THE HYPOCRISY OF CELEBRITY ENVIRONMENTALISTS

National Post ^ | 2007-08-04 | David Frum

[Clive]

Readers of Hollywood news already know that Laurie David has filed for divorce from her husband, Larry David, the creator of Curb Your Enthusiasm and co-creator of Seinfeld. Mrs. David's papers cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the split. This past Sunday, the New York Post cast some light on the nature of those differences. Over the past year, neighbours have seen Mrs. David in a variety of amorous postures with a younger man, "her hottie but dumb building contractor," as one of those neighbours describes him.

OK, stop right there -- this is the National Post, not the National Enquirer. Why would we reprint salacious allegations of middle-aged romance?

Well, actually, there is a serious political point to make here amidst the hanky-panky.

Remember Ted Haggard? The Colorado preacher who championed traditional marriage -- and was then caught buying sex-enhancing drugs from a gay prostitute? You've also probably heard a great deal about David Vitter, the socially conservative U.S. Senator from Louisiana whose name showed up on a Washington, D.C. escort service's client list? It seems almost an iron law: Sexual moralists get hoisted by their own petard.

But there is another form of hypocrisy, very nearly as ubiquitous, about which we hear much less -- and that is the hypocrisy of the celebrity environmentalist.

Of all today's fashionable causes, the environment is the very most fashionable of them all. And no Hollywood activist is more dedicated than Laurie David, who used her husband's wealth to finance Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore lavishes praise on her work: "Laurie David has done more than any one person I know to raise awareness of the climate crisis."

Laurie David reviles SUV owners as "terrorist enablers." She has paid for television commercials demanding higher mileage standards for cars and trucks. She owns and operates the Web site, StopGlobal-Warming.com.

Her message: "There's something that we can all do about it." In her many media interviews, Laurie David details her own contributions to the cause: She uses only recycled paper products and she has made her two children take shorter showers.

Now back to our celebrity chitchat. Note again what Mrs. David's new amour does for a living. He's a builder, specifically the builder of Mrs. David's new 25,000-square foot house on Martha's Vineyard. That's a bigger house even than her friend Al Gore's. Gore's Tennessee house uses 20 times as much energy as the national average. And he only owns one house -- the Davids own two.

Fuel consumption for electricity production is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the United States.

You may wonder: How does a Los Angeles resident like Mrs. David travel between her west coast home and her new east coast summer place? Answer: She charters a Gulfstream jet. Environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook calculates that a midsized Gulfstream G200 burns as much fuel on one transcontinental flight as a Hummer monster SUV consumes in an entire year. Easterbrook sourly comments: "But then, conservation is what other people should do."

Eric Alterman, a liberal journalist friendly with the Davids, has worried in print about the hypocrisy of Hollywood environmentalists. "The response," he writes, "has been not so much explanation or excuse as a plea for indulgence -- as if one were, after all, dealing with children."

This seems to be Larry David's own assessment of his domestic situation. Larry David contributed a comic introduction to his wife's 2006 book, Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You.

"Thirteen years ago, I met a materialistic, narcissistic, superficial, bosomy woman from Long Island. She was the girl of my dreams - Finally, I had met someone as shallow as me - But then, after a few months, I began to sense that something had changed - She was growing - I, Larry David, the shallowest man in the world, had married an environmentalist."

But is it really true that environmentalism precludes materialism, narcissism and superficiality?

If environmentalism is to Democratic America what religious morality is to Republican states, there is at least one Laurie David for every Ted Haggard. The gossip site TMZ in October, 2006, compiled a short tally sheet: George Clooney drives an electric car that gets 135 miles to the gallon -- and then hopped on a private jet to Tokyo, burning enough fuel in one flight to power his car back and forth across the Pacific 57 times. Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt: same story.

But maybe Larry David put it best. Asked by reporters for reaction to the divorce, he answered, "I went home and turned all the lights on."

[SunkenCiv]

Nothing new — Gwyneth Paltry moved to London in part because she was called on her hypocrisy.

[Gen-X-Dad]

I don’t think this hypocrisy argument gets us very far. ... We would do better to illustrate that they are a bunch of communist inspired totalitarian leaning busybodies who don’t know what they are talking about.

