fred thompson responds to michael moore
if you’re having trouble viewing the video or would like to save a copy, you can download it as a 1.9mb ogg theora file, fred thompson responds to michael moore. if you have no idea what i’m on about, the above video is a response to the following letter from moore to thompson:
May 15, 2007Senator Fred Thompson
American Enterprise Institute
110 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036Dear Senator Thompson,
Given that it has been publicly reported in The Weekly Standard, a leading neo-conservative publication, that you support Fidel Castro and the Cuban regime by being a purveyor of fine Cuban exports despite the trade embargo, I was surprised to see your recent op ed in a more traditional conservative outlet, The National Review, regarding my trip to Cuba (I suspect you choose The National Review in an effort to pander to an outlet that had criticized you for your opposition to medical malpractice legislation).
In your May 2, 2007 National Review article, “Paradise Island,” you specifically raised concerns about whether my trip to Cuba with 9/11 heroes, who have suffered serious health problems as a result of their exposure to toxic substances at Ground Zero that have gone untreated was somehow going to support Castro ad the Cuban government:
“It always leaves me shaking my head when I read about some big-time actor or director going to Cuba and gushing all over Castro.”
Putting aside the fact that you, like the Bush Administration, seem far more concerned about the trip to Cuba than the health care of these 9/11 heroes, I was struck by the fact that your concerns (including comments about CastroÕs reported financial worth) apparently do not extend to your own conduct, as reported in The Weekly Standard’s April 23, 2007 story, “From the Courthouse to the White House Fred Thompson auditions for the leading role” (emphasis added):
“Thompson’s work space looks just like what the home office of a successful politician or CEO should look like — though a little messier: a large desk, dark wood, leather furniture, lots of books and magazines and newspapers, a flat-screen TV, and box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana.”
In light of your comments regarding Cuba and Castro, do you think the “box upon box of cigars — Montecristos from Havana” that you have in your office have contributed to Castro’s reported wealth?
While I will leave it up to the conservatives to debate your hypocrisy and the Treasury Department to determine whether the “box upon box of cigars” violates the trade embargo, I hereby challenge you to a health care debate.
Survey after survey has indicated that health care is one of the top issues to the American voters. Today, more than 46 million people lack health are coverage, including 9 million children. We pay significantly more than any other country in the world — and get less back. Americans life expectancy is lower than other Ground Zero 9/11 workers live in a society where the Bush Administration has shown more concern about their travel than about their health.
Our debate would provide you an opportunity to appeal to the right wing of the Republican Party by continuing to attack me; it would give me a chance to discuss health care and tell you exactly what happened in Cuba, given your apparent inters; and it would provide the American people an opportunity to see just how serious Hollywood can be, with a purported conservative and an avowed progressive Hollywood personality on stage.
Over the course of the debate, we could specifically address the following issues:
(1) Your work as a lobbyist in light of the fact that the health care and insurance industries have maintained the current health care system through their effective control of the political establishment.
(2) The fact that you raised hundred of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the health care and insurance industries.
(3) Discuss the fact, highlighted in yet another conservative outlet The New York Sun, that you inexplicably wanted to cut funding for AIDS research.
(4) Your relationship with the Frist family and by extension HCA, one of the nation’s largest for-profit hospital chains. It has been reported that former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who was renowned for his over-the-television-screen Schiavo diagnosis) is serving as one of your confidantes on your potential presidential campaign. The Frist family has historically controlled HCA, which paid a record $1.7 billion in civil and criminal fines, including a $631 million penalty for Medicaid fraud — in other words, ripping off the taxpayers.
(5) Discussing whether Arthur Branch, as the District Attorney of Manhattan, supports a woman’s right to choose, gun safety reforms, gay marriage, the trans fat ban and anti-smoking laws (which would impact Cuban cigars, including your Montecristos).
Like American Idol, we could even have the country vote to determine which one of us wins the debate. Though in the spirit of full disclosure, I feel obligated to forewarn you that I was the winner of the 1971-72 Detroit Free Press Debate Award for the state of Michigan.
