Quite honestly, I have never been a fan of Michael Moore films, but Sicko was incredible! I must give Mr. Moore a great deal of credit because, if given enough time, he could modify anyone’s opinion on a given topic. If he couldn’t successfully modify our view, he would certainly make you look at the situation from a different angle.

It is kind of eerie that we watched a film on socialistic values in class last Wednesday because I had just written a long term paper for my Investments course on the terrible consequences of taking on socialistic traits and how they would impact the United States’ society. I wish now that I would have seen this film a few hours earlier, as it definitely would have challenged my perception of the topics I focused on; education, business, and healthcare.

It is quite impressive how well doctors in other parts of the world do financially considering they are part of a socialistic healthcare program. It seems almost too perfect for Canada, France, and England to all have “flawless” healthcare systems – in fact it is. Although Mr. Moore did an excellent job of portraying only one side of the worldwide healthcare situation, he lost some credibility when he neglected to touch on the negative areas of socialistic programs. He also made a mistake of not truthfully acknowledging the benefits of that the American people have – or so the media tells us there are benefits. I do understand that it would have defeated the purpose of Sicko to examine the positive and negatives of each system, as Mr. Moore was obviously shooting a “persuasive” style documentary.

After watching this film and focusing on how media twists society’s minds to believe what it tells the public, I had to stop and examine the types of media that I focus a great deal of my attention on everyday. Every morning I have to get my CNN and MSNBC fix, both of which tell the story from the US point of view. Then I head off to work where I serve as a research analyst in the government affairs division of a local firm – there I also focus on the US point of view through countless hours of legislative research and justifying what I find to the general public. As I disseminate the information to the public, it is clear to me that I am essentially trying to get our audience to either wholly support or oppose the piece of legislation I am working on. At school the only class, the only hour of my day where US theories are challenged, is in my Latin-American Culture course. It is sad to say, and very hard for me to accept, that I have fallen victim to the US media! As much as this thought frustrates me, it upsets me even more because I spent an entire semester studying all around the world in attempt to escape the US media plague. As I was wrapping up my semester of world studies I had one professor tell me (and the rest of the class) to watch our actions and reactions carefully or we would soon slip back into the US mainstream – well he was absolutely right. I have started to turn to other sources that I followed during my semester abroad for news sources such as BBC various leading newspapers from around the world. I especially love to compare the US headlines with that of China or Turkey, because they often differ greatly. This is my step to comfort my fears of becoming another “dumb American.” There is a reason why the dumb American jokes exist; they exist partially because we forget how to and lose the ability to think for ourselves.

Although Mr. Moore generally doesn’t appeal to me, it is probably very evident that he hid a soft spot with me in the film Sicko. It made me step back and think about just how much I do buy into American media and how much I actually should buy into it. It wasn’t so much that Sicko was related to a major concern of mine, even though the healthcare dilemma should be a priority for my generation, it was more just the way the film really provoked my thoughts.

Thank you Mr. Moore for challenging my media digestion process – someday I will partially blame him for turning me into a cynical old lady at a very young age!