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It May Be a Cheesy Movie
But ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ has a message for President George W. Bush
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Gersh Kuntzman
Newsweek
Updated: 5:44 p.m. ET May 28, 2004

May 28 - How do I know that George W. Bush can actually be defeated in November? Simple, I've just seen the big summer blockbuster movie.

That may not sound like the best way to determine the president's vulnerability—after all, summer blockbusters typically concern themselves with high body counts rather than high approval ratings—but this time, the summer blockbuster is "The Day After Tomorrow," a rabidly pro-environment, anti-Bush lecture released by Twentieth Century Fox.

Let's put that another way: when conservative media magnate Rupert Murdoch releases a movie that depicts President Bush as little more than a vapid pawn of Vice President Dick Cheney and decries him for, of all things, his environmental policies, you know the president is in trouble.

And what a movie this is! With its unassailable B-movie pedigree—its director, Roland Emmerich, also helmed the timeless classic "Independence Day"—"The Day after Tomorrow" is nothing if not action packed. The special effects are terrifying! The close-ups are extreme! Computer monitors are always beeping incessantly! Polar ice caps are breaking off in continent-sized chunks! Product placements are really obvious! (The hero scientist drives a fuel-efficient Honda.)

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And the arguments between scientists and the government officials are extremely bitter! And scientists are all heroes while the small-minded, myopic, government officials are all, well, small-minded, myopic, Bush administration officials who spout things like, "With all due respect, Dr. Hall, but our economy is just as fragile as the environment." (Cut to footage of the entire Northern Hemisphere turning into an ice cube!)

And just tell me another summer blockbuster that has the guts to slam the White House for pulling out of the Kyoto Accord (extra credit if any of the target audience of 12- to 18-year-old boys knows that the Kyoto Accord is a treaty to reduce greenhouse gases and not some new Honda sedan).

A brief plot summary follows (avert your eyes if you are so unschooled in summer blockbusters that you don't know how such movies will end from the minute you sit down): National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) paleoclimatologist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) discovers that the greenhouse effect is melting the polar ice caps much faster than once anticipated. How fast? Let's put it this way, by the end of this sentence, the polar ice caps would have already melted (that's fast). Of course, no one in government—least of all the vice president, who is played by Dick Cheney look-alike, Kenneth Welsh—believes him. In fact, they demean his computer models and, worse, his manhood (yes, that Cheney guy plays rough). Thanks to the tenets of the summer blockbuster, though, Hall is right about the melting ice caps. The subsequent glut of fresh water in the oceans shuts down the Gulf Stream and triggers a worldwide megastorm that doesn't end until the entire Northern Hemisphere is frozen. The United States is evacuated to Mexico (which seals its border, forcing millions of Americans to become illegal aliens), the president freezes to death and the Cheney guy has to give a speech admitting that his environmental policies have been a disaster (he eats so much crow that we can only hope he's on the Atkins).

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As fact, this movie is to environmental science what “JFK” was to the grassy knoll. But as an attack on President Bush, it's as dead on as “The Sorrow and The Pity.” So naturally, every environmental group on the planet is endorsing it. MoveOn.org calls it "the movie the White House doesn't want you to see" and Al Gore has even traded in his day job (which was what, exactly?) to promote it. At the same time, NASA briefly ordered its scientists to refuse any interview requests, lest the space agency appear too sympathetic to the hard-working NASA scientists in the movie who are constantly being ignored by the White House. (The paleoclimatology program at NOAA is reportedly slated for a real-life Bush administration budget cut, so maybe NASA's fears of unmuzzling its scientists were not so absurd.)

Of course, the havoc unleashed by the aliens in Emmerich's prior (and far better) B-movie is much more likely to happen than an insta-ice age killing half the planet in an afternoon—but that's sort of the point. (Unlike the pissed-off aliens of "Independence Day," Emmerich seems to be saying, we Earthlings at least have the power to stop destroying the planet by ourselves). Global climate change is happening—and if it takes a horrendously inaccurate, ham-handed, cheesy summer movie to point it out, that's good enough for me.

And, apparently, Rupert Murdoch. "Part of the reason we made this movie," said Mark Gordon, one of its producers, "was to raise consciousness about the environment."

What's next? Well, if Murdoch suddenly buys the rights to Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," we should all get used to the phrase "President Kerry."

* * *

Have you ever felt cheated by an airline frequent-flier program? Send me an e-mail via the Web site below for inclusion in a future column. All information will be kept confidential.
 
Gersh Kuntzman is also Brooklyn Bureau Chief of the New York Post (full disclosure: The New York Post is also owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation). His website is at http://www.gersh.tv

© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
 

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