[Sosfbay-discuss] "BlueCross Secret Memo Re: 'Sicko' "

[Andrea Dorey]

Just in case you missed this one, it's worth the time to see what  
Moore's movie is doing to the "rednecks" in Big D (that's Dallas,  
Boy)....
 From a column by Josh Tyler.
Andrea  ;- )

------------------------

Long time readers of this site no doubt know that I live in Texas. As  
everyone knows there’s no more conservative state in the Union than  
here. And I don’t just live in Texas; I live in the Dallas/Fort Worth  
metroplex. Dallas isn’t some pocket of hippy-dippy behavior. This  
isn’t Austin. Dallas is the sort of place where guys in cowboy hats  
still drive around in giant SUV’s with “W” stickers on the back  
windshield, global warming and Iraq be damned. It’s probably the only  
spot left in America where you stand a good chance of getting the  
crap kicked out of you for badmouthing the president.

So when I went to see Sicko for a second time this afternoon, I  
wasn’t sure what to expect from the audience. I wasn’t watching it  
downtown, where the city’s few elitist liberals congregate and drink  
expensive lattes. I went to a random mall in the mid-cities, where  
folks were likely to be just folks. As I sat down, right behind me  
entered an obligatory, cowboy hat wearing redneck in his 50s. He  
announced his presence by shouting across the theater in a thick  
Texas drawl to his already seated wife “you owe me fer seein this!”

Sicko started; the stereotypical Texas guy sat down behind me and  
never stopped talking. He talked through the entire movie… and I  
listened. The first ten to twenty minutes of the film he spent  
badmouthing Moore to his wife and snorting in disgust whenever MM  
went into one of his trademark monologues. But as the movie wore on  
his protestations became quieter, less enthusiastic. Somewhere along  
the way, maybe at the half way point, right before my ears, Sicko  
changed this man’s mind. By the forty-five minute mark, he, along  
with the rest of the audience were breaking into spontaneous  
applause. He stopped pooh-poohing the movie and started shouting out  
“hell yeah!” at the screen. It was as if the whole world had been  
flipped upside down. This is Texas, where people support the  
president and voting democratic is something only done by the  
terrorists. Michael Moore should be public enemy number one.

By the time the movie was over, public enemy number one had become  
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy all rolled  
together. When the credits rolled the audience filed out and into the  
bathrooms. At the urinals, my redneck friend couldn’t stop talking  
about the film, and I kept listening. He struck up a conversation  
with a random black man in his 40s standing next to him, and soon  
everyone was peeing and talking about just how fucked everything is.

I kept my distance, as we all finished and exited at the same time.  
Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire  
Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in  
front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is  
Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here  
these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking  
excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home  
without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My  
redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center  
of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my  
spouse to emerge.

The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a  
cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to  
this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black  
gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for  
everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes  
in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see  
this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point?  
Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife  
started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling  
down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do  
something… though no one seemed to know quite what. It was as if I’d  
just stepped into the world’s most bizarre protest rally, except  
instead of hippies the group was comprised of men and women of every  
age, skin color, income, and walk of life coming together on  
something that had shaken them deeply, and to the core.

In all my thirty years on this earth, I have never ever seen any  
movie have this kind of unifying effect on people. It was like I was  
standing there, at the birth of a new political movement. Even after  
9/11, there was never a reaction like this, at least not in Texas. If  
Sicko truly has this sort of power, then Michael Moore has done  
something beyond amazing. If it can change people, affect people like  
this in the conservative hotbed of Texas, then Sicko isn’t just a  
great movie, seeing it may be one of the most important things you do  
all year.



On Jul 6, 2007, at 11:47 AM, Gerry Gras wrote:

>
> "BlueCross Secret Memo Re: 'Sicko'"
>      http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/06/2344/
>
>
> Gerry
>
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>