'Sicko' and the pirates

Many bloggers who could conceivably be described as unsympathetic to Michael Moore in general have been snickering with schadenfreude over the fact that a) Moore has gone on the record as being in opposition to U.S. copyright laws and b) his latest film, Sicko, is currently available on the internet, in pirated form, for free download. Hoisted by his own petard, is he, etc.,etc.,etc.

It's an interesting thing about certain Moore haters. As right wingers, you'd think they'd have a vague idea of how capitalism works. But apparently, not so much. Rob at Say Anything—a Pajamas Media blog, I see, how exciting—after some really insightful yammering about how "most socialists don’t care about private property... [t]hat’s why the left is always so eager to seize the wealth of citizens through taxes and redistribute it according to their whim..." and so on and so on and please kill me now so on, proudly embeds a pirated copy of Sicko in a post entitled "Calling Michael Moore's Socialist Bluff." Before the embed, he gets all puffy-chested and stuff.

Now I fully expect that I’ll probably get a letter or an email at some point from Moore’s people asking me to take this down. Which I will, because unlike Moore and most liberals I actually do respect things like copyright laws and property rights. But until they ask, I’m going to take Moore at his word. And if I am asked to take it down, I will be calling Moore a total hypocrite.

He intends to call Michael Moore a total hypocrite. Well. That will certainly utterly destroy the man.

But here's the thing. I wonder who Rob considers Michael Moore's "people" to be? Moore's wife? The folks who work in Moore's office? Because those aren't the people Rob will be hearing from, if he—or any of his cute little Pajamas Media buddies like that fellow with the hat—hears from anybody. Rob will most likely hear from representatives of the Weinstein Company, the film's co-distributor, a firm headed up by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. These individuals, Rob may be interested to know, are fairly aggressive businessmen who pursue and protect their interests with a particular passion that is unusual even in the very high-powered business we call show. And while they are in fact in business with Michael Moore, they are not "Moore's people." And I do imagine that among the things Moore and his limited partners at the Weinstein Company agree to disagree on, one such thing is copyright law. And that Moore has no standing by which to make the Weinsteins change their policy as to pirating.

So if they contact you, they won't be contacting you as "Moore's people." But I'll bet you wind up calling Moore a "total hypocrite" anyway. Which, as I said, will utterly destroy him.

Updated below

Whadya know, I was right: Rob at Say Anything reports:

Big Mike has clearly changed his tune about the distribution of his movie over the internet, turning into the hypocrite I knew he could be, I’ve taken his film offline.

"The hypocrite I knew he could be." That is withering rhetoric. Note Rob doesn't say which of Moore's "people" contacted him.

In the meantime, Moore is claiming the piracy was an "inside job" and that the dogged and no doubt quite irritated Weinsteins are on the case. (Moore says Harvey and Bob are "devastated," which might be the case, but from my knowledge of the brothers I'd say they're deploying the combined might of a fleet of high-charging, unpleasant lawyers rather than crying in their Froot Loops.)

In the meantime, as I prepare my own review of Sicko, I see that some film critics believe that a proper assessment of the film also calls for the composition of a position paper on universal health care. I must say that I find this a little daunting. I mean, I know that film criticism can be a, you know, multi-disciplinary craft, but my wonkiness only stretches so far. Not so the New York Post's Kyle Smith, who's posted a very lengthy anti-Moore, anti-Sicko broadside on the Post website that's nominally the home of his colleague Lou Lumenick.

Smith is a frequently engaging writer who, alas, is almost as frequently self-kneecapped by bouts of inexcusable stupidity. (His huff that "Even Moore does not believe what he says, and his films don't bring about change" was quite deftly pin-pricked into anti-content with an "oh. Well then..." by good Mr. Hudson over at Green Cine Daily.) It's too bad he lards his piece with so much ad hominem bluster and innuendo, tipping this reader's balance from "hey wait a minute" to "oh, get stuffed." Here's one thing: Smith approvingly cites Dr. David Gratzer's proposal of health care "decentralization that gives patients more choice." In free-marketeer code, "more choice" means "screw the poor," or at least it does until some freakanomics whiz can explain to me precisely why it doesn't. Of course, if you're cool with that, then Gratzer and Smith are really on to something.

Further update:

Moore's foes have some more red meat in their jaws—a video in which he is seen to be, at the very least, coddling some 9/11 conspiracy, um, theorists...or something. I understand Moore enjoys, um, interacting with fans, but he does himself and the cause of Sicko no favors here. I'd figured he would know better by now than to provide his detractors with this kind of ammo. Which is not even to go into the "merits" of his interlocuters' case...

Comments

[Raymond Tomlin]

Great commentary. Just the right tone. Glad that MovieCityNews linked to your column, Glenn. Keep up the good work!

[RudyV]

Yeah, only pinkos want universal health care, and so the biggest pinko of them all must therefore be...Richard M. Nixon, who might have passed such a thing if it wasn't for that whole Watergate business.

[WP]

I'm no freakanomics wizard (and am not familiar with Dr. David Gratzer), but this is getting into some tricky territory--the suggestion that the very idea of "more choice" is by definition weighted with a nefarious desire to screw the poor sounds pretty much like the ideological inverse but rhetorical equal of Rob at Say Anything's statements. And you're way smarter than that!

[RudyV]

The idea of "choice" when it comes to health care plans is a guarantee that there will be a difference in the quality of care based on how much you can pay. Otherwise, who would choose a plan at the bottom of the list if it cost the same as a plan at the top?

To make the health care system truly equitable, there should be one plan for everyone. The rich don't get preferential treatment, the poor don't get screwed--and if the rich don't like it they can either leave or make the system better for everyone.

[Stella]

Michael Moore is God!

[WP]

RudyV, I completely agree that when it comes to a question of quality of care, obviously no critically ill person is going to choose not to see a specialist for any reason other than not being able to afford it. My point was that choice is a broader concept than just that, and encompasses things like being able to choose Family Doctor A over Family Doctor B because you prefer his/her bedside manner, or because his/her office is closer to your home (rather than just being assigned a doctor based on some arbitrary bureaucratic criteria).

Obviously, you could challenge me here, too, and the health care problem is a huge and nuanced one, but I just felt that, for that very reason, it deserves a the most clear-eyed approach we can take. The " 'more choice' [equals] 'screw the poor' " statement didn't seem to give the issue the weight it deserves, adding to the mudslinging rather than to the debate. That's all I meant.

[RudyV]

I completely agree on that point. Hopefully there will be enough decent MDs to go around that choice won't be a problem, but that issue fell off my radar since I'm still focused on equitable insurance for all as a basic starting point. We still have Dems out there who would like to have health insurance provided by employers, but for those of us with more than one employer and still no insurance my question would be "Which one would be forced to provide it, and which one will get off lightly?"

You might as well tell people that their employer will decide where they can buy their groceries and how many gallons of milk they can get.