Here’s the problem with Joe Klein.
April 16, 2007 11:19
Just What Liberals Need
Michael Moore is a disgrace.
That’s the whole post. That’s the entirety of Klein’s analysis. So, I had to follow the link to discover what it is, exactly, that makes Michael Moore a disgrace.
Guess what? Michael Moore decided to make a movie called Sicko about the state of health care in America. As part of that film he contacted people that helped clean up the ground zero site at the World Trade Center and that are now suffering from respiratory problems. He took them to Cuba for free treatment.
Moore…wanted to highlight that health care in the communist country is free. Cuban doctors are also said to have developed new techniques for treating lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses.
One of the applicants contacted to take part on the trip was Michael McCormack, a disabled medic who found an American flag at Ground Zero that once flew atop the Twin Towers.
McCormack said: “What he [Moore] wanted to do is shove it up George W’s rear end that 9/11 heroes had to go to a communist country to get adequate health care.”
John Feal, who runs the Fealgood Foundation to help raise money for the Ground Zero workers was approached by Moore to find candidates for the trip.
He called the visit a success saying: “From what I heard through the grapevine, those people that went are utterly happy.”
Okay. Klein sarcastically asserts that this stunt by Moore is exactly what liberals need. Then he says that Moore is a disgrace. Let’s take these two things separately.
If Michael Moore wanted to stick it in George Bush’s rear end, this probably isn’t the best way to do it. Why? Because the right-wing will howl like mad that Michael Moore traveled to Cuba, and that he is a communist lover, and that Castro is a bad person that has tortured people, and so on. And, given all that white-hot outrage, Michael Moore’s point about health care will be drowned out. Why? Well, that leads us to the second part.
Moore’s message will be drowned out because the people representing the left on our teevees and in our weekly magazines (like Time) will not rebut the right-wing noise machine. Instead, they will join in with them and call Michael Moore a disgrace. They will not say, for example, “Michael Moore is making a very important point.” They’ll say, “Michael Moore is a disgrace.”
This is why our left-leaning pundits have totally lost the confidence of the left in this country. They are complete capitulators.
They see a leftie, not even a Democrat, do something that the right will criticize…and they run for cover. Michael Moore isn’t a disgrace for pointing out that Cuba has more compassion for those in need of health care than America. It’s a disgrace that it is so easy to make this point.
It would be more accurate to say that Michael Moore doesn’t understand how to win a political argument. If he was smarter, he would have gone to Costa Rica or Norway to make his point. As long as wankers like Joe Klein are around to agree with Bill O’Reilly…visiting Cuba or Venezuela or Syria will trump all other considerations and make anything you have to say not only irrelevant, but a disgrace.
I have a good friend in Argentina, who 15 years ago had bike accident, and became paralyzed from the neck down. At the time, the best place for him to seek treatment was Cuba (maybe they were experimenting with stem cells at that time). This guy had the means to go anywhere in the world, but because of the Cuban research at the time, that was were he chose to go.
Maybe there is a similar reason why MM decided to go there.
Found this
Joe Klein can go suck eggs. I could give a damn why Moore took those people to Cuba. At least they are getting some help.
Those guys are NEVER happy with us.
As for Michael Moore, he’s very useful to the Left for all sorts of reasons:
As in, “Hey, maybe Moore shouldn’t have taken them to CUBA, but the REAL ISSUE is why these guys couldn’t get decent medical care in the United States!”
I’m no public relations genius and even I thought of the appropriate response.
Oh, and Joe Klein is a Reich wing tool. Pay him no nevermind.
I absolutely love MM and I think this is brilliant. It doesn’t make any difference what he does he will get absolutely and completely savaged by the wingnuts and unfortunately some liberals like to distance themselves from him also-why I really don’t know.
If even a portion of the truth gets through to the public about the difference between Cuba’s healthcare and ours and makes people to start to wonder about the massive difference to our great disadvantage than I think this ‘stunt’ just might help tip many people’s ideas on single payer here as being a good thing.
The fucking disgrace is that ground zero workers or anyone would have to leave the country to get any kind of decent, FREE medical care.
Which reminds me of what Castro offered during Katrina….to send 1,600 medical people with all their own equipment and some 35 fucking tons of medical supplies and tons of food to go to NO and other areas to help save peoples lives……how many lives were lost because bush refused to even acknowledge Castro’s offer?
As for Joe Klein…did he just jump the shark with this stupid post of his? I hope so, ‘liberals’ like him we don’t fucken need.
Who the heck is Joe Klein?
Oh yeah, he’s Anonymous.
Well, I’m anonymous, too. And I think Michael Moore is a He-man, a hu-Man, and a He-ro.
