Readers keep sending me the 10:10 video or asking me to comment on it. So I did. From my column today:
….The video’s defenders argue it’s all a big joke, lighten up.
For the layman, the obvious response is, “That’s not true. Blowing up people isn’t funny.”
But that misses the point.
This isn’t a joke for the benefit of you and me. No, this is a knee-slapper for those already committed to the cause. The subtext is, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if we could just get rid of these tiresome, inconvenient people?” That’s why they’re blown up without anyone trying to change their minds. That’s the joke: “Enough with these idiots already.”
How else to explain the fact that this thing went through the entire pre-production and filming process, was undoubtedly screened by any number of people — most likely including sponsors and PR people — and none of them said, “Are you nuts? We can’t go public with this.”
That’s the outrage here: not that they thought normal people would find it funny, but that the producers and sponsors clearly did think it was funny. It’s like one of those ugly inside jokes high-school cliques share that instantly become horrendous when outsiders find out about them. In their arrogance and insularity, they didn’t realize that their inside joke wasn’t appropriate for mixed company. Imagine Curtis’s horror when he discovered no one was laughing outside the green bunker.
That’s also what makes this so disturbing. Environmentalism has always had a fascism problem (which is different from saying that all environmentalists are fascists)….