Good evening,
It’s a clear night tonight in Whitewater, with a full moon, and a low of fifty-eight degrees.
I spend a fair amount of time online, and I visit websites from left, center, and right. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a new find. Happily, I came across one recently, that I’d like to share. I had never before seen GritTV, but finding it was a real treat.
The website is not connected with the magazine called Grit; GritTV is a left-of-center website with public affairs programming. It’s also so cheesy that it makes the Grit newspaper look like the New York Times. (GritTV would do better to claim it was connected to the Grit newspaper, in the hope that the style of the latter — such as it is — might rub off on the former.)
Here’s a description of GritTV, from its website:
Launched on May 12, 2008, GRITtv reaches millions of viewers weekly on Free Speech TV on Dish network (9415) and DirecTV (340) on cable and public television stations nationwide, and anytime, anywhere online. Distributed in multiple platforms, GRITtv is a daily, 30-minute discussion for people who want to make a difference.
Incorporating viewer-submitted content, grassroots activism, and a positive, progressive message that aims to go beyond the one-way format of traditional media, GRITtv talks to the people commercial media ignore. Independent filmmakers and journalists, activists, and the smartest thinkers and doers of our time are part of the conversation, and you can be too.
I’m sure some of that’s true, but watching one of their programs is like watching a parody from Second City Television, except not as clever, well-produced, or intentionally funny.
Here’s a segment with two activists, talking about environmental policy. Consider, first, how GritTV describes the episode:
Our biological clock is ticking, and it’s ticking fast. Global temperature averages have risen by ten degrees, eliminating many species and drying up necessary water resources. When natural ecology changes, human ecology changes; while we might not have an apocalyptic Day After Tomorrow scenario, it may be a slow and more painful series of wars, refugees, and failed states brought on by slowing food production.
Heather Rogers, author of Green Gone Wrong and Gwynne Dyer, author of Climate Wars joined us in the studio to discuss the risks and environmental policy needs to postpone the inevitable, bleak consequences of overconsumption. While plenty of people are making personal choices to ride their bikes or be vegetarians, these will barely help without structural policy changes to curb the behavior of the unconverted.
I’m not sure what’s funnier — misuse of the expression ‘biological clock,’ the description of those who disagree as ‘unconverted,’ or set that’s as cheesy as anything I can recall.
See for yourself, and enjoy seventeen minutes of utter nonsense. You’ve probably not seen anything like this since you last hurried past a mumbling vagrant sitting on a bench near a local flop house.
Link: http://www.grittv.org/2010/07/10/heather-rogers-gwynne-dyer-environment-climate-change/.