Hemingway: Watching Crap So You Don’t Have To
It’s kind of sad that I got this via the Agitator, but OC Alumn and all-around cool guy Mark Hemingway has a piece about Live Earth in NRO. The whole thing is golden, so read it, but I’ve excerpted a few of my favorite bits below.
12:59: Another PSA, this time horrendously exploited children prattling on about global warming. One very young girl bemoans that her children may never see a blue sky or green grass. It’s a full-frame closeup with tears streaming down her face. Naturally, this causes my wife to laugh uproariously. I knew there was a reason I married her.
5:55: John Mayer takes the stage. Mayer is Berklee College of Music grad and arguably the first virtuoso musician to take the stage today. Too bad he’s carved out a lucrative career by taking on the most thankless task in music — writing songs that simultaneously a) make sorority girls feel good about themselves (“Greg at Sigma Chi would never compare my body to a wonderland!”) and b) are non-threatening enough that make aging Grammy voters feel good about voting for someone under 30. For all of his technically impressive licks, every song the man writes makes my cochlea want to leap out of my head and dissolve themselves in a warm bucket of lye.
This describes, perfectly, exactly what is wrong with John Mayer.
“Carbon offsets” (a lovely euphemism if ever there was one) are nothing more than a way for the wealthy to continue to live as they always have (read: wastefully and lavishly) while at the same time providing the supposed moral authority to chide the working- and middle-classes about their eco-unfriendly ways.
“Do as I say, not as I do… unless you can afford carbon offsets!” Magic indeed.
The term “raising awareness” makes me wonder what the bottom of a bottle of Drano looks like….
But hey, as long as they buy a shit ton of carbon offsets, it’s all good with me. Carbon offsets are magic.
I had a somewhat animated — and thankfully short — discussion with someone a few days ago who was convinced that the whole Live Earth was “a really good thing” that “got people talking” and is “totally raising awareness — even among those evangelical types who just do what their preacher tells them”.
She called me “cynical and jaded” when I suggested that the only reason anyone was there — Al Gore included — was to make money, advance their career, and stroke their ego.
When I pointed out that the event was directly causing huge amounts of pollution, she didn’t really have a comeback (and I was pleased that she didn’t fall back on the old “carbon offsets” line, since that’s a debate all of its own…), but just repeated that it was finally making people aware and getting people “talking about the issues.”
I didn’t bother bringing up the fact that the ratings were abysmal and the only “talk” I’ve heard has been derision for Live Earth.