I've Got Your Inconvenient Truth Right Here

I saw An Inconvenient Truth.

And I expected to be frothing at the mouth about it, but I am not. The content of Gore's slideshow is similar to Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, but the similarities end there. Flannery is anxious and powerless, and this makes every fact in his book sound insane. Gore, on the other hand, has a real gift for delivering bad news. Like everyone else, I like this guy better than I like the Gore who ran for office.

Gore does not feel powerless, and he manages to position himself as a leader. He got the presidency stolen out from under him; has had to watch the utter insanity of the Bush administration unfold and know that he would have done better; has been working for like 30 years on this global warming issue and has watched the US consumption of oil and coal skyrocket...

But he does not feel powerless. Sure, this movie collapses into gratuitous thoughtful looks, as Gore tippy-taps away at his ibook (product placement?). And he says so-democratic-party things sometimes, like opening up the fucking movie with the statement "I feel like I have failed." The stuff about his personal tragedies rings hollow and reminds us of Candidate Gore drumming up likeability points--it's not perfect. But if Al Gore--the one person who has personally suffered more than any other single person at the hands of George W. Bush and Karl Rove--does not feel powerless, then I should not feel powerless, either.

An Inconvenient Truth was kind of scary, but there was no hysteria. He largely avoided Tim Flannery's three scenarios for a sudden climate flip--a smart strategy. He managed to be extremely optimistic, and clearly framed climate change as a problem completely within our reach. He was smart to mention the fact that climate change will spur economic growth. It was soothing to watch him treat the audience like a bunch of smart people who have to make a choice, and present himself as a trustworthy steward on this issue. The montage of past sacrifices and important changes Americans have made stirred me, and made me feel like something really could happen.

In other words, I got my money's worth. I walked out of the theater nodding my head, along with all the other liberals who paid $11 bucks and an hour and a half of their free time to watch a lecture. All positive and clucking like a bunch of chickens, heads nodding, moving down the stairs at the Sunshine, talking about positivity and leadership.

And you know that summertime movie feeling? When for the first couple of minutes you are so blinded by the sun and your skin is still tingling from the air conditioning and you are in that space between the fantasy of the movie and the reality that it's really fucking hot and the sun won't go down for hours?

That's when it hit me that I went to a fucking movie. I paid for a simulation of how democracy should work, and I did it to feel better about reality. We, who streamed out of the Sunshine Theatre, are not substantially different from Dubya's vetted and screened audiences. Behold the choir. I realized that I left Farenheit 911 with a similar sense of righteousness and peace, only to find that not enough people who actually needed to see and believe that movie chose to hand Michael Moore their money.

Leadership means reaching out to everyone, not just people who are willing to pay for your message. If An Inconvenient Truth becomes this generation's The Day After, then I will stop being offended that Laurie David has decided to pimp out Gore as a leadership substitute in these desperate times and start believing all of this positive talk.