an even more inconvenient truth

Gore is a bore:

And he’s a scold:

Mr Gore said the world faced a stark choice between the end of civilisation and a future for its children….

Mr Gore said global warming was a “challenge to our moral imagination to understand it and then to respond to it urgently”.

Apparently, he’s also got an idiot for a film publicist. There is a pledge drive on the website for An Inconvenient Truth. Visitors are asked to pledge to go see the movie (aka “the truth“):

Make a difference when you pledge to SEE THE TRUTH on opening weekend in your city. Your pledge will send a message to the world that global warming is a genuine threat to our planet.

Paramount Classics will donate 5% of ticket sales from AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH to the
ALLIANCE FOR CLIMATE PROTECTION.

To pledge, simply fill out the form below and click SUBMIT AND PLEDGE NOW. Then, keep your promise to the planet and see AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH on opening weekend. If you select “Remind Me”, we’ll even email you a reminder. For Group Sales, please click the GROUP SALES button below.

fyi: as of this writing, they have received 87, 645 pledges out of a hoped-for 1,000,000.

The same pledge campaign is part of Laurie David’s “Stop Global Warming” campaign, which I made fun of in “No one likes a Cassandra.” (She is also one of the producers of the Gore film.)

Is it just me or is this a bizarre marketing concept? What is the target demographic of this campaign? What kind of audience are you after that needs to sign a pledge before making the huge commitment to see a movie?

I mean, if you’re going to go to the trouble to make a movie, shouldn’t it, you know, be something that people want to see? on their own?

Ana Marie Cox detects a slightly more sinister agenda (emphasis mine):

Viewed through the optimistic lens of the post-premiere chatterers, An Inconvenient Truth is intended to be a political biography whose power comes from the film’s terrifying argument about global climate change: Elect me or we will all die.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Most of the folks on Chris Matthews’s show this morning thought Gore has a fair shot at the nomination (they were otherwise tepid). But they all agreed that the climate is “anyone-but-Hillary.”

I don’t see the support from the party. I don’t think it’s going to happen, but I’m no politico. The political climate is so unstable and unpredictable—Ray Nagin won the mayoral race in New Orleans!—that it’s fair to say anything could happen.

I hope it’s not Gore. ‘Bye for now, Al.