Ah, Waddaya Know From Funny, Ya Bastard?
Hot on the heels of telling us that Stephen Colbert was not funny, the right is once again doing us the very kind favor of informing us what is and is not entertaining. This time, it's half-rate NY Times columnist John Tierney letting us know that, despite anything we may have heard, Al Gore's new documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" is a complete failure in every sense, and we should not be entertained or moved by it.
So begins Mr. Tierney, who fortunately doesn't resort to middle-school style name-calling, and instead focuses on the actual content of the documentary.
No, just kidding. He calls Al Gore a nerd twice, while poking fun at a documentary that is more about informing than entertaining. I'm assuming he decided to edit out the part where he doesn't want Al to sit at his 'cool' lunch table. It's not that I'm shocked that Tierney stoops to using anti-intellectualism to make his point; God knows it's an effective strategy these days. I'm just surprised he couldn't be bothered to hide it a little, or at least elevate it to a level beyond pubescent posturing.
Here we go with the Colbert strategy. Even though YOU think Al Gore might be likable and funny, he's really not, and if you think he is, you're obviously not as cool as the rest of us. Pay no attention to his already classic Saturday Night Live bit from a few weeks ago, or the fact that he his recent appearances have gone a long way to shake his reputation as wooden and humorless. We on the right have been claiming he's a bore since 2000 in an attempt to make him unelectable, and we certainly don't want to have to stop now.
Oh, and also, nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd.
Does John Tierney really want a savvy reader to think he's an idiot? I don't believe it. Tierney knows that the title of the movie doesn't refer to a truth that's politically inconvenient for Gore, but one that is inconvenient to the ease of life and wealth in the industrialized west. Pretending that he doesn't understand the context of the title is just lazy.
Yeah, imagine the nerve of Al Gore implying that the American industrial complex has tried to fool the public about the state of global warming. Go ahead and follow that link. That's the marketing campaign the energy corporations have devised in response to "An Inconvenient Truth." The level to which they patronize the viewer and pander to ignorance is, frankly, disgusting. The ploy of the clip is so transparent, I have to believe that most Americans can see through it. I hope so, anyway.
But of course, Al is right, no matter how much people like John Tierney want to make excuses now. We've been getting warnings about global warming for decades, and, especially on the right, we blew them off. I know, because I was one of the people listening to Rush Limbaugh instead of peer-reviewed scientific studies. I used to sneer at environmentalists who proposed drastic changes to the industrial model that America has prospered from. Eventually, though, science catches up with the rhetoric. There ARE obvious solutions, though no one claims they are without consequences. They're difficult. They're expensive. They're.. ahem... INCONVENIENT. They are also necessary. Ten years ago, I would have scoffed at the notion that rising temperatures would lead to double the number of high-intensity hurricanes in the Atlantic, including one that would devastate the bulk of the Gulf Coast. What potential disasters that we scoff now will be realities in another decade? Rush's fan base can chuckle at the Al Gore Apocalypse clock on the Rush Website, itself based on a misquotation and pandering to the uneducated. What happens, however, when the world's most efficient carbon dioxide absorber, the rainforests, reach a temperature at which the level of decay exceeds the rate of photosynthesis, and the 'trees that breathe it in' start to actually emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb? There is a point when that will happen, it may happen within the next ten years, and it may be the point of no return.
America is like a smoker whose health is deteriorating, but who refuses to quit smoking because he 'doesn't have lung cancer yet.' We know what the problem is. We know what is causing the problem. We know what we have to change to fix the problem. The reality we don't want to face is that the longer we keep going without making those changes, the more likely that lung cancer is to settle in. The question is not whether or not there is a point of no return. There is. The question is, how far will we push our luck, and how long will our luck hold out.
These are no longer arguments the right can rail against without sounding ignorant and self-delusional. Instead, Rush keeps his silly little Apocalypse clock up, and John Tierney tries to convince us that "An Inconvenient Truth" is a flop. The environmentalists quote science, and the corporate apologists engage in juvenile antics and manipulative marketing. They are also losing ground. Al Gore's documentary could have never been released a decade ago. Global Warming was still a fringe concern. The message is getting out, thanks to the efforts of people like Gore. The movie is just part of the movement, and the movement has not been a flop.
If Al Gore's new movie weren't titled "An Inconvenient Truth," I wouldn't have quite so many problems with it.
He should have gone with something closer to "Revenge of the Nerd." That's the heartwarming angle to global warming. A college student is mesmerized by his professor's bold measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our hero carries this passion into Congress, where no one listens to him, and then works up a slide show that he inflicts on audiences around the world, to no discernable effect.
But then his slide show becomes a horror movie -- and it turns into a cult hit. The nerd becomes the toast of Hollywood, Sundance, and Cannes. He is cheered at premieres across America. Audiences sit enraptured through a film staring graphs of CO2 concentrations and close-ups of ice cores.
