Political Films

We live in a country where both sides in most political debates are usually wrong. It baffles me sometimes. It almost seems like the debates that are freely discussed in public are designed to give each side ammunition to discredit the other. Let's take the subject of political films and Michael Moore, for example. His movie "Fahrenheit 911", was designed to show audiences that George W. Bush is an incompetent president and that he demonstrated very weak leadership during the 911 tragedy. All of this was true. But Moore went on to paint a picture of our government, and particularly the Bush family, as being controlled by the rulers of Saudi Arabia. This distortion totally undermined the power of his film and gave conservatives an easy out to dismiss the whole shebang as boneheaded propaganda.

Now we have the Oscar-winning Al Gore, and his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." As I understand it, the main point of the movie is that, unless we do something very serious, very soon about carbon dioxide emissions, much of Greenland's 630,000 cubic miles of ice is going to fall into the ocean, raising sea levels over twenty feet by the year 2100. The inconvenient truth is that there is not much scientific support for this doomsday scenario.

To be sure, global warming is frightening, but the only thing that can be said about it with accuracy is that we currently don't know how high the environmental price we are paying really is for our consumption of fossil fuels - let alone, specifically, how Greenland will be affected. We are driving down a road heading for a cliff in the fog, and we really have no idea how much farther we have to drive before we reach the cliff. That is scary, but it is a different message than "Stop the car right now, or we are all going to die!"

Gore's movie will ultimately give the morons who deny the reality of global warming weapons against more sober-minded politicians when they attempt to argue the subject with scientific facts. Inevitably there will be a temporary reversal in polar ice melting and those on the other side of the debate will declare victory. I suspect that in the long run, "An Inconvenient Truth" will do more harm than good.

If only the general public would pay money to watch the political documentaries produced by Frontline and Nova. Maybe if they hired Quentin Tarantino. I can see it now, Frontline and Quentin Tarantino present "The Naughty Nurses of Walter Reed Medical Center."

Return of the Blog

I took four months off from blogging. I didn't plan it that way. I just got out of the habit and the next thing I knew, four months had gone by.

So, I am going to try to get back in the habit.

So here is my synopsis of the last four months:

October: I mainly remember these two kids that came by my house on Halloween and scooped up over half the candy in this big bowl that I held out. They would have taken all of it if I hadn't said "Hey c'mon!" and yanked the bowl back. The parent of these two kids was right there and didn't say anything. The whole thing was frightening beyond belief. Demons really do come out and roam the earth on Halloween.

November: The Democratic Party totally waxed the Republican Party in the November elections. I could not have been happier. Gridlock is good. Also, I ate some turkey somewhere. I can't remember.

December: I celebrated 25 years of continuous sobriety in December. That was cool. I gave this 6-year-old nephew of mine a Spider Man Playstation 2 game for Christmas and he learned how to run the controls in this amazing hyper speed. It was freaky to watch. It was expecially remarkable since the kid can't read the instructions. I guess that kind of concentration comes from not having a lot of other crap bouncing around in your brain. Or maybe the opportunity of pretending you are Spider Man when you are six is more motivating than anything I can imagine at 43. December was also the month I really got to know Gerri, who is now my girlfriend. I think it is cool that when people ask "Who is that couple over there?" and they get told, "Oh that is Chris and Gerri," they won't know which one of us is Chris and which is Gerri.

January: This January will be forever remembered for the beginning of my relationship with Gerri, and for the Ice Storm of 2007. Schools were closed for an entire week because of icey roads. I have never seen that happen before. Meanwhile, I drive a Jeep Wrangler so I drove anywhere I pleased, anytime I pleased. At times I was the only one on the road. I felt like Charlton Heston in Omega Man. I love my Jeep.