So lets get this straight. Once again, we have to watch the way we say something. We have to make sure that before we come out and say something and say it with the heartfelt emotion that comes out when someone speaks from the heart, we had better be extra careful so that no one gets hurt!
Gee, I thought that is wht we have been doing for the past 6 years or maybe even longer. And look what it has gotten us. Just look!.
Well, ya know what- Fuck joe klein and Booman- don’t be stupid. Michael Moore is saying something. He is saying it to anyone that wants to hear what he has to say! And ya know what?- He may ruffle alot of feathers but his past efforts have at least gotten All of us talking- And that is a hell of alot of better than trying to solve our problems in the way we are trying to do it in Iraq!
There are 300plus million in this once great country and I can assure you that there are a hell of alot of those 300m million that really don’t give a shit if good old joe drops dead or whatever. He is a talking bag of shit Boo and he aint talking for a majority of us!
I think the problem is that klein has an audience at all or better yet – he’s given one.
That said, Cuba has a health care system which puts ours to shame. They’ve donated doctors to developing nations throughout the world – with NO STRINGS! And they have provided free care and transportation to South Americans needing special care – like eye surgery.
Those are but a few facts.
(Klein is a shill who is no “liberal” or “progressive”; but he pretends to play one. He has absolute NO CRED.
Who hired him to “speak” for liberals? Time, Inc? And the rest of the MSM nods and treats him like a sage. After all the crap that’s come out of the wrong end of him, and put in print or on tv, why is it assumed that he is legitimate? I’m tired of him being stuffed down our throats unwillingly.
How about we hire Borat to officially speak for Time or for the MSM in general? While I’m at it, there was a teacher in 5th grade that I really hated; I think I’ll hire Bobcat Goldthwait to speak for him.
New Rule
Joke Line is a disgrace….bewcause he is a republican shill and a Bush sycophant.
From the MediaMatters.org site:
Maybe the REAL point that everyone should make is this: people had to go to Cuba, that evil bastion of communism, to get health care. Could they get free care here? NO. That’s this country’s disgrace, not Michael Moore’s.
It’s amazing how the right will stick up for their provacateurs, but some on the right will run from the people on their side. Grow a spine already!
Moore would not have the same impact if he’d gone to Costa Rica or Norway to make his point. The best way to anger people, and make them pay attention, is to go to the most extreme place – Cuba. How much free publicity will he get, and how many people will be shocked, shocked to learn that Cuba has good medical care? And how many of them think about that later? More than a few I bet.
Joke Line said something stupid?
Zzzzzz…..
Does anyone really give a shit what Joe Klein has to say?
There once was a pundit named Joe,
In need of expanded cash flow;
“No worries”, says Klein,
“I just have to find,
Some more corporate dick I can blow.”
to Cuba, a poor underdeveloped nation under an embargo and repressive rule. That’s an unbelievable disgrace, and the cause is the shockingly callous attitude of the healthcare industry here – and of course Republican rule, which is far more concerned with corporate profit than citizen health.
At least in one very important measure of well-being: the infant mortality rate.
Infant mortality rate
Cuba: 6.2 per 100,000, ranking 181 out of 221 nations (with #1 being the highest rate and #221 the lowest)
United States: 6.43 per 100,000, ranking 179th.
Canada: 4.69 per 100,000, ranking 199th.
Sweden: 2.76 per 100,000, ranking 220th.
So the United States has an infant mortality rate on par with that of a Third World communist dictatorship.
Ah, lovely. We should be so proud.
This is from Savethechildren.org:
I wonder if the Right To Lifers ever get up in arms about the infant mortality rate? Oh no, I forgot…they’re only interested in the child during the first six months of gestation (so long as they don’t have to pay any tax money for neonatal care). After that, the kid is ON HIS OWN.
Let’s see, we can visit, bleed manufacturing jobs and maintain a humongous trade deficit with another, much larger communist country, but Cuba is still a no-no. I’m sure it makes perfect sense to the critters inside the beltway.
they have accepted a framework for interpreting patriotism in which only “MM is a disgrace” appears to have actual meaning. They have no way of understanding “a point” of that kind, and the reason it’s JUST framing is that of course it IS possible to understand the plight of ground zero workers in terms of health care statistics and access… objectively speaking such frames do apply and are fundamentally apt.
Why are they not available? Because to avail of them requires getting rid of the national-security framework of modern geopolitik, i.e. modern feudalism.
Bravo to Micheal Moore.
One would have thought it would have worn off by now.
There are people who live in the illusion that there is a left in the US and that the Democrats are it. No wonder we are flying in ever decreasing concentric circles clockwise.