aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Monday, October 29, 2007

Sicko opens in UK

And not everyone is singing its praises:

Unfortunately Sicko is a dishonest film. That is not only my opinion. It is the opinion of Professor Lord Robert Winston, the consultant and advocate of the NHS. When asked on BBC Radio 4 whether he recognised the NHS as portrayed in this film, Winston replied: “No, I didn’t. Most of it was filmed at my hospital [the Hammersmith in west London], which is a very good hospital but doesn’t represent what the NHS is like.”

Of course, after 750 words of an unremitting battering, there comes this:

None of these problems mean we should abandon the idea of a universal shared system of healthcare. It’s clear we would not want the American model, even if it isn’t quite as bad as portrayed by Moore. [emphasis mine]

Er, that is precisely Moore’s point!

The author goes on to resort to the now familiar tactic of calling Moore fat (maybe his next movie should be on our industrial food system - I’d like to see him look into the farm lobby and Boss Hog - I’m ready for another Supersize Me).

More substantively, she’d probably not be pleased that I didn’t include what follows her quote above:

It’s clear our British private medical insurance provision is a rip-off. I believe we should as a society share burdens of ill health and its treatment. The only question is how best to do that and it seems to me the state-run, micromanaged NHS has failed to answer it.

But hey, that’s not my point. And it wasn’t Moore’s either. Let the Brits make their own film on the shortcomings of the NHS. Moore’s movie is about the shortcomings of our system and compared to theirs ours stinks! Even she says so.

Everyone wants Moore to make their film. The man is an advocate and a very entertaining one at that. I reveled in every minute of his over the top advocacy.

He could have made a safer, more balanced movie, but why the hell should he? Does anyone imagine that if he had the Right would stop calling him a zealot, propagandist and a demagogue?