Shrewdly waiting until the buzz died down, George Will weighed in today on Mike Judge’s The Goode Family. His verdict: It sorta sucks, but thank god someone’s taking environmentalists down a peg.
Let’s take a look at my paragraph-by-paragraph CliffsNotes version of his column:
- Too many people are asking “us” to save the planet.
- The media is in on it.
- The “incessant hectoring” of the “media-political complex” inspired Judge’s show. Drat, it’s too bad cartoons are an effective medium. But it’s great that this cartoon is helping to burst the green bubble.
- Summary of show and characters.
- The New York Times didn’t like it, because the reviewer is “complacent” and “smug” and doesn’t believe in the “reasonable dissent” of climate deniers.
- The show is not actually that good. But it touches upon “ecology as psychology.”
- Now I am going to pivot and talk about Nordhaus and Shellenberger!
- Green consumption/individual actions are ridiculous.
- Green consumption/individual actions are ridiculous.
- Green consumption/individual actions are ridiculous.
- Green consumption/individual actions are ridiculous.
- Oil and coal will save the world’s poor!
- The green bubble has burst because the economy is slowing green consumption. Thanks, recession, for forcing us to get real.
Which … has literally nothing to do with Mike Judge skewering greens? Among other flaws.
I’m pretty sure George Will is officially the Andy Rooney of the print world.
