A Venal Industry
Folks,
I watched some of the Oscars the other night. The high point for me was seeing Scorsese receive his little gold statue. He deserves that. His body of work is amazing and has helped shape our modern culture. The man is a first class story teller and a consummate professional. Having Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas do the honors was a very nice touch. The shot of the four of them walking back offstage was a powerful one. Between those four men have come movies which have probably garnered Hollywood over a billion dollars in box office take. Titans each and together it was a grand sight to see.
The downside for the show however, was the Al Gore bit and “An Inconvenient Truth” taking the Best Documentary honors. It was hardly surprising to see Hollywood honor him and throw its laurels at his film. Not surprising but an excellent demonstration in that industry’s venality.
As documentaries go, Reverend Al’s ain’t much. It’s his standard slide presentation that he’s been doing for many years now given the full-on Hollywood treatment. Apparently a Hollywood mover and shaker, Davis Guggenheim, caught one of Gore’s slideshows and was moved deeply enough to throw his money and connections behind the man’s message. What resulted was a very slickly done bit of film making and an even slicker marketing campaign. The good Mr. Guggenheim proved he was both skilled at puffing up Al’s basic work and at making sure the right people in Hollywood got the word. Quite quickly, “AIT” - as those in the know say it - became _the_ film to see. It was _the_ way to demonstrate your proper Liberal credentials and that you cared about the environment.
Fast forward a few months into Oscar season and the film becomes the frontrunner. It wound up going against four other films. “Deliver Us From Evil” was an examination of a child molestation scandal and the Catholic church’s response to it. “Iraq In Fragments” looked at the three main sides in the post-war Iraqi conflict. “Jesus Camp” was a look at a summer camp for Evangelical Christian youth. And lastly there was “My Country, My Country” which documented “the months leading up to Iraq's first post-Saddam election in 2005.” My guess is that priest molestation is now regarded as old news, the kids at Jesus Camp wasn’t big enough, and the other two weren’t inherently negative enough about the US in Iraq to get the nod either. That left AIT and its “big” message. In particular, its “big” message coming from Al Gore.
Hollywood has had an absolute lovefest with Clinton/Gore. This, aside from the entertainment side of Hollywood being far left liberal. So it was no surprise that when a Hollywood insider, Guggenheim, connected with Gore to do the Hollywood treatment of his PowerPoint presentation, that the end result would be _loved_ by the folks who comprise the Academy. Given how weak a scientific background the Academy folks typically have, and given the predisposition of the Left in this country to accept blame and guilt for the material wealth we have, it was pretty much a shoe-in that they'd also buy into the whole global warming crap as well.
The essence behind AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming - i.e. man caused) is that we are at fault. At fault for a variety of things. That we, particularly in the West, are guilty. Of what, exactly, or why, exactly, doesn't matter so much as the general idea that we are guilty of something. This plays upon the absence of religion in the lives of most modern day liberals. Religion is something for the un-enlightened and for the non-Liberals. The Red Staters, not the far more sophisticated and urbane Blue Staters.
Yet, these individuals still have the need for the expiation that traditional religion provides. While a typically religious person might feel the same sort of generalized guilt, they have the option of going to their church, confessing, saying their Hail Marys, and shedding enough of that guilt to go back to their regular lives without bother. The liberals, eschewing the traditional role of religion in their lives, do not have that option. Thus, their guilt builds up. And that leaves them ripe targets for any and all manner of schemes which play upon that guilt and offer them some form of expiation. This is especially true if the scheme is not overtly a religion. Such a thing would offend their modern sensibilities and be too much like the traditional religions which they disdain. But, to work and to get that expiation, these schemes would have to be pretty close to those old time religions. Thus, what works best is some sort of “secular religion.” That is, something which has the structure and message of a traditional religion without all the normal trappings of one.
Communism was the first major "secular religion" to offer this in the post-Enlightenment world. Fascism the second. In the modern age, it has been Environmentalism which has cast its net wide. This recent new flavor to Environmentalism, Global Warming, continues this role. It's no conincidence that the folks pushing AGW are all hard left liberals and a great many of them are also either former outright Communists or anti-capitalists harking back to their glory days in the 60's.
No, not all are fifth columnists or fellow travelers. But a great many of the folks pushing AGW the hardest are. They are the ones behind the IPCC and Kyoto. They're also the ones who work up the "Summary for Policy Makers" portion of the IPCC reports. These Summaries are even more biased and sensationalistic than the "scientific" reports themselves.
So, what you've got is a movement which plays upon the angst and guilt of the post-Enlightenment, post-Industrial Left in the West. In exchange for political and financial support it offers its followers a way to expiate that angst and guilt over their "crass" materialism by telling them that they - and they alone - are more aware than the non-believers, that they - and they alone - are morally superior to the non-believers since they are the ones who, by taking these few simple steps, will save the planet from certain doom.
Thus, by always making sure to separate their trash and recyclables and perhaps installing some Compact Fluorescent Lighting - as well as tithing their checking accounts, the supporters of AGW are thus free to keep on enjoying all the other benefits of their crass materialistic lives.
It's a swell gig and a sweet racket. And the Left in this country has bought into hook line an sinker. This, just like the "Global Cooling" hysteria of the early 70's which was followed by the "Population Bomb" hysteria that the Left also bought into. Both of those guilt/angst expiation movements also turned out to be false. No surprise that many of the same folks who were pushing Global Cooling and Global Overpopulation/Shortages are the same ones pushing AGW today.
It's also interesting to se Al Gore playing up to all this. His family has earned millions of dollars from its Occidental Petroleum stock. As legal council to OP, the Gore family has won quite a few cases for that oil company for access to oil rich lands. Some of those lands have been contested by the native peoples on them. Al, being the honorable steward of the environment, has done his part to brush those aboriginals aside for Occidental's oil rigs. This, not to mention his massive carbon footprint lifestyle with at least three huge homes, a fleet of cars & SUV's, a yacht and his private jet. I also find it amusing how much Hollywood is sucking up to him now as they seem to have conveniently forgotten Al's crusade against the e-viles of rock music lyrics. His wife started that effort back in the early days of the Clinton/Gore presidency and Al championed the effort to stop rock music from rotting the minds of our nation's youth and destroying the country's families. And now the media elite are falling all over each other to wedge their noses up the man's ass. Go figure.
At the 2007 Oscars, Gore's film won in all the categories it could. Hollywood was so desperate to love it that it simply had to. Thus the song used in the movie, “I Need to Wake Up” by Melissa Ethridge, got top honors. Considering that it was up against not one, not two but three different songs from “Dreamgirls” - a movie all about music - this shows to me how intent the Academy was to lavish awards on AIT no matter what. Pandering indeed.
I see this much like the Grammys honoring the Dixie Chicks. The politics of that vapid trio didn't really bother me. The way they treated their original fan base however, was wholly repulsive. It's one thing to change your genres. It's quite another to do so while insulting and spurning the very people who made your fame possible in the first place. That was a venal and snide act on the part of those women. Had the DC's gone from "Adult Alternative" music to Country whilst insulting the Alternative crowd, then the Grammy's wouldn't even have offered them a seat in the nosebleed section of the theater. That they moved from "dumb fuck country hicks" to "oh-so-cool-and-enlightened" fans made their churlish and petulant behavior not just tolerable but something for the media elite to embrace and celebrate. Same same with the Oscars and Al Gore’s sanctimonious crap.
Sorry, but that shows far too much venality on the part of the whole entertainment industry for my taste.
Madoc