Michael Moore and Leonardo DiCaprio release "activist" films.

The Blob is returning. Michael Moore, the dishonest, deceptive extremist from the Left has produced another one of his psuedo-documentary films, this time attacking American health care. No field in America is as regulated, subsidized, controlled, investigated and shackled as health care. So, of course Moore’s solution is more regulation, more subsidies, more control, more investigations and more shackles.

In his previous films Moore used every underhanded dirty trick to distort the facts. He would quote people out of context, he would change the order of statements in order to give them different meanings, he would stage events and then present his staged scene as if it were normal. Moore is to the Left what Ann Coulter is to the Right: dishonest, manipulative, and unreliable. I personally cringed when he produced his Fahrenheit 911 film because I opposed the war in Iraq. I do not want Moore on my side on anything as he has no credibility.

But he does have fans as in the true meaning of the word: fanatics. And they want Moore to lie to them. Moore’s lying began with his first film Roger & Me which chronicled his “unsuccessful” attempt to interview General Motors chairman Roger Smith. That is the basic theme of the film.

The then relatively slim Moore pursues Smith repeatedly desperately seeking to interview him about the effects that downsizing a plant had on Moore’s hometown, Flint, Michigan. Moore made much of his working-class roots in Flint except Moore was not from Flint. He was from Davison, Michigan which was very different. Davison was much wealthier and much whiter than Flint. Well under 1% of the population was African-American and the poverty rate was half the national average. But for the sake of the film it looked better if Moore lied about his actual hometown.

And where the film portrayed Moore as a Quixotesque individual on a lone crusade to bring down the rich and powerful the truth was something different. The reality is that the film of Smith was someone else’s idea and Moore, as the editor of a far Left rag, had been asked to help them raise the funds to do a documentary presenting their complaints against GM. The actually would-be filmmakers turned over all their documentation and material to Moore so he could help them raise funds for their project.

Moore left Michigan to work for the Left-wing Mother Jones magazine. But he was quickly fired from that position. He then filed a law suit against the magazine for millions claiming wrongful dismissal. Rather than fight the claims the magazine took a cheaper alternative and paid Moore a severance pay which he then used to produce the film on Smith. No mention of the originators of the idea or all their material, now in Moore’s possession, was made.

Throughout his first film Moore showed how the city of Flint responded to layoffs at the plant through feeble “projects” to create jobs. And here was Moore’s first use of his deceptive timelines, a tactic he has used repeatedly to distort facts. The projects he ridiculed in Flint may have deserved ridicule but they had nothing to do with the layoffs from GM--nor could they. They were typical stupid government projects that were tried BEFORE the layoffs at the GM plant. They were not, as Moore presented them, responses to the layoffs at all. When questioned about this Moore’s excuse was that they took place in the same decade.

And what about that illusive interview with Smith? We see endless vain attempts by Moore to get his interview and that is how the film ends. Lies. Moore did interview Smith, twice. At a GM stockholders meeting Moore had a lengthy exchange with Smith on issues. And later Moore had a one-on-one filmed interview with Smith as well. Those were inconvenient details that ruined Moore’s story so he simply deleted them.

On the other hand when two Left-wing filmmakers Rick Caine and Debbie Melnyk tried to interview Moore he did his level best to avoid speaking to them the very thing he falsely critized Smith over. Moore’s dishonest tactics were used in every single film he has produced to date. So I see no reason to assume that his new film promoting state control of health care won’t be any different. Moore was correct that Bush lied about Iraq but where does he get off lecturing on honesty when it is a trait he doesn't practice himself?

If the Blob’s new film isn’t bad enough we now have to endure Leonardo DiCaprio making documentaries on the end of the world. His film, The 11th Hour is “on the environmental crisis” and “his message is urgent.” Yawn! Every environmental hysteric’s message is “urgent”. Really, I find them tiresome. They ought to dress up in sack cloth and wear long scraggly hair while marching with signs saying “The End is Nigh.”

DiCaprio admits he knows little about science, or the issues he’s tackling, but that’s okay he says because “it all comes from a good place.” He admits he is using his Hollywood fame to promote a cause but says it allows scientists to “speak freely and openly to tell the truth.” Gee, anyone notice how difficult it is for the doomsayers to get time on television to “speak freely”? In reality it is the skeptics who are rarely afforded the opportunity to question the ideological driven science of the Left.

