Greenville's free alternative weekly

Charleston Post and Courier goes after Michael Moore

By Will Moredock

By Will Moredock

South Carolina has come to expect cheap shots, low blows and ad hominem attacks on the editorial and op-ed pages of its favorite daily newspaper. The editors don’t usually do the dirty work themselves. They leave it to their stable of syndicated rightwing flacks and hacks to bash Democrats and liberals and anyone who will stand up to the corporate oligarchs who rule this country.

This has been going on for generations, at least as long as the Manigault family has owned the Post and Courier and its predecessors, the Evening Post and the News and Courier. A half century ago, the Manigault newspapers were among the harshest critics of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in the South. Many people still remember some of the vicious things the Manigault family papers wrote about the people who marched and prayed for their rights in this land of violence and hatred.

Maybe the Manigault family has come around on the question of civil rights, but don’t think for a minute that this clan of oligarchs has had a change of heart. They are committing the journalistic sins today which they will have to atone for tomorrow.

For one example, the P&C has recently run two columns by Kathleen Parker slamming John Edwards’ treatment of his hair. That’s right – two whole columns on a Democratic presidential candidate’s hair. Another columnist dedicated his 800 quotidian words to the subject of Edwards’ enormous house, suggesting that a man with such a house was dishonest for speaking out against poverty.

Now the P&C has taken on filmmaker Michael Moore and his new documentary Sicko, which surveys America’s profit-driven healthcare system. If you haven’s seen it, Sicko is a damning account of Americans being denied healthcare coverage by insurance companies for any of hundreds of reasons, of Americans being dumped from hospitals onto skid row because they could not pay their bills. Moore compares America, where tens of millions live with no healthcare insurance, to Canada, Britain, France and Cuba, where healthcare is provided by the government.

He points out that Americans pay far more for healthcare than any other country in the world, but the World Health Organization ranks American healthcare 37th among nations. Much of the problem, he says, is that in the profit-driven American healthcare system, more than 20 cents out of every dollar goes for executive salaries, marketing and advertising. French and British national healthcare systems are much more efficient.

It’s a devastating look at a corrupt and inefficient system – what conservative like to call waste, fraud and abuse. But conservatives – including the Manigaults – have no objection to waste, fraud and abuse as long as it occurs in the private sector.

The P&C has taken more cheap shots at Moore than I can critique here. Of course, there is no room for a syndicated counterview. In a cartoon, Moore is labeled with the word “Lies” six times. Syndicated columnist Grace-Marie Turner brands him a “radical propagandist.” Star Parker accuses Moore of hypocrisy for profiting from his films.

Fortunately, the First Amendment protects even mean-spirited, one-sided editors and columnists. And I trust it will protect me as I turn ad hominem for a few paragraphs.

There are some things you need to know about Pierre Manigault, chairman of the board of the P&C. Pierre is the scion of one of the wealthiest families in the country, a family who runs an international media empire.

If Pierre gets hurt or sick, he doesn’t worry about how much treatment he can afford. He is insured right up to his silver spoon.

But if you had a cataclysmic sickness or injury, if you lost your savings, your house, your car, your family because you couldn’t pay the hospital bills, don’t look to Pierre for sympathy. Pierre believes in the good old free market solution to all problems. If you can’t afford healthcare, you don’t deserve it.

But Michael Moore does care about the healthcare and the financial security of Americans. He believes that we can do better. He believes that other countries are already doing what we should be doing. He believes the only thing standing in the way of a healthier America is corporate greed, ideological intransigence and human arrogance. Are listening, Pierre?

As Confederates and segregationists, your family has been on the wrong side of history for generations. I wouldn’t expect any better of you. But here’s what you should do. Go back and read some of those editorials Thomas Waring published in your paper in the 1950s and 1960s. Do they make you cringe? Do they make you hang your head? Well, Pierre, that’s the way your descendents will react when they read the mean and petty crap that your editorial board puts in your paper today.

Quite a legacy, Pierre, quite a legacy.