Oh I'm not complaining!

I said it was one of my favorite things, and I meant it.

having the Democrats ram a liberal version of healthcare reform down Americans' throats will only succeed in them getting swept out of office in '10 and '12.

Right, so the Democrats should heed your advice because pandering to Republicans in order to get them to play along has been proven to be SUCH a good idea.

"Don't propose single-payer or we Republicans won't vote with you and you'll get voted out of office!" Republicans warned, and Democrats, trembling, agreed.

"Wait, a public option, did we say we'd vote for that? No, sorry, remove the public option or we won't vote with you and you'll get voted out of office!" Republicans said, and the Democrats, trembling, agreed.

"Oh, did I say we'd vote with you?" Republicans said. "Bwah ha ha ha...."

So Democrats sold out the public option to please Republicans, and the result is that they're getting precisely as many Republican votes as if they'd proposed single-payer universal French-style care.

Time to stop trying to please the Republicans, is the obvious lesson. Not that anyone is learning.....

in which the Fox producer is caught staging all the cheering?

It was just her, Fox claims, she didn't know better. Which is entirely belied by the video, all she does is duck down and continue doing it. Rather than, you know, the reaction being "What are you doing??!" and pulling her out. They were clearly just telling her "No no, you're not supposed to be seen on camera doing that!"

The whole thing was produced by FOX, why would anyone else want to cover it? Of course, they did anyway....

Oh the Paglia-Drudge-Limbaugh hoards are going to love this review.

I love your work, Stephanie, but on this one I couldn't disagree more. I think you're dead wrong, for instance, that Moore is preaching to the converted and won't change any other minds. Conservatives, good old rock-ribbed Republican conservatives, were singing the praises of "Sicko" and saying that it had opened their eyes.

Michael Moore has a certain style, it's not at all dry, traditional documentary, no. That's his style, and it works extremely well.

I also disagree with "playing fast and loose with the facts". Fahrenheit 911 was chided by people for playing "fast and loose" also, and now as you admit it seems a surprisingly, almost embarrassingly, fact-based look at the Bush years. Quibbling with an interpretation here or a tactic there is one thing, but this kind of panning of the whole piece because of those is grossly unfair.

I also, and this is the worst, simply despise the habit of pre-loading any objections to dismissals of Moore's work as coming from "hypnotized" followers, similar to how anyone supprting Barack Obama for President last year was so often dismissed in this zine as an "Obamabot". It's childish, anti-intellectual, dismissive name calling, and is no substitute for actual debate.

Mostly however I simply think your main thesis is wrong. Michael Moore does what he does, in all the ways you describe, precisely to reach the not yet converted, and by all accounts succeeds. The rest of us are cheering him on for exactly that reason, hoping that someone else will finally pay attention. That's what drives his style, the entertainment factor is there precisely for that reason. Another dry, black and white (figuratively speaking) recitation of facts and figures would be the kind that reaches only the converted, mostly because almost no one else would see it.

In fact, the tone of these responses are nearly identical. Zacharek is a conservative. She's a bitch.

This is utter nonsense. I for one wrote nothing of the sort, and I saw others who didn't either.

You're doing the same thing as what I objected to in this review (after praising her work in general) which is reducing any disagreement to something that can be dismissed as a cartoon, coming from hypnotized zombies, or in your case "nearly identical" responses.

Saying that there's nothing wrong with the substantive argument in Zacharek's review is absurd. We're being told, to begin with, that Michael Moore is a showman who resorts to sensationalism. This usually means that the person is a sellout, a non-serious Barnum and Bailey type who sacrifices authenticity in his greed to reach a wider audience. In fact it almost always means that, and it's certainly implied here.

Then, in practically the same sentence, she claims that her main problem with Moore is that he's preaching to the converted, that there's no attempt on his part to reach a wider audience than those "zombie" followers who already agree with him.

My problem with this isn't that it's mean-spirited, it's that it's incoherent.

The suggestion that there's some personal hatred of Moore clouding the lens here is a natural one, especially, as in my case, if one generally likes her work, and I actually love her work. Critics get to criticize, and readers get to criticize back. That's how it works.