Film review
A yummy young Ralph Nader crusades for people over corporate profits. Nader's life is the subject of the documentary "An Unreasonable Man."
An Unreasonable Man
There's so much that I could say about Ralph Nader, but first, let me get a few of those things off of my chest.
First, what a hottie he was. And he's damned smart, too. And he's been incredibly brave, going up against the corporate Goliaths when he so easily could have taken the dark path, like, oh, say, Dick Cheney. What a catch Ralph Nader was, only my fellow Piscean was never caught. (More on that later...)
Two, if Al Gore or John Kerry had fired people up only a fraction to the degree that Ralph Nader has fired people up, Gore and Kerry would have won the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections by such large margins that the Repugnicans wouldn't have been able to steal the two elections (via Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004).
Thirdly, before talking more about Ralph Nader, I want to disclose that I voted for him for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000 at least in part because it was clear, right up to Election Day 2000, that Democrat Al Gore was going to win my state of California anyway, and in the Electoral College it's winner takes all, so my vote for Nader certainly didn't benefit George W. Bush. I found Gore uninspiring and I figured that since he was going to win California anyway, I might as well vote for my favorite candidate, and so I did.
There. Now I can go on.
"An Unreasonable Man" is a documentary about the life of Ralph Nader, and while that might sound dreadfully boring to most, if you voted for the man, like I did, or if you are a political junkie, like I am, then "An Unreasonable Man" is your cup of (green) tea.
"An Unreasonable Man" takes its title from this quote from George Bernard Shaw: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
That's an apt description of Ralph Nader, a man who has rankled millions of people for having had the gall to run for an elected office in what we call a "democracy" -- thereby supposedly having destroyed his "legacy."
When we teach our little children that they, too, might be president one day (yeah, right) -- but then bash someone who actually does run for president -- our democracy is in deep, deep shit.
Yes, "An Unreasonable Man" focuses the most on Nader's presidential politics, since that's what he's most known for.
"An Unreasonable Man" features plenty of interviewees who turn blue in the face directly or indirectly blaming Ralph Nader for the horrors of the Bush II years.
Yet when it is pointed out to one of these embittered interviewees that although George W. Bush officially "won" Florida in 2000 by fewer than 600 votes, more registered Democrats in Florida than that voted for Bush instead of for the uninspiring Gore, and that the uninspiring Gore didn't even win his home state of Tennessee or Bill Clinton's home state of Arkansas, the interviewee is momentarily tripped up but then continues on his anti-Nader rant anyway, because it's too late for him to get a new gig now; the camera is rolling.
It doesn't help the Democratic Party when its hacks refuse to take responsibility for Al Gore's shortcomings in 2000. When third-party candidate Ross Perot in 1992 almost certainly cost King George Bush I another four years, I don't remember the Repugnican Party blaming Ross Perot like the Democratic Party blames Nader. The Repugnican Party instead retooled itself to the point that it could have a moron who lost the 2000 election installed into the White House anyway by the five of the nine U.S. Supreme Court "justices" who had been appointed by Repugnican presidents.
When Democratic Party hacks attack Ralph Nader, they actually make people like me feel even more repelled by the undemocratic Democrats, who not only refuse to significantly reform their party but whose position really seems to be that people shouldn't be allowed to run for president if it might siphon votes from the Democratic candidate.
When the Democratic hacks foam at the mouth about what an evil man Ralph Nader is for having run for office, they only validate his claims that the Democratic Party has lost its way, and rather than bringing those "stray" Greens back into the Democratic fold, they keep those Greens -- like me -- away.
Even the Repugnicans know to at least pay lip service to those whose votes they want -- or even need. Which is why the Repugnicans are able to steal close elections and why the Democrats "lose" close elections that the Repugnicans are able to steal.
As Nader himself points out in "An Unreasonable Man," despite all of their Nader-bashing, after Election 2000 the Democrats in Washington did little to nothing to disprove Nader's pre-Election 2000 contention that there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Repugnicans -- such as how the Democrats, in their spinelessness on a myriad of issues, signed on to the Vietraq War.
Indeed, the Democrats' pick of the lackluster John Kerry for 2004 proves that they had learned little to nothing from 2000.
Not that all of this is easy or clear cut. I voted for Nader in 2000 but I supported John Kerry in 2004. I gave Kerry's campaign hundreds of dollars and I put in hundreds of hours informally working for the Kerry campaign, such as through coordinating several months of Kerry Meetups, buying and distributing Kerry campaign materials (buttons, bumper stickers and lawn signs) and blogging an awful lot about the Kerry campaign and the 2004 election. Not so much because I loved Kerry but because I saw him as the best candidate to unseat the Bush regime.
In hindsight, I wouldn't have supported Kerry. As Nader points out correctly in "An Unreasonable Man," Kerry should have trounced G.W. Bush, the worst "president" in the history of the United States of America. How bad was the Kerry campaign? Well, here was Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, who didn't even fight back when the campaign of Bush Jr., a Vietnam draft dodger, attacked Kerry's service in Vietnam.
