Micheal Moore

I had the unfortunate assignment of having to watch Micheal Moore's Sicko. I am NOT a fan of Micheal Moore. And on the off chance that I even need to defend my hatred here ya go:
1.) He is uneducated. A college drop-out (who's reasoning to do so was because he couldn't find a parking spot one day) Not saying that there aren't plenty of very smart people who never went to college but he acts like the political authority on EVERYTHING.
2.) He is a sensationalist who likes to shock. It came to light during his movie Bowling for Columbine that much of his "facts" were made-up and used only to push his extremist views.
3.) He is a spin master. He takes his one-sided view and pushes it to the limit; editing and painting a picture in a way that you only see what he wants you to see.
The class I had to watch the film for was my Argumentation and Debate class. Our assignment was to watch the film and then write a paper about the fallacies and weak arguments that were made during it. Luckily, it is a Micheal Moore film so it was chock-full of both.
He uses a ridiculous number of emotional appeals. Shots of people crying, sad music, slow motion. An emotional appeal is the easiest argument to make. Take those "In the arms of angels" commericals for AACP. However effective they may be in the realm of true argumentation they hardly hold water. Maybe this is the English minor in me but the main thing that drove me nuts about his film was that he didn't cite ANY of his sources! Not once! He rattled off hundreds of "facts" and numbers and quotes but never showed you were they came from. Also, many of his video clips are edited like mad and take peoples actual quotes out of context in order to better support his argument. Ugh, if this hadn't been an assingment, I would have never watched that crap.

http://http://www.michaelmoore.com/