Somewhere between the 50's and the 90's, our celebrity obsessed culture started placing more value on what a hollywood star had to say about a given cause then people who had spent their life working on that issue in the private or public sector. I still often wonder how this happened, but it did. The enviromental cause is the current celebrity fad of the moment to get them more face time, more publicity, more movie offers from their groupthink peers, and helps to inflate their opinion of themselves even higher. This can all be seen when they trip over themselves to rush up to the podium of yet another-self-congratulating-award show to spout off their latest allegience to the enviromental cause.

Thankfully, this rush to go "green" is also leading to the public reevaluating celebrities in general. Their over the top hypocrisy on environmentalism is the key to waking up the masses. People are just now beginning to realize that celebrities really should shut up and sing, and that they are the last people that we want to listen to when it comes to guiding our nation. This is important as it will help to shut down a very successful propaganda channel that the totalitarian busybodies have used on the public in the last few decades to manipulate public opinion. An avalanche of information exposing their hypocrisy on their push to convert us to being "green", will lead to the public being less trusting of their celebrity icons, which is a good thing.

[RedCobra]

crow is dumber than dumb, and is, in my opinion, one of those celebrities who must have made a deal with, or slept around with a music mogul or something, as she has no discernable talent, any more than say, any one-hit wonder you’ve ever seen profiled on VH-1. What a mediocrity. On top of that, ol’ “one-square” is telling us how to live our lives and fight “global warming”.

[ILBBACH]

“Gwyneth Paltry moved to London in part because she was called on her hypocrisy.”

What were those circumstances?

[pnz1]

I wonder if “One Square” is using disposable diapers and only ONE baby wipe per stinky diaper..

[Red Boots]

But is it really true that environmentalism precludes materialism, narcissism and superficiality?

No. Environmentalism IS a symptom of narcissism.

[Red Boots]

But is it really true that environmentalism precludes materialism, narcissism and superficiality?

No. Environmentalism IS a symptom of narcissism.

[HHFi]

crow is dumber than dumb,

Sheryl Crow and Laurie David have become joined at the hip recently in their anti-global warming crusade, and I doubt that between the two of them, their IQs add up to double digits. For some reason, Laurie David seems to think that she is brilliant enough to tell everyone else in the world how to live, and yet what are her personal accomplishments? She married a comedian who happened to go on to help create "Seinfeld," which made him $250 mil in syndication sales, and another chunk of change for "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Thanks to California's community property laws, she's able to slice off half of that money she had nothing to do with earning and use it to finance Al Gore's pathetic attempts to make his messiah complex a reality. But again, what has Laurie David herself ever DONE that was not completely dependent upon a pile of money supplied by her husband, who probably secretly wished the entire time that she'd just shut up and order the cook to make dinner?

BTW, on a related topic, has anyone seen the reality show that followed Ed Begley Jr? He's one non-hypocrite celebrity who really does live like a monk. What was hilarious is how much his wife hates it. While he's lecturing everyone about composting or reusing coffee filters 20 times, she's grousing about those &$)@^&% dim fluorescent light bulbs that make her face look green so it's impossible to get her makeup looking right. It seems that non-hypocrite celebrities might be just as annoying as hypocrite celebrities.

[ripley]

the little stalins will eat well while the rest of us scrounge for scraps from their table.

mr. marx was right, but he got the heirarchy wrong; the liberals/communists/progressives (whatever they call themselves) will be the swastika-wearing bullies. (and the “american electorate” will swallow the whole magilla, hook, line and sinker.)

[SunkenCiv]

If memory serves, she was one of the celebrities who put their name to a full-page ad scolding the world for not doing something about emissions / US not ratifying Kyoto / etc, meanwhile she had as her personal vehicle an SUV.

[GOPJ]

Thanks for the ping.

[ClaireSolt]

The media really only covers a small slice of life and seeks to make themselves the star of every show. When history writes the story of our time it will reveal that the real movers and shakers in the advancement of science and industry were people we have never heard of.

[GOPJ]

Fuel consumption for electricity production is the largest single source of carbon emissions in the United States.

You may wonder: How does a Los Angeles resident like Mrs. David travel between her west coast home and her new east coast summer place? Answer: She charters a Gulfstream jet.

Environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook calculates that a midsized Gulfstream G200 burns as much fuel on one transcontinental flight as a Hummer monster SUV consumes in an entire year.

Larry David's too smart to be married to this idiot woman - and too authentic.

Good riddance to the puff ...