He screened the film for health care industry lobbyists, and they respond to him. I wish a discussion like this could take place on political television…right now there’s virtually none of this on Meet the Press or the other big shows. It’s all about the politicians, the stars. These lobbyists are doing the job they’re paid to do, and the corporations are doing the job their shareholders expect them to do. The press, when you add in the professional political bloggers, is quite good in print, but once audio and video are thrown into the mix, the quality diminishes. The horse race for 2008 and geopolitics seem to dominate too much of the output. This leads to domestic issues of great consequence being ignored in comparison. For this reason and probably many others, I’m glad Michael Moore exists and that he’s as good of a filmmaker as he is. SiCKO is only relevant in a society like ours – being dictated to as we are through our televisions – where only a fool would continue to believe in the status quo getting around to fixing anything that’s broken. A brouhaha over whether it’s actually broken at all is about as far as the status quo can manage to get. By design we’re conditioned to assume that this is the way of the world…millions of fools, myself included, are too fucking busy to have it any other way.
Also, be sure to check out the health care video I posted the other day.