Sunday, July 1, 2007

Rally Your Troops! (#1)

The western steps of the Colorado State Capitol have played host to a multitude of rallies, over the years. If you need to petition the government for redress of your grievances, the western steps are where you hold up your sign and chant your slogans, alongside fellow, screaming partisans.

Five days before his latest film SiCKO opened in Denver, Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 9/11) was the keynote speaker at a Capitol rally. (Photos above and below.) Moore publicized SiCKO, as well as his quest to change America’s unbalanced system of health care – “a system set up to be cruel to the have-nots.” Moore decried how nine million American children currently go without health care.

Moore began his speech by saying, “I always love coming to Denver. It’s played an important role in my life.” (Of course, his film Bowling for Columbine dealt with the school shooting that occurred in nearby Littleton, Colorado.)

From there, Moore delivered a rousing indictment of the "greedy bastards" within what he called the “Halliburtons of the health care industry.”

He stood his ground, but gave a wide berth to a shirtless, bespectacled, young man, who approached the bottom of the steps, and screamed at him, in essence, to love America or leave it. Moore joked, “The security report will note that he got to the third step.”

Covering topics like the Iraq War as well as health care, Moore appeared much less restrained, much more demonstrative and passionate, than he is as SiCKO’s narrator.

Who could ask for anything more from Moore? Perhaps, you wouldn't want to.

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