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Michael Moore Smacks Wolf Blitzer Around on 'SICKO,' the War, and Why CNN Sucks

by Kim Voynar Jul 10th 2007 // 3:02PM

Filed under: Documentary, Independent, Celebrities and Controversy, The Weinstein Co., Michael Moore, Cinematical Indie



Oh, boy. This is the best thing I've woken up to in a long time. For the first time in three years, Michael Moore appeared on CNN, ostensibly to talk about his film SICKO. Unfortunately for Blitzer, someone at CNN decided to precede Blitzer's interview with a little piece titled "SICKO Reality Check" by Dr. Sanjay Gupta (who is, I expect, now at the top of Moore's "People I Hate" list), which didn't exactly get things off on a good note. After Gupta's "analysis" of Moore's facts, somebody took the leash off Moore, who was on standby -- and then, as they say, the deluge.

Poor Blitzer, he never stood a chance.

It's interesting, too, that once Moore really gets going laying into Blitzer about Gupta, accusing him of being dead-wrong in his report (right about the 8:24 mark), the little blurb beneath Moore changes to "Moore Accused of Fudging Some Facts in SICKO." Uh, how about a blurb reading "And Now We Watch as Moore Smacks Blitzer Up One Side and Down the Other" -- that blurb is exactly the kind of biased "crap" (you just know that's not the word Moore really wanted to use) in the guise of impartiality that Moore is talking about from CNN, and I have to wonder if anyone there at CNN headquarters even appreciated the irony of that.

To his credit, Blitzer does finally manage to get a word in edgewise, and when he does, he distracts Moore from his rant by asking which presidential candidate Moore supports on the health care issue. As a journalistic technique, that's a bit like distracting a rabid dog from killing you by tossing a piece of steak so you can get away before he goes for the kill -- but it does get Moore talking about health care again. Blitzer succeeds in further redirecting Moore's latent rage by showing him a brief clip of Rudy Guiliani at a debate of the Republican candidates. It takes Moore all of about four seconds for Moore to lambast Guiliani as being against the Medicare and the senior citizens of the country -- and Blitzer gets a bit of a breather.

As Moore promised Blitzer during his rant against Gupta, it didn't take long for Moore and his minions to post a bunch of facts on the SICKO website to counter the facts Gupta asserted in his piece. Moore's team goes toe-to-toe with CNN's facts on everything from the US versus Cuba on health care to outright accusing CNN of libel:

"But no matter how much Moore fudged the facts, and he did fudge some facts..."
  • This is libel. There is not a single fact that is "fudged" in the film. No one has proven a single fact in the film wrong. We expect CNN to correct their mistakes on the air and to apologize to their viewers.
Whew. Watch the whole 15 minute fun-fest yourself, then Moore's counter to CNN on his site, and see what you think. Love Moore or hate him, you've gotta admire the man's chutzpah. As for Blitzer, he might need some universal health care to take care of that beating Moore gave him. Dang.

[ via Movie City News ]

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Tags: cinematical, cnn, film, health care, medicare, michael moore, MichaelMoore, movie, sicko, social security, universal health care, wolf blitzer

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