The hilarious part of all this was that DiCaprio premiered his film in the luxury of the Cannes film festival. How much carbon did he and his entourage emit flying halfway around the world to sit in luxury hotels in order to premier the film. DiCaprio’s coproducer, Nadia Connners explained: “Sure we have these yachts behind us - but even they could run on bio-fuel.”

DiCaprio was asked if he flew by private jet to Cannes and said: “Not this time.” Hmm, apparently other times he does. He quickly, however, lectured the reporter for asking this inconvenient question: “I think there’s a certain danger.... Talking, for example, about how Al Gore flies or how he conducts his life, is just confusing the bigger issue where there is no real doubt about global warming. This isn’t a film about one person but about encouraging our corporations and government to practice ecology in our everyday living standards.” He repeated this defense of "waste" again: "The way he [Gore] travels and the way he lives his life should not be criticized."

Oh, I see, do as I say not as I do. Why do “corporations” produce specific products? Because people buy them. So it is about consumers like DiCaprio in the end since the consumer determines, through his purchases, what will or will not be produced. No corporation is going to produce a product that no one will buy. And since DiCaprio is a millionaire, several times over, his buying habits influence production far more than my own meager spending does. So when he does use a private jet he is encouraging private jets. When he flies executive class he ups carbon emissions. He could go tourist like us plebeians but doesn't. At the Academy Awards he promoted the "green" agenda and viewers were urged on screen to use mass transit, yet DiCaprio and his fellow Green lecturers used limos instead.

DiCaprio's film is a full frontal attack on modern technology in all forms. The left-wing Guardian describes the film as "positing that since the invention of the steam engine man has ceased to live in harmony with the environment and has used Earth as a resource to be ruthlessly exploited."

DiCaprio lives in mansion with a private pool and a private pool (heated?) and his own basketball court. DiCaprio isn’t defending Al Gore as much as trying to deflect criticism for his own hypocrisy. DiCaprio says focusing on his own massive consumption of resources is merely “finding another way to convolute the issue and argue about semantics and things that ultimately don’t matter.” So they “ultimately don’t matter”? Apparently if I consume a resource it matters. If DiCaprio consumes far more of the same resource it doesn’t matter.

But DiCaprio is forthcoming about his goal. He wanted to produce a film that will “get the audience emotionally involved to the point where they would want to take steps to get involved.” Now that is normally called propaganda. If he said “rationally involved” it might be science. But the purpose of the film is not to present science but to create activists. And in that sense he’s rather similar to Michael Moore.

As for consumption consider the treatment DiCaprio gets when he stays in a suite of rooms at the luxurious Plaza Athénée in Paris. First the suite is meticulously cleaned by a team of housekeepers. Then it is inspected by “an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter and a painter... making double sure everything works perfectly and is in pristine condition.” DiCaprio is a “VP4” which is the highest class of VIP and who receives the most expensive, and thus most carbon emitting, treatment, of any guest at a hotel filled with the rich and famous.

At this level of service the guest is treated with kid gloves and pampered. The hotel keeps meticulous records of what the person eats and even how they prefer their sheets on the bed. “In some cases, the entire room has been photographed so that when guests return—even a year later—everything is exactly how they left it.” One staff member explains: “If they left a certain book open to page 240, they will find it on the exact same table open to that very page.”

DiCaprio attacks Americans for not "setting an example" saying "If we don't take any action then how can anyone else be expected to?" But he is quite clear that the "we" is Americans in general but not himself and Mr. Gore. Apparently since they come from "a good place" they are exempt.

If the hypocrisy of Rev. Ted Haggard or Jimmy Swaggart is an issue -- and it is -- then the hypocrisy of the Al Gores and Leonardo DiCaprios of the world ought to be a story as well. Of course they buy “carbon offsets” they answer. So, if you are rich enough you can buy the right to to emit carbon while pushing for state coercion to reduce the living standards of the average person.

Apparently the “VP4” treatment they receive, because they purchase it, gives the wealthy like Moore, Gore and DiCaprio, the perception that there are rules for the masses which they can buy their way out of.

Addendum: My prediction is that we won't see major curbs on carbon emissions as a result of governmental controls. We will only see them when new technologies replace old ones. I also think that we will not see any of the major disasters predicted by the global warming hysterics in spite of no meaningful aciton being taken. Eventually the apocalyptics will move on to another imagined crisis. But no matter the crisis they will have the same solution: more state control.