Inherit The Windbag

John Podhoretz' clever review of Sicko compares Michael Moore to William Jennings Bryan:

Bryan's specialty was the "Chautauqua"--a stem-winding address in the manner of an evangelist's sermon delivered in a tent to a rapt audience on a topic in the news. Moore's movies are the Chautauquas of our time, addressing topics of current interest in a highly entertaining style that makes their author's didactic intent go down like a spoonful of sugar. Moore movies are comic and sentimental and yet full of moral outrage, exactly in the Chautauqua tradition. They do not attempt arguments in any sense of the word. Rather, they are complete expressions of a worldview, and how you respond to them depends on whether you came into the theater accepting the worldview to begin with.

This is perhaps the most interesting thing that can be said about Moore.