I said I’d refrain from further comment until I saw Michael Moore’s film. Well, I have. In short, everything up until the Cuba scene was far better than I expected. And the Cuba scene was far worse than I expected.
Moore’s indictment of HMOs and corrupt politicians is spot-on. His portrait of the Canadian, British and French systems is probably over-generous, but the point is valid — in plenty of other democratic countries, citizens get a far better deal overall. And the horror stories invoked by the right, that with universal care we’ll all be at the mercy of bureaucrats? We’re at the mercy of bureaucrats now. Everyone who’s ever had to call their health insurer knows it.
Cuba is a different story. Moore, in his defense, has insisted: “I’m not trumpeting Castro or his regime.” Yes, he most certainly is. In the film he mocks the very idea of denouncing the Castro dictatorship. And by portraying the Cuban medical system as a marvel of justice and equality, he has colluded with the regime in sanitizing the truth.
A famous American filmmaker does not walk through Havana, camera crew in tow, without the authorities being aware. The Cuban police state, happy to score easy propaganda points, put on a great show. And Moore, to advance his ideologically driven whitewash, was happy to prey on the hard luck and desperation of the 9/11 rescue workers he brought with him. It is he who ends up dishonoring their heroism.
Why harp on this one scene in an otherwise worthwhile film? For one thing, because it allows every Bill O’Reilly, every Rush Limbaugh, to dismiss the case for universal health care as a sinister ultra-left delusion. Interestingly, earlier in the film Moore satirizes some vintage footage from the American Medical Association and Ronald Reagan declaring socialized medicine an evil ploy to turn America communist. How ridiculous, scoffs Moore, as he raises the spectre of the hammer and sickle, Red Guards on the march, scenes of smiling Soviet automatons harvesting grain. But later, by praising an actually existing communist dictatorship in Cuba, Moore winds up making that old footage look more creditable than it is.
With the Cuba scene, Moore has done tangible harm to the prospects of the democratic left in America. He pretends that criticizing Castro is something only right-wingers do, and he thereby marginalizes the invaluable work of Human Rights Watch, Amnesty Interational, the Committee to Protect Journalists and others. [Note: I urge you to read each of these linked statements on the dismal human rights situation in Cuba.] Casting his lot with the authoritarian wing of the left, Moore has made it easier for the right to assert that there is no anti-authoritarian wing.
The fundamental issue, however, is not tactical, but moral. As I’ve said previously, Moore has staked his entire career on the importance of dissent, free media, the exposure of government failings and abuses. But in Cuba, dissent is outlawed and those who run afoul of the regime are harassed and jailed. With his deceitful sequence in “Sicko,” Moore has stabbed his Cuban counterparts — his fellow dissenters, muckrakers, whistle blowers — in the back. And he’s reaped millions doing it. His voice is heard all over the world, while Cuban journalists languish in prison, utterly voiceless. In fact, Moore has rendered them even more voiceless.
For more on Moore, see my Democratiya essay from Winter 2006.
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