Denis needs another vacation

Denis: I thought that a week of luxuriating in the fresh salt air would have repaired some of your liberal synapses.

Either the vacation did you no good or you’re just being sarcastic. I can’t tell which. But on a charitable note: Have you expelled all of that water from your lungs yet?

Here’s one definition of a documentary: A book or film that presents facts objectively without editorializing or inserting fictional matter. I haven’t seen any of Moore’s films. Maybe I ought to be fair to him and defer comment until I see them. But I don’t think I owe him any fairness when I read the following quotes he’s uttered about America and Americans while overseas:

• British Paper-The Mirror - "They (Americans) are possibly the dumbest people on the planet
. . . in thrall to conniving, thieving smug [pieces of the human anatomy]," Moore intoned. "We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing."

• In Munich - "That's why we're smiling all the time," he told a rapturous throng in Munich. "You can see us coming down the street. You know, `Hey! Hi! How's it going?' We've got that big [expletive] grin on our face all the time because our brains aren't loaded down."

• In England - "You're stuck with being connected to this country of mine, which is known for bringing sadness and misery to places around the globe." In Liverpool, he paused to contemplate the epicenters of evil in the modern world: "It's all part of the same ball of wax, right? The oil companies, Israel, Halliburton."

• In An Open Letter to the German people in Die Zeit, Moore asked, "Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" Then he began to reflect on things economic. His central insight here is that the American economy, like its people, is pretty crappy, too: "Don't go the American way when it comes to economics, jobs and services for the poor and immigrants. It is the wrong way."

• Interview with Japanese newspaper - "The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich."

Is a man who holds such opinions capable of being objective and of keeping propaganda out of his films? I thoroughly doubt it.

And I’ve looked for corroboration that a prize has been offered for proving inaccuracies in Fahrenheit 9/11 and can’t find any. Did you get this directly from Moore’s website?

On the use of the word "mistake"

National leaders never made “mistakes” before the Clinton machine showed up. “We just made a mistake” is what it said when it was found to have in its possession 500 FBI files that it shouldn’t have had. It said something like We didn't know this was against the law. Those files gave it the kind of information it needed to intimidate the federal government that it had when it was the “boss” of Arkansas.

On socialized medicine

Denis: I’ve seen socialized medicine in person. My friend from Liverpool took me to visit his mother in hospitals twice over the years. These hospitals are best described as less than what St. Joseph’s Hospital was 40 years ago. They are aging buildings without air conditioning. The richer types over there can get their own health care and I’m sure their hospitals are much better. But I trust that the experiment of government-controlled socialized health care in the US will result in a two-tiered system like I saw in England. And then maybe even you will be bitching about your taxes as the government attempts to close the gap it created.

And I mean it very strongly when I say I am opposed to my tax money being used to perform elective abortions.

And then I fail to understand this stuff about me being Mexican. I've been lying to all of you all this time anyway so I might as well come clean. I am no longer of Polish and German heritage. I am French.