The Lotus Eater

John Tierney likes to think that he is one of the cool kids. Not only has he been inducted into the Club of Five Paragraph Philosophers on the NY Times’ Op-Ed page–get this–he has never lost a presidential election . In his latest column (not available for those of you without Times Select, a fact which Johnny-boy probably rues since he didn’t have enough time to build up his visibility in the heyday of free access), Tierney takes on Al Gore’s recent cinematic turn in Cannes. Now, the second half of the column actually takes issue with some of the arguments presented in the documentary (however disingenously), but, for some reason, Tierney feels compelled to trot out the old Al-Gore-as-annoying-grade-grubber trope for his first few paragraphs, as if that makes his conclusions stronger:

If Al Gore’s new movie weren’t titled “An Inconvenient Truth,” I wouldn’t have quite so many problems with it. He should have gone with something closer to “Revenge of the Nerd.” That’s the heartwarming angle to global warming. A college student is mesmerized by his professor’s bold measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our hero carries this passion into Congress, where no one listens to him, and then works up a slide show that he inflicts on audiences around the world, to no discernible effect.

But then his slide show becomes a horror movie — and it turns into a cult hit. The nerd becomes the toast of Hollywood, Sundance and Cannes. He is cheered at premieres across America. Audiences sit enraptured through a film starring graphs of CO2 concentrations and close-ups of ice cores.

The documentary doesn’t open in theaters until tomorrow, but it’s already a cinch for an Oscar, and deservedly so. Getting anyone to voluntarily endure 100 minutes of Al Gore and his slides is a historic cinematic achievement.

A stunning insight, really. Al Gore is lame. I bet that, soon, we will find out that Hillary is a frigid bitch and Howard Dean is cray-zee.

Here’s where I am going to take issue with you, John–I don’t think you are Prom King material either. Sure, they let you into Deke back at school, but both you and I know that it was only because the brothers needed a grateful beer-run bitch who could smooth out all those date-rape accusations with the Dean and actually complete the chapter’s required hours of commuity service. Your bi-weekly pontification in The Grey Lady is just as dull as (and far more masturbatory than) any screentime we might share with the Vice President, and does a whole lot less to further the cause of global progress.

John-boy, I think it’s time for you and all the other right-wingers of the commentariat who champion jockstrap notions of public policy to come to terms with your identities. We’re all nerds here. You’re a nerd and I’m a nerd. The only difference is that you are self-hating nerd, and feel the need to persecute fellow intellectuals for their (sometimes socially awkward) intelligence. Pathetic.