So begins Mr. Tierney, who fortunately doesn't resort to middle-school style name-calling, and instead focuses on the actual content of the documentary.
No, just kidding. He calls Al Gore a nerd twice, while poking fun at a documentary that is more about informing than entertaining. I'm assuming he decided to edit out the part where he doesn't want Al to sit at his 'cool' lunch table. It's not that I'm shocked that Tierney stoops to using anti-intellectualism to make his point; God knows it's an effective strategy these days. I'm just surprised he couldn't be bothered to hide it a little, or at least elevate it to a level beyond pubescent posturing.
Gore doesn't quite come off as likable in the film -- he still has that wooden preachiness and is especially hard to watch when he tries to be funny. Yet you end up admiring him for his nerdy persistence. He turned out to be right about something important: Global warming is a problem worth worrying about.
Here we go with the Colbert strategy. Even though YOU think Al Gore might be likable and funny, he's really not, and if you think he is, you're obviously not as cool as the rest of us. Pay no attention to his already classic Saturday Night Live bit from a few weeks ago, or the fact that he his recent appearances have gone a long way to shake his reputation as wooden and humorless. We on the right have been claiming he's a bore since 2000 in an attempt to make him unelectable, and we certainly don't want to have to stop now.
Oh, and also, nerd nerd nerd nerd nerd.
But the story he tells in the movie is hardly "an inconvenient truth." It's not really true, and it's certainly not inconvenient for him or his audience.
Does John Tierney really want a savvy reader to think he's an idiot? I don't believe it. Tierney knows that the title of the movie doesn't refer to a truth that's politically inconvenient for Gore, but one that is inconvenient to the ease of life and wealth in the industrialized west. Pretending that he doesn't understand the context of the title is just lazy.
In his morality tale, global warming has been an obvious crisis-in-the-making for decades, and there are obvious solutions that could have been adopted without damaging consequences. But supposedly America, almost alone among industrialized nations, has refused to do anything because the public has been bamboozled by evil oil companies and Republicans -- especially one villain who, we're reminded, got fewer popular votes than Gore did in 2000.
Yeah, imagine the nerve of Al Gore implying that the American industrial complex has tried to fool the public about the state of global warming. Go ahead and follow that link. That's the marketing campaign the energy corporations have devised in response to "An Inconvenient Truth." The level to which they patronize the viewer and pander to ignorance is, frankly, disgusting. The ploy of the clip is so transparent, I have to believe that most Americans can see through it. I hope so, anyway.
But of course, Al is right, no matter how much people like John Tierney want to make excuses now. We've been getting warnings about global warming for decades, and, especially on the right, we blew them off. I know, because I was one of the people listening to Rush Limbaugh instead of peer-reviewed scientific studies. I used to sneer at environmentalists who proposed drastic changes to the industrial model that America has prospered from. Eventually, though, science catches up with the rhetoric. There ARE obvious solutions, though no one claims they are without consequences. They're difficult. They're expensive. They're.. ahem... INCONVENIENT. They are also necessary. Ten years ago, I would have scoffed at the notion that rising temperatures would lead to double the number of high-intensity hurricanes in the Atlantic, including one that would devastate the bulk of the Gulf Coast. What potential disasters that we scoff now will be realities in another decade? Rush's fan base can chuckle at the Al Gore Apocalypse clock on the Rush Website, itself based on a misquotation and pandering to the uneducated. What happens, however, when the world's most efficient carbon dioxide absorber, the rainforests, reach a temperature at which the level of decay exceeds the rate of photosynthesis, and the 'trees that breathe it in' start to actually emit more carbon dioxide than they absorb? There is a point when that will happen, it may happen within the next ten years, and it may be the point of no return.
America is like a smoker whose health is deteriorating, but who refuses to quit smoking because he 'doesn't have lung cancer yet.' We know what the problem is. We know what is causing the problem. We know what we have to change to fix the problem. The reality we don't want to face is that the longer we keep going without making those changes, the more likely that lung cancer is to settle in. The question is not whether or not there is a point of no return. There is. The question is, how far will we push our luck, and how long will our luck hold out.
These are no longer arguments the right can rail against without sounding ignorant and self-delusional. Instead, Rush keeps his silly little Apocalypse clock up, and John Tierney tries to convince us that "An Inconvenient Truth" is a flop. The environmentalists quote science, and the corporate apologists engage in juvenile antics and manipulative marketing. They are also losing ground. Al Gore's documentary could have never been released a decade ago. Global Warming was still a fringe concern. The message is getting out, thanks to the efforts of people like Gore. The movie is just part of the movement, and the movement has not been a flop.
posted by Zafrod at 12:38 PM
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