I throw my virtual hands in the air.

It seems the glossing over of Michael Moore's pathological mendacity is not limited to mainstream movie critics but to those who are actually fluent in public policy. Jonathan Cohn, a very smart guy and longtime advocate of progressive-style healthcare reform, writes in the New Republic that, before he saw "Sicko," he was fearful of Moore's slippery methods.

Then he saw it: "As 'Sicko' rolled, it did little to allay my fears. I spotted plenty of intellectual dishonesties and arguments without context -- enough, surely, to keep right-wing truth squads (and some left-wing ones) busy for weeks."

But, but, but: "[I]t was hard to get too worked up about all that. Because, beyond all the grandstanding and political theater, the movie actually made a compelling argument about what's wrong with U.S. health care and how to fix it. 'Sicko' got a lot of little things wrong. But it got most of the big things right."

Again, I give up. Is there any other filmmaker or politician or propagandist who is afforded such kid-glove criticism? I mean, Cohn in so many words admits Moore got "big things" wrong, too. As I wrote in an earlier post: "Under these extremely hospitable circumstances, how can Moore, in any sense, ever be 'wrong' about anything, so long as he is sentimentally on the 'right' side of whatever topic he's addressing?"

Cohn writes later that the vested interests that have resisted universal healthcare "have been spewing half-truths and outright falsehoods for decades," while proponents have been "too honest." In other words: Whatever its faults, "Sicko" helps even the score.

Pardon me, but it's not the job of people who write for the New Republic to credit people like Michael Moore for having well-intentioned passion. TNR is supposed to be more rigorous than that.

There is a case to be made for universal healthcare. "Sicko," which I've seen, does not persuasively make it. Here's a very sensible David Denby: "Moore winds up treating the audience the same way that, he says, powerful people treat the weak in America -- as dopes easily satisfied with fairy tales and bland reassurances. And since he doesn't interview any of the countless Americans who have been mulling over ways to reform our system, we're supposed to come away from 'Sicko' believing that sane thinking on these issues is unknown here."

Jonathan Cohn happens to be one of those people who've mulled over ways to reform the system. He should know better than to be one of Michael Moore's dupes.