Saturday, June 30, 2007

Fact Check: facts in 'Sicko' are accurate

Last time Michael Moore released a movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, critics on the right accused him of lying about the mismanagement of the War on Terror and how we got into Iraq. So, he offered a $10,000 reward to anyone who could document an error in the whole movie. To date, despite righties crawling all over it like ants on a dead bird, only a single inaccuracy was ever found-- an inadvertent one at that, in which a newspaper headline was transposed with the wrong date in a way which was of minor significance to the movie itself.

So it should come as no surprise that a fact check of 'Sicko,' while at times criticizing Moore for not putting some things in context (see my last post) verifies that his facts are pretty accurate.

The right can and will criticize Moore as biased (which most of us on the left will readily admit, just I would say this blog is biased because it reflects my own views), as motivated by profit (funny that the right has suddenly decided that being rich is a sin, at least when it is Michael Moore who has become rich), and as quoting facts out of context (though when he quotes facts like the Institute of Medicine's figure that 18,000 people per year die in America as a direct cause of not getting adequate health care because they are uninsured, it's hard to imagine what 'context' exactly would make that an acceptable number.) But if they criticize him by calling him a 'liar,' then you can be sure that they don't know what they are talking about.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hey, love the blog. Since you're talking about health-related issues, I wanted to give you and your readers a heads up about expired baby formula.

Looks like local grocery store Bashas' and Food City have been accused of selling out-of-date formula: http://ktar.com/?nid=6&sid=526635

That's sick.

And maybe you'll find this funny, but Eddie Basha (the owner) won an honorary degree from U of A last year in part for childhood nutrition. Ha!

http://uanews.org/cgi-bin/WebObjects/UANews.woa/9/wa/MainStoryDetails?ArticleID=12664