In my last Spot-on column, I took a look at Michael Moore’s new movie Sicko. Lots of people are writing about it, largely from a public policy standpoint, but I wanted to look at it more as a film. Moore takes a lot of heat, even from his supporters, for some of his techniques, and I wanted to explore the possible justification for his emphasis on emotion and drama over facts and accuracy.
Just the Facts, Ma’am, Just the Facts?
By the way, I reference Up Close & Personal (1996) which kind of sucks as a movie, very glossy and slick, but did lead to the book Monster: Living Off the Big Screen.
Tags: Michael Moore, Sicko, documentaries
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The Pop View Says:
T. A. Frank wrote a piece on NY Times columnist Bob Herbert in the Washington Monthly that touched on some of these same issues. Frank essentially argues that Herbert doesn’t have the influence of some of his Times colleagues because he focuses on less flashy topics, uses statistics instead of emotional appeals and doesn’t employ styles over substance.
On national issues, however, Herbert doesn’t write as if he knows that his readers are informed, jaded, and hard to hook.
This is why, for example, Herbert’s column in August decrying conservative attempts to block the expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program as “cruel” was read less than Paul Krugman’s column one day earlier on the same topic, which started with a deliberately specious case for abolishing public schools. Krugman’s effort, which made the Times Web site’s top-25-most-e-mailed-articles list, wasn’t necessarily revelatory, but it did try to weave in a provocative analogy rather than simply restate established liberal opinion.