When Laura and I walked out of the Arclight in Hollywood after seeing Michael Moore’s Sicko, I scanned the floor ahead for rusty nails, sharp-toothed dogs, falling satellites — anything that might necessitate a trip to Kaiser. Laura would probably tell you I’m a bit of a hypochondriac. That couldn’t be further from the truth. It seems to me hypochondriacs like going to the hospital, whereas I avoid the hospital like the plague since I’d surely catch something in the waiting room. It’s not that I have some pathological aversion to germs, it’s that like most self employed, non-unionized people, I have to fund my own health insurance and I can only afford basic coverage. That means I have high deductibles, high prescription fees and while I haven’t checked, I’m fairly certain I have to pay for that paper gown that won’t close in the back. That gown, by the way, is representative of my insurance: if I think my ass is covered, I’m wrong.Anyway, over green salads at the Arclight’s Charcoal Bar & Grill, Laura made me promise that if anything were to happen to her, my second call would be to 9-11 — my first would be to Kaiser (the HMO Nixon fell in love with — just go watch Sicko already), so we wouldn’t end up like a woman in the film whose ambulance ride after a car wreck wasn’t covered because she hadn’t first called her insurance provider. While she lay unconscious in the street (or the mangled car, it wasn’t clear which).Imagine my relief when CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta dispelled all the horrible myths Michael Moore had subjected us to:

What relief! What glorious deliverance from fear and anxiety! Thank you, thank you thank you, CNN, for reminding me that while we don’t live in the best of all possible health care systems, it couldn’t get all that much better anyway. While I may despair at the high deductibles and live in fear that they’ll count that skinned knee I had when I was four as a “pre-existing condition” should I ever need a knee replacement — at least I don’t have to live with the frustration that comes with knowing we could have a much better system than we have if we’d only cut out the profit motive. I love you, CNN.

D’OH!…Oh, wait a sec, Moore can’t prove any of this, can he? Of course he can’t. Dr. Gupta, after all, is a journalist, and CNN is the most trusted name in news. I’ll just go check Moore’s website. No way he could have posted the so-called “evidence” he promised Wolf.D’OH!

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Editorial cartoonists are dropping like flies, in concert with the declining health of the newspaper industry. The Internet is the most likely culprit. As people increasingly turn to to their computers for news, some cartoonists, like Mark Fiore, are adapting as well — becoming animators. This year’s Pulitzer winning editorial cartoonist won partially for his body of animated work, and members of the AAEC are asking themselves: If it’s animated, is it still an editorial cartoon?

Check out this animation by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle. What do you think?

Editorial cartoonists are dropping like flies, in concert with the declining health of the newspaper industry. The Internet is the most likely culprit. As people increasingly turn to to their computers for news, some cartoonists, like Mark Fiore, are adapting as well — becoming animators. This year’s Pulitzer winning editorial cartoonist won partially for his body of animated work, and members of the AAEC are asking themselves: If it’s animated, is it still an editorial cartoon?Check out this animation by Nick Anderson of the Houston Chronicle. What do you think?

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