If you or I were to be the target of a blatantly politically motivated investigation by the US government, we’d be sweating. When it happens to Michael Moore, he’s smiling. The US Treasury department is investigating Moore for bringing ‘ailing September 11 rescue workers’ to Cuba for medical treatment, despite our longstanding travel ban against the country.
Such an investigation is astonishingly politically tone deaf: Moore brought them to Cuba to illustrate what bad shape the US health care system is in for his upcoming movie, Sicko. This investigation doesn’t just kick up controversy that will help to sell the film, it gives Moore a further platform to talk about what a shambles America’s health care system is in (and as someone who just left a job with very good insurance, I’m aware that something as simple as breaking an arm could put me in a major financial hole. If I get cancer I might as well just die rather than take the massive monetary hit).
"The government going after Michael Moore is like Paris Hilton going to the clink: It’s a brand extension," crisis management and PR expert Eric Dezenhall told Variety. "It can only help his career. It validates his shtick that he’s the little guy being silenced by a large and sinister voice."
Things are getting downright Nixonian in the final days of the Bush presidency, and it’s almost hilarious.
Sicko opens in June – I can’t wait to hear the shriveled, soulless conservatives rising to defend a health care system that keeps people from getting the treatment they need simply because of money. It seems to me that if you work in the health insurance industry, you’re probably going to hell. There’s a spot for you next to the oil company people and the advertising folks.