Journal-Sentinel columnist grunts, throws rocks at Tales From Planet Earth Film Festival

As you may have read on this site this week, an environmental film festival called Tales From Planet Earth will return to Madison this weekend. The free event, which runs Friday through Sunday, will include 50 films—including a 35mm print of John Ford’s 1940 classic The Grapes Of Wrath and the acclaimed new documentary The Cove—that “explore how stories told through film shape our understanding of nature and inspire action on behalf of environmental justice and the diversity of life.” Even if an environmental film festival isn’t your sort of thing, at least they’re showing some great movies. At the very least, Tales From Planet Earth seems pretty benign, right?

Well, not if you’re The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s conservative columnist Patrick McIlheran, who jokingly (and somewhat puzzlingly) compared the film festival’s prospective audience to the c-r-r-razy Kool-Aid drinkers at Jonestown. McIlheran’s mock incredulousness is based on a “glance” at the festival program—which reads more like a cherry-picked list of three “kooky” tree-hugger films designed to make his angsty white-suburban-dude readership chortle. 

“What, do the festivities conclude with a mass suicide?” McIlheran asks. “I know the word has drifted from its origins, but insofar as modern environmentalism has become the morbid embrace of the notion (contra the evidence) that in every possible way things are going to hell, 'festival' seems hardly to apply.” 

Hmm. Interesting point. Too bad McIlheran doesn’t offer any supporting evidence for the “contra the evidence” claim—or show any real understanding of the film festival he’s mocking. Oh well, it’s not like he has the means to actually research these things. What does he work for, a daily newspaper or something?

Milwaukee bloggers have had fun with McIlerhan’s attempt at making a cheap, reactionary (and unfunny) political point at the expense of a harmless film festival. Writes Illusionary Tenant: ”Did you know the Republicans are a serious party, with serious ideas? And that the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a real newspaper?”