Manditory picture of Ann Coulter.
Posted on 01/30/2005 6:42:45 AM PST by ml/nj
There's a problem with Michael Crichton's new thriller, and it shows up before the narrative even begins. In a disclaimer that follows the copyright page, Crichton writes: ''This is a work of fiction. Characters, corporations, institutions and organizations in this novel are the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, are used fictitiously without any intent to describe their actual conduct. However, references to real people, institutions and organizations that are documented in footnotes are accurate. Footnotes are real.''
Footnotes?
Yes, there will be footnotes. Although ''State of Fear'' comes dressed as an airport-bookstore thriller, Crichton's readers will discover halfway through their flight that the novel more closely resembles one of those Ann Coulter ''Liberals Are Stupid'' jobs. Liberals, environmentalists and many other straw men endure a stern thrashing in ''State of Fear,'' but Crichton's primary target is the theory of global warming, which he believes is a scientific delusion. In his zeal to expose the emperor's nudity the author cites, ad nauseam, actual studies that seem to contradict the conventional wisdom on global warming. Hence, footnotes.
Scholarly trappings aside, ''State of Fear'' does follow the basic conventions of the mass-market thriller. There are villains, there are heroes and there is an evil plot to be foiled. Chief among the baddies is Nicholas Drake, head of an environmental group called the National Environmental Resource Fund (NERF), who has conspired with radical eco-terrorists to trigger a series of climate-related catastrophes. Drake believes the disasters will convince the public that global warming is an imminent crisis that can be averted only by writing big fat checks to NERF. As Drake explains to a P.R. man, John Henley, global warming simply isn't scary enough. ''You can't raise a dime with it, especially in winter,'' he says. ''Every time it snows people forget all about global warming. Or else they decide some warming might be a good thing after all. They're trudging through the snow, hoping for a little global warming. It's not like pollution, John. Pollution worked. It still works. . . . You tell 'em they'll get cancer, and the money rolls in. But nobody is scared of a little warming.''
Opposing Drake is John Kenner, an M.I.T. professor who moonlights as a 007-style agent for the National Security Intelligence Agency. When he's not dispatching thugs, Kenner spends most of his time disabusing new acquaintances of the wrongheaded scientific notions they've absorbed from the news media. Global warming, he says, was ''a setup from the beginning,'' a wrongheaded theory foisted upon the public by unscrupulous scientists and fear-mongering environmental leaders.
Between Kenner and Drake stands Peter Evans, a mild-mannered attorney for NERF whose loyalty to the do-gooding tree huggers melts away in the heat of Kenner's relentless climatology lectures. In the cartoonish political world Crichton creates in ''State of Fear,'' Kenner and Drake exist as extreme symbols of a good red conservative and an evil blue liberal struggling to win a swing state. Peter Evans is Ohio.
Crichton clearly enjoys drawing the line between fact and fiction exceedingly fine. Nicholas Drake's fellow travelers include George Morton, a billionaire philanthropist who's pledged $10 million to NERF; Ted Bradley, an actor and environmental activist who plays the United States president on a popular TV drama; and a shadowy band of eco-terrorists known as the Environmental Liberation Front (ELF). The author's disclaimer notwithstanding, it's impossible not to identify these folks as stand-ins for the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, the ''West Wing'' star Martin Sheen and the real-life Earth Liberation Front. The nonfictional N.R.D.C. finds itself burdened with an acronym, NERF, symbolizing all that is soft, squishy and childish. Sheen's doppelgänger comes in for portraiture so villainous -- a drunken lecherous crybaby blowhard, he suffers the novel's most gruesome demise -- that one wonders what the poor actor did to earn such emnity.
''State of Fear'' is so over-the-top, in fact, that it wouldn't take much to turn it into a satiric parable of a liberal coming to his conservative senses. Take the scene where Kenner, Evans and Sarah Jones, George Morton's plucky assistant, arm themselves to confront the eco-terrorists: ''When was the last time you were on a range?'' Kenner asks Evans. ''Uh, it's been a while,'' answers Evans, whose lack of military training and anti-gun politics instantly put his manhood in doubt. ''In the passenger seat, Sarah looked at Peter. He was good-looking, and he had the strong physique of an athlete. But sometimes he behaved like such a wimp.''
Her suspicions aroused by Evans's metrosexual gunslinging, she presses him further. ''You ever do any sports?'' she asks. Sure, he says. ''Squash. A little soccer.''
Wrong answer, blue boy.
''She was disappointed with him and not even sure why. Probably, she thought, because she was nervous and wanted somebody competent to be with her. She liked being around Kenner. He was so knowledgeable, so skilled. He knew what was going on. He was quick to respond to any situation. Whereas Peter was a nice guy, but. . . .''
But she'll be voting red this year. Sarah -- for some reason the author refers to Peter Evans as Evans and John Kenner as Kenner, but Sarah Jones, well, she's just Sarah -- functions as Crichton's own Dame Commonsense. She sees through Ted Bradley's self-righteous bluster: ''Sarah thought: Ted really is a fool. He has a severely limited understanding of what he is talking about.'' She appreciates the road clearance of a good gas-guzzler: ''The vehicle was bouncing over the dirt road, but it was an S.U.V. and it rode high so Sarah knew they would be all right.'' Thank God they didn't take Evans's hybrid wimpmobile. Really -- the guy drives a Prius.
