Michael Moore Discharges Another Heap of Intellectual Excreta
It was Saturday evening. I had finished my analysis problems for the week. My conscience was telling me to do more work, but my friend Felipe suggested that I go to a movie at Doc Films with him and Abraham. I succumbed to peer pressure.
The film for the evening was Michael Moore's latest "documentary", Sicko, on the insurance industry. While I had heard nothing but scorn for the filmmaker from my friends of all political persuasions, I had never experienced his cinema for myself. Moore is generally known for making films that are laden with anecdotes and information that ranges from misrepresentation to false. Though his movies are generally classified as "documentaries", they really are more like cinematic editorials. The word "documentary" implies a sense of objective documentation, and Moore eschews all possible opportunities for objectivity.
Upon watching the film, the negative hype surrounding Michael Moore was generally confirmed in my mind. The film begins by highlighting the catastrophic state of the insurance and healthcare industries in the US through a series of disturbing examples: people who died because their insurance companies refused them coverage, people who were forced to choose which lost limbs they wanted to reattach because they could only afford to reattach one, etc. This was fine and well-done. We can all agree that there is a serious problem with healthcare when 50 million Americans are unemployed and people die because they can't afford treatment.
But then the film quickly transitions to the so-called "solution". Mr. Moore spends well over and hour preaching the merits of state-run health care, largely through examples from other nations. Given the embarrasing state of America's current privatized system, some sort of government sponsored universal health care seems like a compelling idea. However, rather than evaluating the option objectively by analyzing the costs and benefits of such systems, he uses a series of cherry-picked interviews to support his claim, without ever considering any possible counterarguments. In fact he only deals with his opposition by using caricature. This is a catastrophic failure on his part because the major counterargument for state-run healthcare is its cost and potential inefficiency. If you neglect to establish that your system can be any more efficient or cheap than the current system, then you have absolutely no argument whatsoever. Worst of all, he repeatedly makes the absolutely asinine claim that universal government-run healthcare is free. He even devotes an entire scene to walking around a British hospital attempting to "find" where people pay. Since the British medical system is entirely supported through taxes, no monetary transactions take place at the hospital, obviously. But he proceeds concludes that healthcare in Britain is free, and therefore is a better model than the American one. Maybe he's right, but only by sheer luck, not by any kind of analytical insight.
On an analytic level, Sicko provides absolutely no insight or interesting analysis on the healthcare problem in America whatsoever. Then again, we shouldn't expect much from someone who does not understand the difference between correlation and causality. From this standpoint, it is profoundly unsatisfying. On the other hand, it is an incredibly well-made movie. The use of irony is excellent. The trip to Cuba, where doctors treat the American patients who can't get treatment here, is delightfully produced. Subtracting all the content, it is actually a very great movie to watch. One can only wish that Michael Moore's political opinions and intellectual depth had more complexity than those of a five-year old.
Don't you think you're being a little harsh? If Michael Moore presented his movies as analytical or impartial, then something would be wrong. But most people (at least the ones that would be more impressed with analysis) realize that they're constructed to appeal to the emotions and make money. Plus, calling him an intellectual five-year-old isn't exactly reasoned argument.
I thought I was actually being rather generous to Michael Moore. And I thought the five-year-old analogy was actually quite accurate. Five-year-olds generally aren't intellectually mature enough to process the complexities of issues, such as the fact that virtually nothing is actually free. Having "free" healthcare seems like the kind of knee-jerk solution that someone with a simplistic worldview would suggest. Usually by the time people reach the age of 10 or 12, they get better at understanding and analyzing these complexities.
On the other hand, if you had argued that I was being a little harsh on the five-year-olds, I might have a hard time defending my comparison.
But more seriously, I think that Michael Moore can still make great, visceral movies that have some depth to them. Dealing with counterarguments might be a good start. And since there are very intelligent people on both sides of the issue, this would not be hard or unreasonable to do. There is nothing wrong with Michael Moore constructing movies steeped in spin, but if he's going to do that, it might help if he first were to know what an argument is.
I tend to agree with Adam; the rational argument being presented in Sicko doesn't rise to a level which could be dignified by calling it a rational argument. There's nothing wrong with that; it just means that, as I've said for a while now, Mr. Moore is just in the wrong business.
He was an excellent comedian, and in dealing with political subjects, too, but there was never a serious argument. He was a comedian; the issue would be lampooned, the outrage process employed to such great effect here was employed on other issues. After the outrage, you could make fun of political enemies and then transition into the absurd (I fondly recall "Crackers: the corporate crime-fighting chicken!" Crackers was a man-sized chicken who would show up at corporate facilities in violation of laws and "raid" them in his shiny red convertible.) The issue was opened up and made fun of; a viewpoint might be refuted, but none presented. Mr. Moore was a funnyman, not a scholar, and that was the right thing for him to be.
