Subpoena-rama

Congress issued subpoenas to White House insiders Harriet Miers and Karl Rove last week. In an apparent response, the Federal Government subpoenaed Michael Moore for bringing members of the World Trade Center rescue crew to Havana for medical treatment.

Let's think about this for a minute. Miers and Rove had it coming, and can handle themselves. But the White House must be losing it. Calling Michael Moore to give testimony under oath is like giving Robin Williams a race car, a full tank of gas, tapping Johnny Knoxville as his co-driver, and telling them to race across the country documenting the Cannonball Run. Issuing a subpoena to Michael Moore alone is tantamount to the Catholic church giving Joan of Arc a syndicated talk show.

Nothing could please Moore more. He's the Oprah of the white, pissed-off middle class. This should be interesting, and it will give "Sicko" some legs:

LENO: I was asking you about them in the dressing room. And this is like one of these dramatic moments. We were backstage, and I said, “Hey, what happened with them? I know you took them to Cuba, and I know a couple of months ago the government went after you for going to Cuba” –

MOORE: Took them to Guantanamo Bay.

LENO: Yeah. And everybody to get their health care.

MOORE: Because I heard the al Qaeda terrorists that we have in the camps there detained are receiving free dental, medical, eye care, the whole deal, and our own 9/11 rescue workers can’t get that in New York City. And I just thought there was something completely crazy about that, so we sailed into Guantanamo Bay and filmed it, to try to get them the same care we’re giving al Qaeda. The Bush administration became upset at that, and it informed me at the same — when I was on the show last — that they were investigating me for doing this.

LENO: Well, investigating you for going to Cuba.

MOORE: Yeah, because Guantanamo Bay is in Cuba, and once we’re there in Cuba, we couldn’t get any help, so we went and got help from the Cuban doctors.

LENO: But a lot of celebrities go to Cuba.

MOORE: Yeah, oh yeah. Leonardo DiCaprio has been there, Cameron Diaz.

LENO: Sure, a lot of people go. But what happened just an hour ago —

MOORE: You want me to tell what happened –

LENO: Sure, go ahead.

MOORE: Ok, well, I haven’t even told my own family this yet, so you’re asking me to do this on national television.

LENO: Yeah, but it’s NBC, so not that many people are watching.

MOORE: Alright. Well, I was just informed while I was back there with Jay that the Bush administration has now issued a subpoena for me, going after me for helping these 9/11 rescue workers.

LENO: Well, no, for going to Cuba, it wasn’t for helping them –

MOORE: Well, that’s why I went there. I didn’t go there like Cameron Diaz to get a tan. No offense, I’m all for her tan. I’m just sailing around on a pontoon there in Cuba, but that’s not why I was there. I was there to help them and now I’m going to face this further harrassment from the Bush people. Aren’t they busy with something else?

LENO: What does the subpoena involve? Is it because you went to Cuba, is that why?

MOORE: Yeah, because as free citizens in a free country we’re not allowed to travel to Cuba, but journalists can go, and this was a work of journalism. But frankly, the larger point’s being missed here. The point is that first of all, can we all agree that we should take care of 9/11 rescue workers? You know? And you know, actually, Harvey Weinstein who owns the company that’s distributing the film — the Weinstein Company — they have said that on Aug. 11 this year, they’re going to donate 11 percent of the box office of SiCKO to help these workers and the other workers who need some help.

LENO: That’s good.

The "Department of Justice" wouldn't confirm to CNN that an investigation is underway. But harassing Moore on the basis that he's not a journalist (being a journalist is the only way for a US citizen to legally enter Cuba) is a great idea. I wanna party with you cowboys! And I hope Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, and Harriet Miers, should they appear in front of Congress (although I hope they refuse) have as wonderful a time as Michael Moore will in front of his inquisitors.

Michael Moore Is Fat. Don't Listen To Him!

Moore is a documentarian who exploits issues, distorting them into rants which serve his purposes. He tells the truths we already know but don't want to hear, like some ruthlessly perverse anti-socialite who shows up at cocktail parties to show off a progressing cancer. His movies, 'Roger & Me,' 'Bowling for Columbine,' and 'Fahrenheit 9/11' all had the same signature in-your-face-give-me-answers approach. Despite that, some prefer to treat him like an overweight sahib criticizing the Raj or a drunken Eliot trashing high society in 30s Singapore. As someone who has become an insider, but really shouldn't be fully legitimated. Their best defense seems to be, "Make him look ridiculous," juxtapose the body of his work as lightweight against his too-great bulk. But Moore is no effete liberal, and neither is America media all that conservative, or deep.

