Burt Bacharach has finally seen "An Inconvenient Truth." In this blog at HuffPost, he says:[quote from HuffPost blog begins]
I finally saw "An Inconvenient Truth" the other night, and it scared the life out of me. I was stunned at the reality of it all; now days later, still not being able to get what I saw out of my mind.
This movie is not entertainment. It's hard work for all 100 minutes.
I thought of it like going to class, a difficult and mandatory class. I urge and plead with anyone who reads this blog, no matter your tastes in music, movies or politics, to see this, even though it's like getting kicked in the stomach.
[quote from HuffPost blog ends]
Burt Bacharach! I don't know why this blog appealed to me more than other blogs saying the same thing. Maybe it's because during my lifetime, Burt Bacharach has been such an icon of amiable middle-middle class middle-of-the-roadness.
I never cared for his music, in the sense of, you know, caring for it, but nobody from the tag end of the boomer generation is completely free of it. At an impressionable age, I had hooks for "Do You Know the Way to San Jose" (Dionne Warwick Version) and "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (B.J. Thomas) sunk deep underneath my cerebral cortex. The other day I caught myself humming DYKTWTSJ (a maladroit song title if ever there was one). The music I care for includes all music by The Grateful Dead, Jethro Tull, the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Ian Dury, Beausoleil, and----much more recently---Pearl Jam [come on; that would be like linking the Beatles] and The Shins. But care or not, BB's music is rooted in my brain and is an unavoidable staple on the intercoms of dentists' offices and the "hold" function on telephone lines. (Damn: now Dionne Warwick's voice is playing in my head and doubtless will continue to do so ALL DAY LONG).
Needless to say, I agree with Burt about the film. "An Inconvenient Truth" is a great film, a film that will only gain more plaudits as time passes and people begin to get seriously nervous. It's like a riveting and very high-quality special edition on Discovery. Unlike Burt, I emerged feeling slightly shaken----partly because I've believed Al Gore from the get-go, so none of it was news to me, though the graphic presentation of supporting science was something I hadn't fully appreciated---but partly also because the conclusion is reassuring and compelling: there's still time to avert the worst effects. I've been telling everyone I know to see it, even my esteemed Republican mother (who on behalf of her five grandchildren and six children and children-in-law was cheered to hear that the message was an encouraging one, "even though I'll never have to deal with it," she said.
So I didn't really need BB's endorsement. The real reason I included a reference to this blog is because of what follows. What follows causes me bemusement:
[quote from HuffPost begins]
I don't know how people feel about Al Gore. I don't know how I feel about him. But he's much more likable in this movie than ever before. The cynical might assume that he's found a platform, a hot button issue to maybe make another run at the presidency; but this is not a new issue for him. He's been involved and concerned and tracked the dangers of global warming since his pre-college days. He's cared about and studied the changing environment before any of us even gave it a thought.
[quote from blog ends]
Yes, exactly.
But what is it by Al Gore that people find so difficult to stomach? I was telling a couple of young friends of mine who are Republicans that AG is the Democrat I think I'd most like to see run for President and they groaned aloud in distaste. They "hate him." Why?
Is it the association with Bill Clinton (a personal hero of mine, but despised by friends and family on either side of the political spectrum, either for being too liberal or insufficiently progressive)? If so, why don't the seemingly accurate allegations (?) that Gore can't stand Clinton either cut any ice with these people?
Gore is a straight arrow who grew up on a Tennessee tobacco farm. He ran against Clinton in that long-forgotten race for the Democratic nomination that so very bafflingly ended in Mike Dukakis. Back in the day---I hope I am remembering this correctly--- Frank Zappa and others went head to head against his wife Tipper because she had the gall to say that record labels unsuitable for the young should have warning labels on them. We were all horrified. Such statements were REACTIONARY. They were TANTAMOUNT TO CENSORSHIP. (Boy, if only we'd known what we'd have to look forward to.)
He was wonderfully likable in the film, but I've never understood the whole Gore-is-stiff-and-unlikable line of crap anyway. Clinton is charismatic---he is, he is----and Gore isn't that, but he's certainly dignified, soft-spoken, and intelligent.
Furthermore, haven't we had enough of folksy guys in the White House? God God Almighty: we had Carter (folksy), Reagan---now reinvented as a "Great Statesman" by people who haven't read Paul Slansky's The Clothes Have No Emperor: A Chronicle of the American Eighties, which tragically appears to be out of print(?)---(folksy), George Bush Senior (not folksy, but trying hard to come across as), Clinton (charismatic/folksy), and Bush II (folksy).
I'm ready for a return to the days when presidents were willing to seem as well as to be, you know, smarter than the average American and to the days when that's what we wanted too. I'm sick and tired of Presidents who behave like people you'd encounter in the foyer after church or in the Elk's Club recreation Hall. Clinton hid his really formidable intellect under a veneer of Arkansas folksiness and won by a landslide; Bush's affable all-American guy-you'd-pop-open-a-beer with demeanor has likewise served him well with people I really respect such as my extremely intelligent brother ("I love W. I will vote for W. And I refuse to say anymore about it") and other Republicans I know.
Bill Maher (hero) and I both agree that the current need is for a president who is more imposing and presidential and that the person in question is Al Gore (new hero).
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