[Marxism] Michael Moore: An Awesome First Night for "SiCKO"

[Joaquin Bustelo]

Sayan says:

"I've a question: there's been some criticism in the press (e.g. in a signed
editorial in the New York Times) that Moore "lied" -- that the treatment
center where the people he took to Cuba got treated, was actually NOT one
for the common people in Cuba but one for "tourists" and Cuban
dignitaries....

"Does anyone know if there's any basis to this charge by the New York
Times?" 

The article Sayan refers to is here:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/05/opinion/05thu4.html>. It is not a "signed
editorial" but an "editorial observer" personal opinion column by Philip
Boffey, who has been on the Times's editorial board for many, many years,
since shortly after he authored an expose of the National Academy of
Sciences back in 1975.  

That book, highly thought of at the time, provided the occasion for an
incisive review-essay by Stephen Jay Gould that began, "No myth deserves a
more emphatic death than the idea that science is an inherently impartial
and objective enterprise. Objectivity after all has been battered -- by
everything from Thomas Kuhn to Watergate. Yet it continues to thrive among
working scientists because it serves us so well.... [A] self-serving
statement that enhances the social prestige and political clout of
scientists."

I mention this because if memory serves, there are some people on this list
who worship at the feet of the goddess of objectivity. 

Me, I strive merely for *accuracy* -- and its contrary drives me up the
wall, especially when presented in "objective" drag at the service of a
cause like the denigration of Cuba.

With that in mind, let's look at Sayan's post.

First, we have the use of the word "lied" (within "quotation marks") with
Boffey's piece (inaccurately described as a "signed editorial") as the only
specific reference. So I searched for the word "lied" -- Sayan did, after
all, put it "in quotes" -- and could not find it in the piece he alluded to.

So I did a Google News search for "Moore Cuba lied" -- without quotation
marks in the search box, so it would turn up any articles where all three of
these words appeared. Got about a half dozen hits. In every single one,
every use of the word "lied" was in reference to statements by the U.S.
government. 

There was not a single article --NOT ONE!-- turned up by the Google news
search that claims Moore "lied" about the character of the Cuban facility,
making Sayan's assertion even more scandalously inaccurate: Not only does
the NY Times article he alludes to not make the claim he "lied," there do
not seem to be any other articles that used this word in this context
either, making his allusion to the NY Times piece, introduced with the
abbreviation e.g., which stands for the Latin phrase "exempli gratia,"
meaning "for example," especially egregious, because not only was the piece
NOT an example of the claimed phenomenon, the alleged phenomenon does not
appear to exist -- at least not in the press universe indexed by Google.

OK, so Sayan misremembered the use of the specific word "lied," the
substance of the word is there at any rate, isn't it?

Not exactly, not in Boffey's column. This is what he says: "As for Cuba, can
it really be true that three volunteers who worked on the smoldering World
Trade Center pile after 9/11 were unable to afford care in this country and
had to visit Cuba to get it? The hospital they went to reportedly caters to
dignitaries and foreign tourists and is hardly representative of health care
for the Cuban masses."

Notice first the weasel word "reportedly." It is there because Boffey could
not find an indisputably authoritative source that would let him make the
assertion that follows. And notice the second weasel word immediately
following reportedly: "caters." This verb suggests a focus or central
concern, however NOT *necessarily* an exclusive one.

I did try to chase down the claim via by googling "moore cuba foreigners." I
got 19 hits, mostly for right-wing outlets who source their claims to the
Cuban American National Foundation or counterrevolutionary Mafia Cuba
academic "experts." 

And even supposedly reputable rags, like the Latin Business Chronicle, turns
to these sources. Their article
<http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=1356> is focused
exclusively on the claims of two such individuals, Florida International
University professor Jorge Salazar Carrillo, who also happens to be --oh
happy coincidence!-- an anti-Cuba calumnist for El Nuevo Herald; and the
notorious Jaime Suchliki, who --the second item in the google web search
claims-- is the originator of the statement “Only those who are doing
something illegal should be worried about the U.S. government's actions.”

