Idiocracy

God help us (thanks for the link, JB):

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth." After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film. The movie consists largely of a PowerPoint presentation by former Vice President Al Gore recounting scientists' findings.

Al Gore's documentary about global warming may not be shown unless the teacher also presents an "opposing view."

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

The members of the Federal Way School Board need to go have their heads examined. Don't get me wrong -- I'm all for this Frosty character (Frosty?) believing in pretty much whatever he wants to believe in. But when a school board starts giving in to idiots like this guy -- morons who actually believe the Earth is only 14,000 years old -- then I call bullshit on that. In fact, by letting people like Frosty have their way, the Federal Way School Board is essentially taking the position that there is actually a real debate on global warming when there isn't one.

Global warming is real. In fact, I'm still waiting for the extreme right to start arguing that global warming, although real, is so far along that there is nothing we can do about it so why try to stop it (i.e., it's God's will). I expect we'll be hearing such an argument a lot in about a year or two.

And speaking of idiots, I watched "Idiocracy" on DVD last night. It's the latest movie by Mike Judge, who also made "Office Space." It is about this "average" dude who volunteers for a hibernation experiment and ends up being revive 500 years in the future when the Earth is populated by complete idiots and he turns out being the smartest guy in the world. The movie is hilarious, yet for some reason it was only released in 130 theaters last September and grossed less than $500,000 in North America.

Needless to say, Idiocracy never made it to any Central Oregon theaters. I figured that it wasn't any good, given that the studio did very little to market the film and then only released it in a handful of cities. But I realized two things after watching about 10 minutes of the movie: (1) it is a very good film, and (2) there is no way Corporate America could have promoted something like Idiocracy because the whole movie is basically a vicious -- and completely on-the-money -- attack on Corporate America. Even Democrat-leaning corporations like Costco aren't spared.

I won't give anything away, but it is definitely worth seeing, even though it is pretty clear that a lot of the scenes weren't as polished as Judge would have liked them to be, undoubtedly due to the scant support he received from his studio.