Fallout from the 10:10 campaign’s “No Pressure” snuff film global-warming PSA continues to come down like blood from the ceiling over an exploded schoolkid. Video remixes are coming in, and this one is my favorite. It’s no less gory than the original, but it’s a lot more honest:
Andrew Revkin, the NYT‘s resident global warming scold, rounds up some of the reaction to the ad. Particularly obnoxious is this one from someone named Randy Olson:
I think the film was horribly offensive. I also think Stephen Colbert should be boycotted for making a mockery of the U.S. Congress, Jon Stewart should be punished for his unwillingness to treat serious American politics seriously, and South Park should be banned altogether. Given the desperate state of today’s world — more violent and filled with hatred, pain and suffering than any time in history — there is simply no place for this stuff. It’s time for humor to be added to the list, alongside polio and tuberculosis, as things to eradicate in our lifetime.
Ha ha, because he means the opposite! It’s the “old clown nose off/clown nose on” dodge. These guys want it both ways. You’re supposed to heed them because they’re serious people. Then, when you engage their argument, they fall back on, “But it’s just a joke. Lighten up!” It’s dishonest.
“But this is like Monty Python,” you say. “Remember when the fat guy blew up?” Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, you mean. The enormously corpulent man who gorged himself to the point where a single wafer-thin mint caused him to literally explode. A classic of graphically sick humor. Well, the reason that wasn’t just a gross-out gag is because they were satirizing gluttony. Creosote did it to himself. He didn’t have to eat all that, and he had nobody else to blame for what happened to him. Is that really the message 10:10 is trying to send to kids who don’t parrot what these zealots are telling them? Are the younguns supposed to see the humor in being blown to bits for daring to disagree? “This is what happens to skeptics, kids. Submit.”
Or, if adults are the intended audience, what does that say about the people who made this? We’re supposed to laugh at children being murdered by a blandly cheerful teacher? After that teacher has lied to them. “No pressure, it’s your choice.” As satire, it’s incoherent. The only way it makes sense is if it was intended as propaganda, with a tissue-thin veil of “J/K LOL.”
Tim Blair says it best. The producers’ message is: “If you aren’t a warmist, you deserve to become a warm mist.”
P.S. Jonathan Strong: Environmentalists stay mostly quiet about violent climate change advertisement.