Nader is right: The Democratic Party (I paraphrase) doesn't fucking deserve our support.
With the Kerry campaign I gave the Democratic Party a chance to get me back. Instead, I got to see the ugly underbelly of Democratic Party politics when two local Democratic Party hacks hijacked the Kerry Meetups that I'd coordinated for months and turned the Meetups from meetings of citizens talking about the issues that they cared about into fucking fundraising events.
These two party hacks hadn't lifted a fucking finger to help with the Meetups until it was clear that Kerry was going to win the Democratic nomination. One of them hadn't even attended a single Kerry Meetup until after it was clear that the nomination was his. Then she suddenly, miraculously popped onto the scene and announced that she was the real deal and that (by extension) I, who had been doing all of the work for months before she ever showed her face, was not.
The bitter taste of the Kerry campaign lingers in my mouth. I did a lot for the campaign, including giving it a lot of my time and my energy and my money, not just in campaign contributions but in out-of-pocket expenses, trusting that in return it would run the strongest campaign possible, and Kerry wouldn't even defend his status as a veteran against the attacks of a draft dodger.
The weak Kerry campaign -- whose outreach to minority voters was practically nonexistent, I will add -- validated Ralph Nader's contention that with the Democrats and the Repugnicans our choice is the lesser of two evils.
Speaking of which, of the many people featured in "An Unreasonable Man," either in interviews or in clips, including Phil Donahue, Bill Maher and Pat Buchanan (who, on the Reform Party ticket, came in fourth place for president in Florida in 2000 to Ralph Nader's third place), is moonbat god Michael Moore, who proclaims, in one clip of his appearance at a Nader 2000 rally, that the lesser of two evils is still an evil.
Moore went on, like I did, to support the lesser evil -- er, John Kerry -- in 2004.
But, unlike so many who identify themselves as being on the left, I refuse to bash Ralph Nader, if for no other reason than that it's undemocratic to bash anyone who is for running for public office for the fact that he or she is running for public office. Anyone who qualifies to run for public office and wishes to run for public office should be able to do so without anyone telling him or her that he or she shouldn't.
And let's just fucking face it: People voted for John Kerry in November 2004 not so much because they were crazy about him as it was the case that they hated George W. Bush and wanted him the fuck out.
Which means that the Democratic Party still has a problem.
Yes, the Democrats won back the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate in November. But was that because the American people wuv the Democrats so much or because the Repugnicans had fucked everything up so much?
Is this the Democrats' strategy: To let things get so shitty under Repugnican rule that eventually the people finally vote for Democrats in margins that are just a little too great for the Repugnicans to be able to commit election fraud?
And who is the Democrats' front-runner for November 2008? Hillary Fucking Clinton, who I don't find any more inspiring than was John Kerry. In fact, I find her less inspiring, because while I think that John Kerry probably meant most of what he said, I think that most of what Hillary Clinton says comes out of some fucking focus group or poll. When the national sentiment was to bomb the holy living shit out of Iraq for revenge for 9/11 (even though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9/11), Hillary voted to bomb the holy living shit out of Iraq for revenge for 9/11 (even though Iraq had had nothing to do with 9/11). Now that the political winds are blowing in the opposite direction, Hillary is against the Vietraq War that she voted for.*
What have the Democrats learned since 2000?
Absofuckinglutely nothing. They go with milquetoast every fucking time. It's a pattern: Al Gore (2000 model), John Kerry in 2004, Hillary presumably in '08. You can't blame that on Ralph Nader.
So here's the deal for '08: None of the announced Democratic candidates who can actually win the nomination floats my boat. Hillary Clinton and John Edwards voted for the Vietraq War. Hillary is too high and mighty to apologize for her mistake. Edwards can apologize for his vote for the Vietraq War until he's blue in his pretty face; the Vietraq War is my litmus test for 2008. Plus, I've never trusted Edwards, with his lawyerly permasmile, and I don't trust Barack Obama, either (it's not that I necessarily think that he's hiding anything, it's that I don't think that we know the man nearly well enough to give him the highest office in the nation).
I would give Al Gore (the 2007 Oscar-winning model) a chance in '08, if he would run. I blame him much more than I blame Ralph Nader for the horrors of the Bush II years, although, of course, the primary blame for the horror of the Bush II years has to go to the members of the Bush regime (duh). I mean, fuck: the members of the Bush regime should be hanging from the gallows for their war crimes, their crimes against humanity and their treason, a la Saddam Hussein -- fair is fair -- but instead, we're still blaming it all on Ralph Nader.
Al Gore not only ran a lackluster campaign in 2000 -- again, he didn't even win his own home state, for fuck's sake -- but he didn't fight hard enough for the White House when the Repugnicans stole it in late 2000. He seemed to think that fighting was beneath him. I'm not saying that Al Gore should have had a crystal ball; I don't think that any of us knew the proportions of the disaster that would be the reign of the Bush regime. But Gore should have realized in late 2000 that it wasn't about him and his wanting to appear to be above it all -- it was about the American people. His failure to fight hard enough has had serious consequences.
