Global Warming jumps the shark

The phrase "Jump the Shark" has been in circulation for about 10 years now and originally denoted the moment/event when a television show passes its expiration date, so to speak, and begins its decline. The phrase derives from an episode of Happy Days where Fonzie - yes - jumps a shark on water skis, subsequently going down in the annals of absurd TV and spawning a phenomenon.

I can think of no more evident sign of a great global cause jumping the shark than a massive, intercontinental series of concerts designed to raise consciousness about that very cause. I'm talking about Live Earth here, Al Gore's just-completed pet project and, ostensibly, the first phase of his new campaign to bring an awareness of global warming to the masses.

Now, I think this blog is testament to where I stand on the issue and I'm no Al Gore hater, but it's been my experience that these mega concerts rarely, if ever, give the impetus for a cause to remain in the cultural consciousness for very long. In fact, I'd argue that they are consciousness killers. Not that they don't do any good or meet any of their immediate goals, but they bring important issues into the realm of commerce, where they are appropriated by the very interests that are part of the problem - big corporations and mass celebrity culture. Once the corporations get involved on the sponsorship side (as Chevy, for one, did), how much harder does it become for someone like Al Gore to call them out for inaction or, god forbid, malfeasance? Oh, he might still have the cajones to do it, but it's a slippery slope my friends.

Ironically, putting big name celebrities and musicians at the heart of this part of the campaign stands in contradiction to some of what Gore has to say in his latest book, The Assault on Reason. In it, he bemoans the disporportionate focus paid to events such as Anna Nicole Smith's death while "our nation was in the process of more quietly making what future historians will certainly describe as a series of catastrophically mistaken decisions on issues of war and peace, the global climate and human survival, freedom and barbarity, justice and fairness." Later, speaking of the degradation of television news, he states that "The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold goverment accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt or both."

Hell yeah. So, by Al's own testimony, celebrities and musicians, aka paid entertainers, may not be the best representatives for the cause at hand. It leads to, as Dan Rather put it about TV news, information being "dumbed down and tarted up."

To wit, some quotes from participants:

• "As a parent I want a decent world for my kids to grow up in and if we can draw attention to this and make people start doing the things that really count ... then that will do something."
  Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran



• "Our actions from this day forward will help determine just what sort of future we pass on to our children and to their children."
  Leonardo DiCaprio



• "America, what happened to us?"
  Melissa Etheridge



• "If you want to save the planet, I want you to start jumping up and down!"
  Madonna

Add into these empty pronouncements the vague concert banners admonishing people to "answer the call" and $40 organic cotton T-shirts proclaiming "Green Is the New Black," what does any of it actually say or ask people to do? We are continually awash in platitudes and banalities that lead to the intellectual atrophy of our society and that is too often what events of this nature offer.

I have no particular quibble with any of the participants but, as the saying goes, the road to hell is often paved with good intentions. And I do believe that most of these people involved have good intentions, although a lot of pixels have been spilled over Madonna's notable lack of green credentials.

As a country, it's been easy for us to sweep some of the big global issues addressed by concerts, such as poverty and AIDS, under the rug since they don't affect us very directly. We won't have that luxury in this case. Arguably, these concerts serve as a very rudimentary band-aid. Whether global warming has just "jumped the shark" in public consicousness or not, it's not something we'll be able to turn a blind eye to for much longer.