Suchliki is a "doctor" who got his PhD. from the highly prestigious Texas
Christian University. He is the "Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished
Professor and Director, Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies," at
Suntan U., a.k.a. the University of Miami. 

One can gauge Suchliki's academic "objectivity" from this passage: "The
dynastic succession from Fidel to his brother unfortunately is currently
proceeding smoothly. The inevitable transition that we all want toward a
democratic, open society will be difficult and lengthy. It will require, in
addition to maintaining current U. S. policy, a major effort in several
areas: public diplomacy and communication; diplomatic initiatives; support
for the dissidents and human rights activists as well as for a civil society
in the island; and a variety of covert operations to weaken the successor
regimes."

But I also came across an article in Scientific American, with the more
nuanced headline, "Health care in Cuba more complicated than on SiCKO." It
is here:
<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?alias=health-care-in-cuba-more&chanID=sa00
3&modsrc=reuters>. 

It is, as it turns out, a Reuters dispatch:

"Hospitals in Cuba are often shabby and badly-lit, and lack equipment and
medicines. But the health system built by President Fidel Castro's
government has produced results on a par with rich nations using the
resources of a developing country....

"On key statistics measured by the World Health Organization, Cuba is in
line with the United States.

"Yet the United States spends more than 26 times as much on health, $6,096
per person a year, compared with only $229 in Cuba, the WHO figures show."

The Reuters article is by no means favorable to Cuba: it includes many of
the usual stupid slanders from gusano medical mercenaries: 

"'In Cuba, the elite hospitals are as good as here, if not better,' said
Leonel Cordova, a Cuban doctor who works as a emergency room physician at
Miami's Baptist Hospital.

"'The hospitals dedicated to the health of regular citizens are a disaster,'
said Cordova, who was sent to work in Zimbabwe and defected in 2000."

However, it does have a very notable passage that quite definitively answers
Sayan's question. The passage is given with a favorite trick of anti-Cuba
propagandists, claiming that, yes, education, or nutrition, or health care
of whatever in Cuba USED to be good, but it has gone to the dogs.

"While Cuba has 73,000 doctors, twice as many doctors per capita as the
United States, in recent years it has sent as many as 15,000 to work in the
slums of Venezuela, its main political ally, in exchange for vital oil
supplies.

"The export of medical services has hurt Cuba's family doctor system and
caused longer waits at health centers.

"At the Havana clinic where Moore's American patients received free
check-ups in March for respiratory problems and bone fractures suffered at
Ground Zero, Ivonne Torres reads a Buddhist text as she waits for an
appointment.

"'The attention is pretty good, but it was a million times better six years
ago, when we always saw the same doctor,' said Torres, who suffers from
tachycardia."

*  *  *

So that's the answer to Sayan's question. The Cuban clinic where the 9/11
rescue workers were examined is simply one more clinic serving the
population, not a special one isolated from the strains on the health care
system as a whole.

Actually, I KNEW that from the second I read Sayan's post, and without even
knowing that Sayan had misquoted the NY Times and press accounts generally,
but just from the logic of the situation.

The Cuban authorities who authorized Moore's visit with the rescue workers
obviously knew what the filmmaker was up to. It would have been IDIOTIC to
send Moore and his friends to an exclusive foreigners- and bureaucrats-only
facility, even if Cuba HAD such clinics, which it does not. And it would
have been IDIOTIC for Moore to have included it in the film if that's the
way it had actually happened. And neither the Cubans nor Moore are idiots.
QED.

What is most interesting in this is how perfectly The New York Times's
Boffey suckered Sayan into believing that Moore had "lied." How craftily
Boffey casts his criticism so as to leave the typical reader the
counterfactual IMPRESSION that Moore lied, while skillfully avoiding making
a statement that is literally and demonstrably false.

This sort of swindle is based on something else, however, which I would urge
Sayan to ponder. It counts on the reader having been acculturated to
*trusting*  the New York Times and *distrusting* the critics of the
capitalist and imperialist system the Times defends. 

Joaquín