Michael Moore and "Sicko"

The above is a photo of activist Michael Moore on the west steps of the Colorado state capitol, taken by myself with my new $10, match-box sized digital camera (-the bottom right is apparently dominated by a lady's hat. I never claimed I was a professional photographer-). For the Denver crowd, dark-haired news reporter Raj Chohan faces Moore and is asking a stupid question, and attorney/activist Michael Huttner appears at the bottom left, with hand on chin.

After Moore gave his speech to the gathered crowd of Coloradoans on the sorry state of health care in this country, which is the subject of his new movie, "Sicko" (opens Friday 29th), the press was invited up on to the steps in order to ask Moore some face to face questions. Being as I had a new $10 digital camera, as well as being the author of this blog, I felt that I had sufficient credentials to be regarded as "press", should anyone ask ("You've never heard of 'Fiat Lux'? Unhand me you knave, I'm with the alternative press! Have you never heard of bloggers?"). So I followed the herd up the steps, in order primarily to test the camera out. Seems like it works pretty well! You can fine tune settings and exposures for the best picture possible, which I'll have to learn about, but it took a pretty good picture, I'd say.

Moore seemed a little tired at first, and a little unsure about what to say, how to start out, but then he really got rolling, especially when including the war in Iraq along with the sorry state of American health care as just a further example of the nexus of plutocracy, incompetency, and and criminality that has now become entrenched as never before, thanks to Bush Incorporated. Moore is hoping this time, as opposed to when his film "Farenheit 9/11" opened in 2004, that the American people may have just learned a little something in these past few years, so that the propaganda efforts directed against that film will no longer work today with "Sicko"; as we now know (and some of us always did!) that "Farenheit 9/11" spoke the truth. I can't wait to see the film, and it is certainly time that America joins the rest of a civilised world which provides universal health care to its citizens as a human right, and not just as a commodity to be afforded only to a priviliged minority. Moore thinks that it is now only a matter of time until the country sees the light on this issue, and I think he's right. We may well see universal healthcare in our lifetimes, as it only makes sense, in so many ways.