The winner of our health care debate could even light a Victory cigar with one of your Montecristos (though we may want to consider shopping them to the safe house where I have put a master copy of SiCKO in the event that the Bush Administration tries to seize the film).
Sincerely,
Michael Moore
moore’s letter is written in response to an article thompson published earlier this month which can also be found on the thompson report:
The Myth of Cuban Health Care
You might have read the stories about filmmaker Michael Moore taking ailing workers from Ground Zero in Manhattan to Cuba for free medical treatments. According to reports, he filmed the trip for a new movie that bashes America for not having government-provided health care.
Now, I have no expectation that Moore is going to tell the truth about Cuba or health care. I defend his right to do what he does, but Moore’s talent for clever falsehoods has been too well documented. Simply calling his movies documentaries rather than works of fiction, I think, may be the biggest fiction of all.
While this PR stunt has obviously been successful — here I am talking about it — Moore’s a piker compared to Fidel Castro and his regime. Moore just parrots the story they created — one of the most successful public relations coups in history. This is the story of free, high quality Cuban health care.
The truth is that Cuban medical care has never recovered from Castro’s takeover — when the country’s health care ranked among the world’s best. He won the support of the Cuban people by promising to replace Batista’s dictatorship with free elections, and to end corruption. Once in power, though, he made himself dictator and instituted Soviet-style Communism. Cubans not only failed to regain their democratic rights, their economy plunged into centrally planned poverty.
As many as half of Cuba’s doctors fled almost immediately — and defections continue to this day. Castro won’t allow observers in to monitor his nation’s true state, but defectors tell us that many Cubans live with permanent malnutrition and long waits for even basic medical services. Many treatments we take for granted aren’t available at all — except to the Communist elite or foreigners with dollars.
For them, Castro keeps “show” clinics equipped with the best medicines and technologies available. It was almost certainly one of these that Moore went to, if the stories in the NY Post and The Daily News are true.
Nothing about this story inspires doubt, though. Elements in Hollywood have been infatuated with the Cuban commander for years. It always leaves me shaking my head when I read about some big-time actor or director going to Cuba and gushing all over Castro. And, regular as rain, they bring up the health care myth when they come home.
What is it that leads people to value theoretically “free” health care, even when it’s lousy or nonexistent, over a free society that actually delivers health care? You might have to deal with creditors after you go to the emergency ward in America, but no one is denied medical care here. I guarantee even the poorest Americans are getting far better medical services than many Cubans.
According to Forbes magazine, by the way, Castro is now personally worth approximately $900 million. So when he desperately needed medical treatment recently, he could afford to fly a Spanish surgeon, with equipment, on a chartered jet to Cuba. What does that say about free Cuban health care?
The other thing that irks me about Moore and his cohort in Hollywood is their complete lack of sympathy for fellow artists persecuted for opposing the Castro regime. Pro-democracy activists are routinely threatened and imprisoned, but Castro remains a hero to many here. According to human rights organizations, these prisoners of conscience are often beaten and denied medical treatment, sanitation or even adequate nutrition.
If Moore wants a subject for a real documentary, I would suggest looking into the life of Cuban painter and award-winning documentarian Nicolás Guillén Landrián. He was denied the right to practice his art for using the Beatles’ song, “The Fool on the Hill,” as background music behind footage of Castro climbing a mountain. Later, he was given plenty of free Cuban health care when he was confined for years in a “mental institution” and given devastating, repeated electroshock “treatments.”
There are many other artists and activists who have enjoyed similar treatment. I suspect we’ll see movies with sympathetic portrayals of terrorists held in Guantanamo before we ever hear about the torture of true Cuban heroes. Even Andy Garcia’s brilliant fictionalized movie about the real Cuban experience, “The Lost City,” was given the Hollywood silent treatment. My bet, though, is that we’ll hear lots about how Michael Moore showed that Cuba’s socialized medicine is better than ours.
So go ahead and start working on the Oscar speech, Michael.
fred, i’m going to smoke a montecristo in your honor as soon as i get home. run, fred. run.