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Michael Crichton can’t say that! (Can he?)

A review of ‘State of Fear’

Somewhere in a bar in West Hollywood sits a “Big Time Media Agent” drunkenly explaining to his bartender how screwed he is. It seems that he’s Michael Crichton’s Agent, and he didn’t vet his clients most recent book before publishing, assuming as any of us would, that its automatically “Hollywood gold” because of course, “Michael Crichton wrote it”.

Then someone drops the bomb and tells him the book has two evil protagonists First, an Environmentalist Lawyer and second and far worse, A bloviating actor who “plays the president on a weekly TV show” and drives with great pride, an electric car! Worse still, most of what is made out as laughable by the author is the idiocy that makes up the sanctimonious liberal ‘for a cause’ culture that makes up much of the free time of the Hollywood elite.

Lawyers always suffer at the hands of Michael Crichton, if you’ll remember the scene in Jurassic Park where “The Lawyer” while sitting in a toilet, is eaten by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

I remember the scene because the audience I was with, clapped.

You can make a movie or have a TV show about lawyers, it happens all the time. You can generate thousands of miles of footage about the evil “military industrial complex”, you can have all priests portrayed as pederasts, all cops as crooks and all ex-military types are Nutcase-Rambo-Time-Bombs, but you cannot under any circumstances make fun of “Hollywood Actors” as they go about making the world safe for us common people to live in.

I applaud Michael Crichton for writing a book that dares Hollywood to make it into a movie. However, if there’s a buck in it, they will try, only they will do to him what they did to Tom Clancy on “Sum of All Fears” where they changed the evil characters into safe to hate “Neo-Nazi’s” from the politically incorrect ‘Palestinian Terrorists’. Clearly the potential loss of market share in the middle-east vs. the potential loss of market in Hayden Lake Idaho had something to do with this decision.

This book is guaranteed to really piss some people off. If you are someone who takes the doctrine of environmentalism seriously, you might try reading something less inflammatory, like Ann Coulter instead. There is simply nothing for you in this book as there is nothing in the Da Vinci Code for the serious Catholic.

This is a book of heresy to the followers of the holy church of “mother earth” and my Birkenstock brothers are likely to take after Mr. Crichton with a pitchfork the way they did to Bjorn Lomborg.

Here’s the story in short summary:

A wealthy benefactor is about to make a large grant to an environmental advocacy group. They are working on a lawsuit for the poor put upon people of a south pacific atoll. The problem? Global Warming, and we all know who caused that! That’s right the good ole USA.

While looking for information on the case, the advocacy group is also doing what it can to actually cause targeted environmental disasters. One disaster prophetically told is that of a Tsunami generated in the South Pacific, aimed at the shores of California.

The story line gives Mr. Crichton a chance via his story proxy to tear into the absolute crap that passes for scientific discourse in the minds of those who believe in “global warming”. As such, I enjoyed the hell out of the book. You will find it interesting to read, just to check out the footnotes and detailed information that he practically begs you to go look up. I actually think that he should re-title the book “ Go look it up, Dipwad!” as that is really the point of much of the story. You are really missing half the story if you simply read what is written, go into the footnotes and you can find a treasure trove of facts and figures that will really make you the "man to be avoided" at the next NRDC fundraiser.

I laughed out loud at several points in the book and some of the items in it are eminently quotable. If you want to skim while in the bookstore, go directly to Appendix I in the back of the book. I think it should be moved to the preface of the story, it's that good.

I will only quote once and it’s a quote that he lifts from someone else.

“When the search for truth is confused with political advocacy, the pursuit for knowledge becomes a quest for power”

This is the core of the message behind the book. These are dangerous times that we live in, not because of the way we’ve treated the environment but because of the incessant need to “do something” and he makes clear the very real risks for following some of the idiocy that is presented to the public as “ caring concern for the environment”.

As someone who has had long friendships end because of my stand on “global warming” I can say that the book was a hit for me in a very big way. The book also brought out a new concept that I had not considered before. Much as been made of the “Military Industrial Complex” in our culture, but Mr. Crichton brings out a new idea, the “Political-Legal-Media Complex” where certain agencies are interested in hyping a “State of Fear”. I found this idea in the book to be the most interesting thing about it, as today we saw the release of the Rathergate report where two of the three legs of the PLM milk stool has taken a pretty bad beating.

There are many, many people who will find this book offensive, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Posted @ January 10, 2005 11:45 PM | Book Reviews