Moore was a good comedian; it worked better for him when he didn't have to finish the argument, it was funny. I was a fan; I've seen all his movies and every episode of both TV shows and read most of his books. It was very funny stuff. But then, for some reason, democrats got the idea he was a political figure; because he made fun of republicans and conservative issues (but also, we forget, Clinton, Gore, and governmental inefficiency) they sainted him a theorist, a person with political ideas. He went from making funny films about a war with canada starring Alan Alda, and a TV show with an oddsmaker, comparison shopping for confessionals, and a crimefighting chicken, to his more recent fare. Even Bowling for Columbine did a better job; the argument made a little sense, even though I disagreed, and it was funny at times.
The more recent stuff isn't funny anymore, and in so being it's lost the only thing that made it worthwhile, the only thing that could overcome bad arguments. I'm with Adam; all of his works appealed to emotions and made money, but the early ones had their bad arguments masked by good humor, and these don't. Their popularity is no mask for the fact that they're no good anymore.
You are very wrong about Moore having the intellect of a five year old. Moore is smarter than you think, and is at least smart enough to know that emotion is what appeals most to the masses. Therefore, he writes his movies AS THOUGH they are being watched by five year olds, and it works.
Moore would lose most of his audience if he made your analytically sound movie. His movies make a stronger point to more people, and while intellectuals like you will be dissapointed by his arguements, he is definitely in the "right business". He is in the business of making movies that persuade the common man to a be more liberal, and in order to do so he makes his arguements at the 5 year old level. Do you honestly think Moore doesn't know that his arguements are overly simplified? At the least, I'm sure he has been told millions of times.
Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you. He certainly knows his business well. Maybe he is intelligent, but this is really an irrelevant point if he's going to dumb his movies down such a base and lowly point.
Moreover, I find his "simplification" to be an insult to the intellectual basis for liberalism. Being in the "right business" doesn't change the fact that his actions are reprehensible and contrary to the spirit of positive discourse. On the one hand, everything he is doing is perfectly permissible in the sense that he should have the freedom to say whatever he wants in his films. On the other hand, he is violating his responsibility as a film-maker to his viewers by giving them misinformation and misrepresented facts. This sort of responsibility stems from the fact that many people actually form opinions based on his nonsense.
Of course, all sorts of people do this kind of reckless profiteering: Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, et al. Their actions are perfectly legal and permissible in technical sense. But notice that they all have one thing in common: they are all bad people. All intelligent and remotely rigorous people should work to obliterate their influence from the planet before they cause the level of public discourse to decompose to an even more primative state than that which currently prevails. Just because there is no basis for the state to stop you from doing a given action doesn't mean that it isn't extraordinarily damaging or evil in every possible sense.
Jon, don't mistake me for saying Moore is dumb. He's not, and as Adam points out, it's irrelevant to the status of his movies. And by "wrong business" I don't mean that he is dissatisfied with his work or that he's not good at it; he is. I'm just saying that even if emotion is what appeals to people, even if that's a way to make money, it doesn't make it entertaining, or productive, or right.
Sure, the films convert people to liberalism, or perhaps just entertain people who have already been converted, or perhaps even just firm their commitment. But is that the right goal? Presumably we have a commitment to having the right political views, right? I mean, we wouldn't want to have views that make no sense, that can't be supported, or whose implimentation would lead to a terrible outcome, right? And we want people to share our views, so we want them to use correct reasoning from correct facts so they can find the empirically correct views. So, if that is so, we want our media to have good reasoning, sound arguments and correct facts, to support the population in carrying the right political views, which we will carry too.
By this standard, Mr. Moore's recent work is bad. Whether a socialized medical system is good or bad as a political view (In my observation it is very bad), it is bad to argue for it with flawed reasoning.
My comparison to Mr. Moore's earlier work is the product of a change in his technique. Before, he'd make arguments, sometimes damn good ones, against some other views. Rarely would a political solution be directly suggested, and this is sound because refutation is a necessary part of the argument process, sufficient to be useful on its own. Moreover, his work was funny, which status is a good in itself. So, there it is: the earlier work was more useful in some sense.
Adam, I fail to see where Michael Moore is "giving [viewers] misinformation and misrepresented facts" or committing reprehensible acts. I really don't think his point in walking around the hospital looking for a place to pay is trying to make viewers think that the healthcare just pays for itself (and ironically, it does). Rather, his point is that when you need treatment, you are not required to pay in order to receive that treatment.
I think you both miss the fact that you smarter than the average human. You may think that Moore's actions are "contrary to the spirit of positive discourse" but your idea of positive discourse is at a level that most people would not understand, and incomprehensible discource certainly isn't positive. We don't need to convince the smartest people to be liberals, because they already are. I really don't think Moore could make a movie that satisfied your desire for information and also appealed to a vast audience.
