace. But still ...”

Michael Moore bites back. He handed Blitzer his mainstream-media ass on a plate. And I love it.