Moore "Bacon?"

A couple of days ago we celebrated our nation’s birthday, and what could be more American than conspiracy theories? Or more Iranian, for that matter. Oliver Stone, no stranger to paranoia himself, met his match recently when his request to film Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmandijad for a new documentary was denied. “While it is true that Oliver Stone is considered to be among the opposition in the U.S., the opposition is still part of the Great Satan,” said the President’s media advisor.

Perhaps Mahmoud had seen Stone’s last film, “World Trade Center,” a crude, tearjerking exploitation of the 9/11 nightmare that more or less encourages the audience to buy into the Bush Administration’s delusional warmaking, which could soon include Iran. That didn’t stop Stone from  snipping at the president he once helped enable in his response to the Iranian prez’s rebuke. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a Great Satan,” he said.  “I wish the Iranian people well and I only hope their experience with an inept, rigid idealogue president goes better than ours.”

Meanwhile, Michael Moore’s experience with this surviving member of the Axis of Evil has gone better than Stone’s. His request to have his new film “Sicko” included in the Tehran Documentary Film Festival was accepted, which, barring US air strikes or invasion, is scheduled for October 15-19.

This acceptance will no doubt add more fodder to the conspiracy musings of some right wing bloggers regarding a link between “Sicko” and the recent attempted terrorist attacks in Britain. The British universal health care system lauded in the film, so the logic goes, has spawned a cabal of disgruntled, jihadist physicians doing the bidding of Al Qaeda. So Michael Moore is responsible for terrorism in Britain.

No wonder the Iranians invited him! But that kind of publicity doesn’t help sell tickets in America, as “Sicko” has been ailing at the box office. Moore seems to be  pondering a switch from the stressful genre of confrontational documentaries to romantic comedies and the like. So if you don’t want another dose of “Canadian Bacon,”  I’d advise you all to line up for “Sicko” and take your medicine.