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Daily News
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A Blogger’s Unlikely Benefactor
Michael Moore says it came from the heart, but the recipient of his kind deed insists it’s just another cheap PR stunt.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007 at 3:25 PM
By J. Sperling Reich
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George Pimentel/WireImage.com
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A sheep in wolf's clothing?
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To prove his point about how broken the United States health care system is, filmmaker Michael Moore went further than just making Sicko. He brought home the message with the unwitting help of a bitter foe, Jim Kenefick.
Kenefick, who runs the anti-Michael Moore website MooreWatch.com, last year made public the fact that because of separate increases in his mortgage and Internet hosting fees, he might not be able to also afford his raised healthcare insurance premiums. Shortly thereafter, an anonymous person offered to mail in a check for $12,000, enough to take care of Kenefick and his wife Donna’s premiums for a full 12 months.
Kenefick maintains on his blog that at the time, he “only suspected it could be Moore,” and that his designation of the donor as a “guardian angel” in a thank you message on his website came from the fact that he had no actual name to label the person by. Still, when New York Daily News gossip columnists George Rush and Joanna Molloy confirmed Moore’s charitable act in their column last Friday, all blogosphere hell broke loose, with fellow right wing pundits accusing Kenefick of selling out by not returning the Moore gift.
In the first of many blog posts about all this, Kenefick wrote last Thursday, May 17th that “if Mikey had called me up and said ‘Look, man, I know we disagree on everything, but I just wanted to help. No strings attached, and I hope she gets better.’ That would be an amazing gift and a real piece of altruism. He. Didn’t. Do. That.”
Although it quickly became moot, Moore still chose to leave Kenefick this voicemail message on Saturday, May 19th to personally confirm that he was indeed the mysterious “guardian angel.” While Kenefick has tried to turn the tables by accusing Moore of using the gift as a cheap trick to promote his movie, the filmmaker adamantly denies it.
“I want him to know that it was meant with all the best intentions,” Moore states during a Cannes press conference. “I even struggled whether I should even put it in the film. Before I sent him the check, I had to ask myself, ‘Would I write the check if this wasn’t in the film and answer honestly, because if I wouldn’t, then don’t do it.’ I thought about it and decided this is what I would do, this is what I should do and this is the way I want to live. And this is the way that I want us as Americans to live.”
| Moore says his plan all along was to call Kenefick on Saturday, May 19th, before the first official Cannes screening of Sicko. And he still hopes to have a private conversation with his benefactor, which he will have to do from a number for which the caller ID is not blocked. Otherwise, he'll go straight to Kenefick's voicemail again. |
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