Michael Moore Under Investigation For Possible Violation of Embargo w/ Cuba

[thunter34]

Moore being investigated by the Treasury Department for possible violation of Trade Embargo against Cuba for taking ailing 9/11 rescue workers to Cuba for a segment in the upcoming documentary, "Sicko".


http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1619159,00.html



Discuss.

[Matty the Damned]

Cue ill-informed rant from Jakey . . .

MtD

[thunter34]

Cue ill-informed rant from Jakey . . .

MtD

Yes, it is a gift.  After that really flacid 12000 thread, it seemed he might need a boost.

[Lis]

I must say that I think M moore is a twit.... I have NO party affiliation, but I do know he makes ALOT of cash off other peoples pain...  I think thats wrong...

[Matty the Damned]

Actually Lisbeth, I agree with you.

I think Moore has been correct on a lot things, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a fat blow-hard out to make a buck. He positions himself as a campaigner for truth when in fact he's an obscenely wealthy and obnoxious polemicist.

MtD

[milker]

Seriously, there are more serious dramatic things going on in the world.

Milker.

[Miss Philicia]

Panty-clad?  Is that like All Clad?

[J.R.E.]

I like Micheal Moore. I thought at one time, he was going to go after the Pharmaceuticals. I wonder if he will include this in his future release, which I will see.

And by the way, as I understand it , Micheal Moore contributes, a part of the proceeds to charity.


Ray

[DingoBoi]

his new film opening 'soon' is about pharma

[libvet]

Personally, Moore doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Yeah, he's made money off of his work, that is fine with me.  He isn't forcing people into seeing his films and while they may have a definite spin to them, he does point out some very uncomfortable truths and for that the right wing hates him like poison.

The one thing that really bothers many people is that he doesn't put a "We are America and therefore we can do no wrong" spin on things.  Some people consider that treasonous.  He doesn't pretend that he has no agenda.  But for the most part, he does allow people to damn themselves with their own words and actions.

And he has guts, I'll have to give him that.  It takes a lot of guts to make a film that looks at the other side of America - The one that allows a town to be decimated by a corporation that ultimately didn't care about the people that made it money.  The real problem with violence in the United States.  The one that allowed itself to be led into an idiotic and unnecessary conflict in Iraq. 

And now he's made a film that looks at some of the less than flattering truths about America's health care system.  And honestly, as a person who has had my job outsourced by a corporation already making money hand over fist, a person who watched the region I grew up in get decimated by factories moving work to China and Indonesia, a person who owns a gun, a person who wonders what the root causes of violence in the US are, a person who served in the military, and someone who both works in the health care industry and has known the true fear of living with a incurable disease and losing my health coverage....I applaud people who are rabble-rousers and don't pretend everything is wonderful when there are so many things that we could do better in this country with the resources we have at our disposal.

People can nitpick a few points here and there, but the central themes and facts he lays out tend to be self-evident when one takes off the rose colored glasses and looks at some of the problems of our country. 

I say, more power to him.  You may not like him or his tactics or approach, but quite often his beef with the target of his scorn is legitimate.   And he chooses big targets.  Big powerful targets. 

Some of the criticism about him is absolutely legitimate....other criticism is less than honest (for example, portraying Bowling for Columbine as a "anti-gun polemic" when it was actually a question of what causes America to have so much violence compared with other first world countries).

I have no quarrel with the man. 

[libvet]

his new film opening 'soon' is about pharma

I certainly hope so.  One certainly can't look at some of pitfalls the system we have set up in America with regards to health care without looking at the pharmaceutical industry.  To me, that would be like making a film about the high cost of gas without looking at the love affair we have with automobiles.

[milker]

My problem with Moore is that he has a main topic which is well documented, but at the same time he throws stuff that Fox wouldn't even dare throwing, with no data behind it, and the result is total confusion for people like me who like to have hard facts. Unfortunately the overall result is that most of the people swallow everything he says, and I think this is wrong.

I watched Farenheight 9/11 and I didn't understand the hype behind it. Intelligent people would have discarded this as propaganda.

Milker.

[DingoBoi]

intelligent people would know that a movie is not footnoted so you can research your data.

it's not a scientific paper and is not held to the same criteria, but that, in itself, doesn't make it any less invalid. 

I recently watched on Vongo a couple movies.

One was about walmart 'The high cost of low prices'.  It wasn't documented with fact footnotes but even I was pretty shocked at some of their more 'unknown' practices.

The other was about war profiteering in iraq.. don't remember the name.  Again I was shocked, but not really surprised, by what is happening. 

They were both enlightening and I don't discredit them as they ARE based in fact.  Yes, they may have editorial slant to it, but facts are still facts which can be looked up if you want to research it that much.  I don't have time to, but I seriously do not think he would put things in his movie that aren't factually documented. 

The source material is real.  The editing has creative uses sure.  The end result is the same... people got screwed.

[milker]

I guess i'm not shocked because I read the world news everyday? There is life beyond CNN and FOX.

FOX is not footnoted either. I remember O'Reilly saying on air that Le Monde said zilch about the 100 dead in an attack in Irak. So I connect to LeMonde and it was on the first page. I emailed Mr. O'Reilly saying that maybe he thought Le Monde didn't talk about it because he didn't speak French and couldn't understand, but I got no answer.

