Media Matters Bashes NYT for Exposing Sundance's Green Hypocrisy

The good folks at Media Matters for America are displeased with the New York Times having the nerve to point out the hypocrisy inherent in environmentalists destroying the environment.

For those that don't actually care about such things, the Sundance Film Festival began last Thursday, and as the video embedded right demonstrates, the organizers are supposedly going to great lengths to make this year greener than ever.

Unfortunately, such efforts seem to be failing according to an article published in the Times Arts section Saturday.

This didn't sit well with MMA's Eric Boehlert who in a posting at the group's County Fair blog Sunday seemed oblivious to his own hypocrisy:

Some lowlights in an article that was literally brimming with them:

Still, a stroll here this week down Main Street — where a dozen idling trucks were unloading supplies and equipment, while an oversize band bus, with trailer in tow, spewed fumes outside a soon-to-be-busy party site — framed the obvious quandary: how can you cram some 46,000 people, roughly equivalent to a fifth of Hollywood’s total work force, into a pretty little mountain town without contributing mightily to the problems your films hope to solve?

Are you following? Do you see the false premise the Times constructs? If you're concerned about the environment, if you want to spread the word about environmental activism through film, than you basically shouldn't participate in our society because if you are associated with an industry in which a bus idles, than you're a hypocrite. Or more accurately, an "obvious quandary" is created. 

Um, yeah, Eric: if you really believe fossil fuels are destroying the planet, then you should be doing everything within your power to reduce your own personal consumption of them. By not doing so, you are just another "Do As I Say Not As I Do" liberal.

What don't you get about that?

But Boehlert wasn't done:

The groans in the article just kept coming [emphasis added]:

Los Angeles to Park City is about 692 miles by the old wagon route, though most visitors seem to come by air through Salt Lake City

Yes, the Times thought it was noteworthy that Sundance attendees did not drive to Utah.

Um, no Eric, for the next sentence in that paragraph made it clear that this wasn't what the author was suggesting at all:

According to a report last year by Flight Options, a transit firm based in Cleveland, the Sundance festival helped make Salt Lake City the nation’s No. 2 destination for fuel-guzzling private flights, behind West Palm Beach, Fla.

As such, the point the Times was making was that all these folks that are supposedly concerned about the environment chose to fly on private planes rather than on charters or with a regular airline. In fact, the very next sentence -- which Boehlert also chose not to share with his readers -- identified a group running charters out of Los Angeles:

Even freeloading journalists could take a charter flight this year: Expressjet was offering a select group of reporters free rides on a 41-seat plane from Los Angeles on Friday.

Maybe even more important, as Park City is only 40 miles from the Salt Lake airport, the truly environmental-minded could have flown a commercial carrier there and carpooled or bussed the rest of the way thereby dramatically reducing their fossil fuel consumption as well as their carbon footprint.

Clearly what eluded Boehlert is that if these folks want to talk the talk, they should walk the walk or nobody will listen...apparently not even liberals at the New York Times.

Of course, the beauty here is that the Times IS recognizing this hypocrisy, which is probably what's most upsetting to the folks at MMA.