Yesterday’s big argument on CNN’s “Situation Room” between Sicko director Michael Moore and host Wolf Blitzer was splendid, riveting television and one of the strongest truth-in-media grenade blasts that has ever been felt on a mainstream news show. Here’s the YouTube video and here’s the transcript.

Before bringing Moore on Blitzer presented a video report by CNN’s medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta that reviewed Moore’s occasional fact-fudging and simplifying in Sicko (which is true in some instances), particularly focusing on Moore’s unmitigated admiration of Canadian and European health systems. But it was a typically slanted report that quoted a typical corporate-minded anti-universal health care analyst. Moore was understandably pissed and hit the roof when questioned, calling the report “biased” and “crap.”
Moore then derided Gupta and Blitzer for spinning the Big Lie. He asked Blitzer to “tell the truth to the American people…just once…you guys have such a poor track record, and for me to come on here and listen to that kind of crap….you fudged the facts about this issue and the war in Iraq…why did it take you so long, Wolf, to take on Vice President Cheney? I’m just wondering when you’re going to apologize to the American people and the troops….I just wonder when the American people are going to turn off their TV sets and stop listening to this stuff.”
And then at the very end Lou Dobbs comes on and says Moore “as more of a left-wing promoter than Cesar Chavez, for crying out loud!” Dobbs is my idea of a real establishment prig, and the Cesar Chavez that I came to know in The Revolution Won’t Be Televized isn’t such a bad guy.
Moore will return to “Situation Room” at 5 pm eastern for Part Two of the debate, and then he’ll go up against Gupta on Larry King this evening at 9 pm eastern.