So it seems only fair that Al Gore should have to help mop up the mess that he had a hand in creating.
I'd give Al Gore a chance to redeem himself in 2008. If he runs for president, I'll support him.
But if my choices in November 2008 were Hillary Clinton, Ralph Nader and the Repugnican candidate, I'd vote for Ralph Nader again. (I don't really see Nader going for it in '08, though.)
Turning the discussion back to its topic -- are you still there? -- I recommend "An Unreasonable Man" as a surprisingly interesting civics lesson, but don't expect to get to know too much about Ralph Nader's personal life.
In Nader's early years, in the 1960s, General Motors, highly displeased with Nader's expose of the abuses of the automobile industry, admitted to having at least one woman try to get the young lawyer into a sexually compromising situation. Apparently the idea was to blackmail the young Nader into shutting up and dropping his consumerist crusade: "We have pictures..."
Nader didn't bite, though, so GM never got to blackmail him. Nader, however, sued GM for invasion of privacy and won almost a half-million dollars -- money that, ironically, helped him launch his career crusading on behalf of consumers.
For everything from automobile safety to food and drug safety to toy safety, we have Ralph Nader and his associate consumerists to thank.
But what of Nader's personal life?
In interviews in "An Unreasonable Man," Nader's closest associates say they're unaware of anyone he ever had a sexual relationship with, and they paint him as having been so obsessed with his work that he never would have had time for a relationship. Nader himself says in "An Unreasonable Man" that he knew that no spouse would put up with his unavailability, that he was (I paraphrase) married to his career.
Hmmm... I don't know... Asexuals are rare. I'd like to claim Ralph Nader as a member of my team, the Pink Sox, and if I had access to a Way-Back Machine, it would be tempting to go back in time and meet the hot, smart, just-cause-driven young Ralph Nader.
Not that he would have had any time for me.
OK, so I can't end this review on that note. Ralph Nader deserves better than that. So I will say a few more things in all seriousness. (Not that I'm not serious about being hot for the young Ralph Nader -- and I can't even say that I wouldn't find him hot if I were to meet him today. His intelligence and his passion are quite attractive.)
One, the "purity" issue comes up over and over again in "An Unreasonable Man." Nader's critics, even Michael Moore, pillory Nader for his real or imagined ideological purity -- purity that I don't believe that Nader has ever claimed, but that has been inferred from his steadfastess.
If Ralph Nader can maintain his ideological purity, I say, in all honesty, that I find something quite admirable in that. It's only a problem if it isn't purity, but if it's hypocrisy, if he preaches one thing but practices another. Purity, which by definition is 100 percent, is very difficult to maintain. If Ralph Nader has maintained his ideological purity, I say, in all seriousness, You go, Ralph!
I mean, think of it: Criticizing Nader for his alleged desire to remain "pure" is saying that it's OK, perhaps even necessary, to sell oneself out. I cannot criticize Nader for refusing to sell himself out. I feel like I sold myself out at least a little bit when I supported John Kerry in 2004. Especially after Kerry won the nomination and I saw how the Democratic Party machine really works -- how it's all about the $$$ -- I regretted, at least mildly, that I'd supported him for months prior to his nomination.
In retrospect, in fact, I wish that I had kept my purity.
Secondly, one of Nader's critics in "An Unreasonable Man" says of Nader: "I think Nader is a Leninist. He thinks things have to get worse before they get better."
Um, don't they?
I mean, again, why did the Democrats win the House and the Senate in November? Because Americans are so warm and fuzzy for the Dems -- or because things under Repugnican rule got so fucking bad?
It seems that in the United States of Amnesia things do have to get worse before they get better. This is Nader's fault?
Finally, it's appropriate to end on the topic of Nader's "legacy."
When Nader announced that he was running for president again in 2004 -- although as an independent and not on the Green Party ticket (which was indicative of a much smaller-scale campaign) -- everyone who is left of center wrung his or her hands about what this would mean for Nader's "legacy."
Who the fuck cares? I thought at the time. Does Nader even care?
So I was delighted in "An Unreasonable Man" to hear Nader himself proclaim, "I don't care about my personal legacy. I care about how much justice is advanced in America and our world."
If Nader indeed is pure, which would mean that he wouldn't care about his legacy (that is, after all, of the ego), then his problem, I think -- well our problem, actually -- is that he's a very rare pure man among the impure vast majority.
Which makes him so damned sexy -- and apparently so damned historically unattainable. If he were to state that he's a virgin, I'd believe him.
My grade: A
*Not just to bash Hillary. John Kerry also voted for the Vietraq War, as did John Edwards. While I gave Kerry a pass in 2004 because my overriding objective then was Bush removal, I can't see myself voting in 2008 for anyone who voted for the Vietraq War.
10:09:56 PM 
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