The first screening of a movie is a nerve–wracking time for most filmmakers, said Investor's Business Daily in an editorial. But Michael Moore probably didn't lose much sleep before debuting Sicko, 'œhis latest manipulative movie,'' for an audience of fellow anti–American socialists at the Cannes Film Festival. Like all of Moore's previous documentaries, Sicko portrays America as a capitalist hell where evil corporations conspire with corrupt politicians to make poor people miserable—in this case through America's health–care system. With his patented blend of 'œlies, half–truths, and disinformation,'' Moore argues in Sicko for a system of socialized health care, but his real target, as always, is the 'œAmerican tradition of free men, free markets, and individuality.'' Guess what? The audience at Cannes gave Moore and his latest piece of crude propaganda a standing ovation.
Even by the low standards of a Moore film, said Rich Lowry in National Review Online, Sicko is grossly deceptive. In a typical stunt, he takes some 9/11 rescue workers sickened by toxic dust to Cuba; as the cameras roll, the kindly doctors in Fidel Castro's workers' paradise provide the medical treatment the workers were supposedly denied in the greedy U.S. It's an old saw of the socialist left, of course, that Cuba has a better health–care system than the U.S., with the lowest infant mortality rate in Latin America. What the socialists fail to mention is that Cuba had the lowest infant mortality rate even before Castro's communist revolution, and that it's been losing ground to other countries ever since. Today, quality health care is available in Cuba, but only if you're a high–ranking official, a friend of Castro, or, now, 'œa documentarian who can be relied upon to produce a lickspittle film whitewashing the system.''
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