Inconvenient Countdown: 11 Days

GO-Team '08

It's the summer movie season and while many are getting frothy over the prospects of the final X-Men or the latest Superman chapter, I'm all a-twitter over Al Gore's global warming documentary/slide show, An Inconvenient Truth. And while it's opening in a few select theaters in time for Memorial Day weekend in LA and NYC, it won't be coming to Seattle until June 2, hence the 11-day countdown of the title. (You can check this page at the official site to see when it's coming to your area; you can also pledge to see the movie on opening weekend, as I did.

So, I'll try to do some daily posts on various aspects of the film, as well as the figure at the center of this particular storm--Al Gore. In the run-up to the film, he's been getting himself out in the public more and more, which has been capped (at this point) by his SNL appearance, which was truly quite hilarious (he really has loosened up these last couple of years) and a little sad. And the movie has been getting lots of positive buzz, including a lotsa love at the reliably leftists Cannes film festival:

[E]ven with Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, Penelope Cruz, Jamie Foxx, and Halle Berry here for the film festival, the hottest star in town is Al Gore.

In Cannes for the European premiere of his powerful global warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Gore has been surrounded by adoring crowds and deluged with interview requests. He told me that he gave 23 back-to-back-to-back interviews on Sunday, Hollywood junket-style (all on only one hour's sleep), and had another 23 scheduled for Monday.

You can guess now what's starting to happen now that a Democrat is gaining buzz--launch the Swift Boats!

It started last week with some hilarious TV commercials launched by the Competitive Enterprise Institute--which ThinkProgress dubs "a front group funded by ExxonMobil and other big oil companies"--that attempt to paint carbon dioxide (CO2) in a flattering light. You can check out both ads over at CEI, or the one dubbed "Energy" over at ThinkProgress.

And no, these are not SNL parody videos.

Luckily, these commercials seem to have backfired and have helped to fuel even more publicity and interest in the movie. So it's time to play hardball. First up was Drudge this morning, who prominently placed an assertion that Gore drove 500 yards from hotel to theater in Cannes. Now, I won't even get into security angle of protecting a former Vice President of the United States, but a call from ThinkProgress to Gore's people found this to be totally flat-out false--the man and his entourage made the walk. Drudge took down the piece in the afternoon without (as per typical) any retraction.

Speaking of hardball, MSNBC's Chris Matthews got into the act on his syndicated weekend talking heads gabfest, The Chris Matthews Show, in which the standard Republican meme of an unhinged Democrat (i.e., one who expresses passion toward an issue/position) was floated not only by the host but also several of the panelists. Media Matters has the goods:

On the May 21 edition of the NBC-syndicated Chris Matthews Show, host Chris Matthews, Time columnist Joe Klein, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, and BBC Washington correspondent Katty Kay discussed the possibility that former Vice President Al Gore will run for president in 2008. During the discussion, Matthews cited a recent column by Parker in which she criticized Gore's questions about U.S. policy toward Arabs, stating: "I like this phraseology. You said that Al Gore is one slice short of a loaf. ... Is he a little nutty, you're saying?" Parker responded that "there are those who say he has lost it," but added that "I'm not going to go quite that far." Klein declared that, although Gore gave a "brilliant" speech prior to the Iraq war, "[i]f you saw Al Gore delivering it, he looked like a madman." Later in the discussion, Kay said that one of the obstacles Gore would need to overcome in a White House bid is "he has to come across as somebody who doesn't fly off the handle."

Finally, An Inconvenient Truth received the Presidential Seal of Disapproval today:

Is President Bush likely to see Al Gore's documentary about global warming? "Doubt it," Bush said coolly Monday. But Bush should watch it, Gore shot back. In fact, the former Democratic vice president offered to come to the White House any time, any day to show Bush either his documentary or a slide show on global warming that he's shown more than 1,000 times around the world.

[...]

"New technologies will change how we live and how we drive our cars, which all will have the beneficial effect of improving the environment," Bush said. "And in my judgment we need to set aside whether or not greenhouse gases have been caused by mankind or because of natural effects and focus on the technologies that will enable us to live better lives and at the same time protect the environment."

Did you catch that? The President still isn't sure that human activity has been helping to accelerate climate change. Maybe he's been watching the CEI commercials.

In the coming days, we'll take a look at reviews of the movie as well as check in on what's next for Gore...