Welp, I finally got to watch Sicko tonight. I’d have to say it was one of the better (if not best) Moore movies.

If you go by some of the forums and blogs out there, you’d think everyone either idolizes or demonizes Moore. But, as par the course, those are just the loudest reactionaries on both sides of the fence. Moore is an excellent polemicist, and that draws out the worst in people.

I don’t particularly care for Moore, but I don’t spend time micro-analyzing his movies hoping to catch some sloppy editing. Sicko was not meant to be a comprehensive review of healthcare systems, whether in the U.S. or the four other countries he travels to. Similar to his prior works and any documentary or movie, really, it presented the debate in the filmmaker’s framework. Generalizations are necessary in a 2 hour film. Hopefully no one would take away everything in Sicko as the gospel truth, just as no one should do the same with a press conference or 60 Minutes report.

The oddest part of the film was the bit where he mails a check to some nutjob writing for an “anti-Moore” blog. Its connection to healthcare was tenuous at best. Obviously it was meant to rile the nutjobs (similar to many of the special features on the DVD).

And that it did. I did a quick Google, found the site. Spent too much time (read: 5 minutes) reading a few of the posts responding to said part of the film. I thought briefly of commenting, but appealing to the irrational is a pretty futile exercise. Do you pet rabid dogs? Same concept.