Would you be okay with Moore making a movie and also having a reference booklet that for every annecdotal piece of evidence he gave, he cited a statistic that showed the annecdote to be a true representation of reality? I believe that is what Moore is trying to achieve with his movies - he is presenting facts in a way that the masses can understand.
Jon, you make several mistakes.
First, you say that "ironically, [healthcare does pay for itself.]" This is exactly the misconception Mr. Moore allows his audiences to retain, and this kind of thing is the harm such film does. Of course, governmental health care is paid for by taxes, and tax money doesn't come from the aether, it comes from people and businesses. Of course you know that intellectually, and so do many others, but on some emotional level the mistake endures. Getting past this point to discuss the question rationally, with an understanding that it will cost money and resources in either scenario, is not some "up in the clouds" academic endeavour. Real political discussions are not merely the province of some "smarter than most humans" elite.
Even past that, Mr. Moore's analysis shows, correctly, that the marginal cost of health care under government health care is zero, or can be. He then concludes that it is a superior option without showing conclusively either that the cost of delivering this care is lower, or that the care itself is superior. He fails to address salient factors, and this is not something which can be lightly ignored in such a discussion. To defend, or indeed to celebrate, such fallacy, from a belief that the public isn't smart enough to understand the truth, is really pretty offensive to "the spirit of positive discourse."
Second, you assume Mr. Moore is right, and that "we" have as our goal the conversion of others to liberalism. As it happens, I do not agree, either that "liberal" political views are uniformly the most desirable, or that the primary goal of political polemic should be to convert people to one's present views by logically flawed arguments. What I am (and I believe Adam is also) saying is that our goal should be first to convince people to follow good reasoning, then to follow that reasoning ourselves to find the most desirable views.
As far as the pamphlet idea, I believe you are referring to something similar to the book Mr. Moore authored in defense of one of his films, I forget which. Citations for the various anecdotes, and the like. That's not the real point. Such volumes sell miniscule fractions of the distribution of the film. The damage has been done; millions see bad reasoning and adopt it, their natural inclinations fueled by the progeny of Mr. Moore's gift for filmmaking. Good reasong must appear in every argument, not just privately in the back rooms where we intellectuals decide what to feed the rest of the people.
I believe what Jon means by saying health care pays for itself is that by gettting quality, readily available, preventive care (getting people to lose weight and stop smoking), we can actually spend less money on more drastic health care measures (heart attack and lung cancer treatment).
And as for myself, I actually enjoyed the film very much, and never really thought about the intellectual shortcomings until now. The way I see it, the economics and cost-benefit analyses of universal health care are not the important thing. I believe that, just like providing police, education, and disaster relief, the government has a moral obligation to provide for the health of its citizens, and that making a huge profit through something as terrible as sickness is morally reprehensible. I think this is one of the main messages Michael Moore is trying to present, and I think he does an excellent job of this.
Maybe I'm not being a "good" intellectually by ignoring economics and pragmatism and allowing myself to be swayed by such romantic ideals, and maybe I really am just a hopeless idealist, but I don't care.
I guess now we're discussing the actual issue, but I'll try to avoid really addressing it and instead focus on the methodological point.
It's clear that a "moral mandate" can serve as an imperative to an action with undesirable consequences, one that doesn't make sense except as compelled by such an imperative. For instance, I recently spent several hours consoling a classmate about an emotional problem on the night before an infinished paper was due. That made no sense, but I did it anyway because of a moral imperative. In the case of these small-scale, personal interactions, where positive results occur, such reasoning is clear. You seem to be saying governmental healthcare is such a subject.
But in the case of governmental healthcare, the "imperative" is blunted by those same economic factors you so dread considering. Let us ask whether a well-intentioned healthcare initiative would be desirable if it made the situation worse. Clearly not; what a stupid question. In other words, the real metric for the desirability of a program is the desirability of its outcome, even if the desired outcome is compelled by a moral force.
A huge example of this is the prohibition of Alcohol in the USA in the 20th century. Consumption of alcohol is morally undesirable to many, distasteful to others, and causes social problems. How pleasant it would be, then, to ban "demon rum" from our country forever. But even the most zealous reformers were taken aback by the profound negative results such efforts entailed, and a majority decided to repeal it once this was discovered and known for some decades. Regardless the moral imperative, righteousness is as righteousness does.
In the case of healthcare, however, various obfuscations in the information system prevent people from knowing and understanding all the available information, and the consequences of such a system are not well understood. Preventing this misinformation and disinformation is desirable, since it will lead to better reasoning, and continuing it is not.