Moore is a fellow Eagle Scout, a street fighter who doesn't realize he's not worthy. Rather, he realizes it, but he's pissed, on his home turf, and spoiling for a fight. He uses his appearance as a permanent feint, his leading questions like a bullfighter's cape. He is a patriot on a mission to avenge Flint, Michigan, and he doesn't really care if he looks perverse and ruthless. So when CNN ran a hit piece full of inaccuracies mouthed by the Spokes-doctor Sanjay Gupta right before Wolf Blitzer's interview, it was a pretty bad idea. By the interview's end, Moore had beaten Blitzer so bloody that he actually took pity on him, thanking him with a wry smile while thinking ahead to the proceeds of a coming libel lawsuit.

Lord Wife and I went to see Sicko last Friday night. Here's the short version. Pretty much all of us know the American system of health care is broken. I sure as #%$& do. If you don't know that yet, fall down on your knees and thank whatever god you should pray to for your good health. It's Lord of the Flies out here. I paid $1,420 a month for a top-notch COBRA plan in a state which has the most advanced health care research in the country. When my wife had an emergency appendectomy less than a month after our son was born, the plan refused to pay the surgeon who took out her appendix and saved her life. The operation took twice as long as standard, and the doctor wasn't directly employed by the hospital. So there was a loophole, you see. The surgeon's office came after us for his hefty fee. I could keep going way past there with many other anecdotes, some of which I have written about before. But by comparison to to others, me and mine are lucky, so I will stop.

Even so, before seeing 'Sicko' I half-believed people when they said, "Oh, Cuba is reporting false numbers, people have to wait forever to get seen there, Michael Moore is pulling a cheap Castro publicity stunt, etc." Uh-uh. Wrong. Wait until you see the lobby of Havana Hospital. It's more beautiful, efficient, and, for lack of a better word, thriving, than any hospital in the United States. This is not your father's communism. The Cuban doctors weren't faking their state-of-the-art MRI machines, CAT scans, dental implants, competent diagnoses and sterling bedside manners. The 9/11 volunteers who went there for treatment got it for free and were grateful to the point of tears. Because they sure as hell weren't getting their resultant pulmonary problems treated, or compensated for as promised, here. The kindness in Cuba may have been a publicity stunt. So what? It was also real. And for those of you who think Michael Moore is an ass...maybe he is. But he gives a damn, and unless you happen to be a robber-baron or a boot-licker, he's on your side, and he dishes highly effective counter-propaganda. All Americans are getting screwed by outsourcing. By guns. By resource wars. By blood-suckers. It's just a question of degree.

America is the only country in the world, the only prosperous country, which does not have universal health care. I've lived and worked in quite a few other industrialized nations, East and West. All of them have cheap, readily available and effective care that regularly treats foreigners and tourists at no charge. We all sense the US health care system sucks by comparison, and is getting worse. But it's hard to understand how great the differential margin is until you see it for yourself. Fewer still, of course, understand that America is running a gigantic social engineering experiment to see how much profit can be extracted via people's illnesses. The perfect economic satisficing strategy would be to keep a patient alive and/or in treatment until, like a depleted oil field, there's no easy money left in them. Then you cut them loose and wait for them to die or for conditions to change. As Michael Moore says on Larry King, "There's no mystery here. It's the insurance company's money, and they have a fiduciary responsibility not to give it to you. It's against the law for them to not put their shareholders' returns first."

There's the Crossroads of the Problem. In the movie, you'll see that the for-profit health care system goes all the way back to...Richard Nixon. (Hello darkness, my old friend!) Nixon approved a massive conflict of interest, a scheme by Fred Kaiser to "make more money by providing less care," and the moment is actually caught on tape. To see Moore's knock-downs of Blitzer on CNN, the clip is hosted on Crooks and Liars. The YouTube clip above is from Moore's far more amiable and informative interview with Larry King. Sicko's main value is in exposing how insurers operate. They kill as many people as they can get away with, and they're looking at you. Go see how.