Articles We Never Finished Reading

Here's a "Talk Of The Town" piece in The New Yorker that starts so stupidly it would seem a waste of time to continue. The first sentence:

The imminence of catastrophic global warming may be a subject far from the ever-drifting mind of President Bush—whose eschatological preoccupations privilege Armageddon over the Flood—but it is of growing concern to the rest of humanity.

I'm not much on Bush Derangement Syndrome. I just think political parlance is so base these days that even major magazine editors no longer feel the need for common sense, or common decency. I realize "Town" has always been chatty, but if David Remnick wants to be convincing, or even reasonable, he should drop the cheap shots.

Another example:

...the audience-of-one that most urgently needs to see the film and take it to heart—namely, the man who beat Gore in the courts six years ago —does not much believe in science or, for that matter, in any information that disturbs his prejudices, his fantasies, or his sleep. Inconvenient truths are precisely what this White House is structured to avoid and deny.

Remnick may think this is snappy, but he's simply being childish. If he wants to comment seriously on politics, he should aim higher than contemptuous hyperbole.

As President, Bush has made fantasy a guide to policy. He has scorned the Kyoto agreement on global warming...

This is amusing, since it was Clinton and Gore's fantasy that Kyoto could pass the Senate, and then be followed afterward.

...it is close to inconceivable that the country and the world would not be in far better shape had Gore been allowed to [be President].

What a limited imagination Remnick has!

One can imagine [Gore] as an intelligent and decent President, capable of making serious decisions and explaining them in the language of a confident adult.

The obvious line here (since this blog doesn't have the high standards of The New Yorker) is I guess I was wrong, Remnick does have quite an imagintion. But the real point is that even if you disagree with Bush, you should admit, as opposed to Remnick's tiresome caricature, that he regularly makes serious decisions and explains them in grown-up language.

The piece praises Gore to the skies. Since Gore is probably my least favorite politician in the country, I found it stomach-churning. Even so, if Gore had been elected, I hope I would try to write about him fairly.

Ironically, Remnick's piece will probably keep people away from Gore's new documentary, since he writes two sentences which are the kiss of death for any film:

An Inconvenient Truth is not the most entertaining film of the year. But it might be the most important.