What I'm trying to say is: it's okay to watch propaganda, and it will tickle you to research the facts if something gives you a boner. The problem is that most of the people take it for granted and don't bother verifying the level of the information. This is what bothers me.

Milker.

[DingoBoi]

tv inherently has validation issues, espeically with live tv or prerecorded 'pretending to be live' tv.

a movie has tons of investment time and research and these movies are based upon facts with directorial flair.

A tv interview can be propaganda.  A movie of this sort would be so slammed if their facts are not correct.  Many of his movies are about personal experience anyways aren't they? 

and as to the 'violation' of trade embargo, it's not like they were fucking trading!

They were presumably seeking medical attention for those people and on journalistic duties.

The government can bite my left nut on this one.  This has nothing to do with the trade embargo and is merely about trying to use any excuse to get him in trouble for making negative comments about the bushit adminstration.

[libvet]

My problem with Moore is that he has a main topic which is well documented, but at the same time he throws stuff that Fox wouldn't even dare throwing, with no data behind it, and the result is total confusion for people like me who like to have hard facts. Unfortunately the overall result is that most of the people swallow everything he says, and I think this is wrong.

I watched Farenheight 9/11 and I didn't understand the hype behind it. Intelligent people would have discarded this as propaganda.

Milker.

Oh, I wouldn't put anything past Fox News.  We are talking about the network that has Sean Hannity as one of it's "stars".  Hannity is so hilariously over the top, it's hard to believe anyone really takes him seriously (I just loved the day he proudly announced the US had found NUCLEAR WARHEAD MISSILES in Iraq or castigated the press for not reporting on Senator Man-On-Dog Santorum's claims that we found WMD all over the place in Iraq and that no one was reporting it or defended Cardinal Law when he was accused of shipping priests who were found to be molesting kids to other parishes.  Or O'Reilly who castigated Jeremy Glick for having the guts to show up and defend his point of view on that show and had O'Reilly shouting "Cut his mic!!!" when Glick wouldn't let O'Reilly continue to talk over him (of course speaking of O'Reilly, he's the same guy that said he'd apologize to the world if we didn't find a massive stockpile of WMD in Iraq and failed to actually do so).

Personally, I am not fond of any cable news channel.  CNN, MSNBC, or Fox.  You would have thought that having 24 hours devoted to nothing but new would be a good thing with lots of time devoted to really in depth reporting, but in reality, we tend to hear more about missing girls in Aruba (as though thousands of unsolved disappearances or Anna Nicole's latest tragedy or the latest rumor about Tomnicolebradangelajennifer than really important things.

[thunter34]

And again, it all boils down to the Almighty Dollar.

They all get in competition over advertising dollars, and so the race to the bottom begins.  Anyone remember that Paula Zahn CNN commercial controversy from a few years back.  Where they (CNN) made some sort of sexual overtones about her as their hot new anchor & there was that zipper sound at the end?  There was quite the ruckus over that- with members of the ad team getting the sack in a display of journalistic outrage.

Yeah, right.

Meanwhile, during Zahn's show, they had a camera set up designed for a wide shot to capture Zahn's shapely legs.  "The Leg Cam", it was called. 

Sensationalism sells.  If one network goes for it, the other has to follow suit or get completely trounced.  It's all business.

[Miss Philicia]

I have a hard time watching Paula Zahn.

[thunter34]

I have a hard time watching Paula Zahn.

Oh, I don't watch her at all.  If anything, her specialty is more the pre-scripted news show presentation- not live interviews and the like. 

I generally prefer to read my news...either online or in a paper.

[jack]

Look, just because this guy pretends to be a lib and anti american so he can make a buck doesnt mean that he is above the law. He violated the law. Most likely he has orchestrated this to get pub for his movie "sicko". The guy is a great promoter, who makes a fortune playing the with fickle hearts of left and ignorant. I wonder if he has sold his HAL stock yet? The guy is playing you all. Suckers. Anyone who believes unions are good for the US auto industry, Bush planned 911, and you can get good medical supplies and health care in a sewer like Cuba is  an idiot.
I always thought he was just your typical brainless lib till I saw the expose on this stock holdings. Haliburton was his biggest holding.hahahahhahaha. suckers.

[Miss Philicia]

::notes frothing::

[aupointillimite]

Michael Moore... oh God... I really have issues with that guy.

I think he's a rather tedious, if occasionally amusing filmmaker.  Calling his films documentaries is like calling Triumph of the Will a documentary.  They're propoganda... albeit unapologetic propoganda... but his message, which I want to believe in, is often dulled by the incredibly blunt and often disingenuous manner in which he chooses to convey it.

He's a brilliant man, but he's devious.  I think he plays on trusting liberals in the same manner that a televangelist plays on trusting fundies.  I don't quite know what to make of him... I'd probably enjoy having a beer with him, but I sure as hell wouldn't want him behind me politically.  I'd be too busy feeling for the metaphorical knife in my back.

He's too easy.  He's too easy to love and he's too easy to hate.  There's no nuance to his work which belies a simplicity on the part of the man... a simplicity that he simply doesn't have.  He's very shrewd.  And I never like seeing populism coming from millionaires.  It's inherently worrying.