This might all be good if not screamingly clever fun -- but for the footnotes. The annoying citations make it apparent that the author desperately wants to be taken seriously on the global warming stuff. That would be perfectly fine in a Weekly Standard cover story. In a thriller, it's a little like having the author interrupt the story to insist that Dr. Evil actually has a death ray. Crichton's proof is itself laughably rigged. Kenner cites study after study but Drake, the scheming NERF leader, is allowed no evidence. ''Just trust me, it's happening,'' Drake says of global warming. ''Count on it.'' There are, of course, thousands of scientific studies that raise disturbing questions about climate change and the human role in its cause. To claim that it's a hoax is every novelist's right. To criticize the assumptions and research gaps in global warming theory is any scientist's prerogative. Citing real studies to support the idea of a hoax is ludicrous.
In case anybody misses his point, Crichton tacks a bibliography and two ''author's message'' essays to the end of the book. In these the author compares global warming to the early 20th-century belief in the ridiculous theory of eugenics, and treats us to a bullet-point presentation of his thoughts about science and the environment. One of those thoughts bemoans the lack of ''rational'' and ''systematic'' research on wilderness preservation. For this sorry state of affairs, he writes, ''I blame environmental organizations every bit as much as developers and strip miners.'' Crichton thus leads his readers to one of two possible conclusions: one, there exists a world yet unrevealed in which strip miners wrestle with the issue of proper wilderness management; or two, this fellow has completely lost all sense of perspective. The evidence in ''State of Fear'' forces this reader to embrace the latter.
Bruce Barcott is a contributing editor for Outside magazine.
Crichton's readers will discover halfway through their flight that the novel more closely resembles one of those Ann Coulter ''Liberals Are Stupid'' jobs.
I thought, "Well, yeah, liberals are stupid." And what, exactly, did Coulter ever get wrong?
And so it is with Crichton. I have my compalints about this book, but none has to do with the message it contains. (The plot is way to contrived for me.) Out side magazine contributing editor Barcott seems to have a problem with novels that have messages:
This might all be good if not screamingly clever fun -- but for the footnotes. The annoying citations make it apparent that the author desperately wants to be taken seriously on the global warming stuff.
I wonder if Contributing editor Barcott thinks Moby Dick was a book about a whale hunt, or Atlas Shrugged was about running a railroad!
And then there is the issue he takes with the footnotes (aka facts)
There are, of course, thousands of scientific studies that raise disturbing questions about climate change and the human role in its cause. To claim that it's a hoax is every novelist's right. To criticize the assumptions and research gaps in global warming theory is any scientist's prerogative. Citing real studies to support the idea of a hoax is ludicrous.You think that instead of empty generalizations the guy might come up with one example where Crichton's facts were actually wrong.
Coulter got it right. Liberals really are stupid as this review so amply demonstrates.
ML/NJ
OT - I an't find a way to contact Coulter - someone pls let her know that her new format on her website is very hard to read?
So this reviewer is upset because the author dares to quote "actual studies"? Quoting facts apears to be wrong when it supports a conclusion no one want to hear.
Imagine. It is nausating that he is the one chosen to write the review.
Manditory picture of Ann Coulter.
This is different from a positive claim that global warming itself is simply a hoax; Crichton is simply counseling that we hold out for genuinely scientific evidence (if there turns out to be any).
What is a hoax, in Crichton's view, is the claim that the evidence for global warming is reliable and that we'd therefore better get busy doing something about it. (Even if it's really happening, we're talking about a thousand-year span of time, not something that's going to kill us all sometime next week.)
The money rolls in. And the politicians have another excuse to control the population by taking away their cars and making them ride on "public transportation."
ML/NJ
I like it! Consider it stolen, NYT BR!
bump
"Liberals, environmentalists and many other straw men endure a stern thrashing in ''State of Fear,'' but Crichton's primary target is the theory of global warming, which he believes is a scientific delusion."
LOL!
I guess the Times writer felt a bit stung by Crichton's work!
Typical appeal-to-authority "reasoning" -- thousands of allegedly scientific studies "say it" so it cannot be wrong, can it?
As far as the "hoax goes, Crichton doesn't claim that global warming is a "hoax"; he claims that it's a delusional hypothesis, fostered by scientific wishful thinking, inadequate attention to alternative explanations of incomplete data, and shamelessly manipulated by media types and lawyers in order to further their own control over society. I see absolutley nothing wrong with his analysis.
The liberals are much more comfortable when the footnotes support their theory, even when the footnotes are lies. Michael Bellesiles' Arming America as a case in point.
Fraud Science, the Left only exists by perpetuating Frauds and Lies. The curtain rises and lo and behold there sits the naked truth and ain't it glorious!
Off with their heads.
Gotta love it!
Crichton's lecture on the subject of political delusions, where he first worked out these themes, is excellent. As a fiction writer, however, he is now, as he has always been, extremely, extremely bad, almost unreadably bad. Exception: Congo, where apparently some editor got hold of the egotistical author and made him write better, or just edited the manuscript without regard to the author's wishes.
*chuckle*
Yes.
I admit that I did enjoy Timeline.
Interesting that the Times writer felt compelled to be majorly insulted and stung by the book.
;-)
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