Disclaimer 1: I am not a democrat or a republican, green, independent or whatever, I am just a guy with the Russian accent.
Disclaimer 2: I will never write movie reviews as good as JustCara, please keep your expectations low.
The following clip will make a good intro for my next review:
Long movie weekend concludes with a documentary. Yes, in my plight to provide the best public service by wasting my own time to save yours I am scraping the bottom of “obscure” barrel.
“An Unreasonable Man” – a documentary about Ralph Nader, starts with some obviously disturbed people blaming him for the war in Iraq, our current moronic president, destruction of the US Constitution and on, and on, and on. The theme of blaming Nader for the outcome of the past two presidential elections is present throughout the movie. However, it’s being counterbalanced by the theme of Nader being an uncompromising consumer and people advocate who dedicated his life to the cause of protecting American People. For the record, I don’t support Ralph Nader, some of his ideas border on Utopian and I’ve already “been there, done that”. At the same time even a cynic like myself cannot deny that Nader is responsible for more consumer- friendly legislation than any other American citizen. At one point in the movie a person states that if everything Nader was involved with had his name stamped on it, his name would be everywhere: seat belts, airbags, clean air, safer consumer goods, cheaper auto insurance, etc. People who profess to hate him don’t realize how much he has done for the country.
In the movie Nader himself explains why he ran for president in 2000 and 2004. For 20 years his organization stood behind democratic candidates, not very happy with them but still the lesser of two evils. Over that time he realized that democrats relied on his support when they needed him, only to ignore his agenda after the elections. During their last term Clinton and Gore wouldn’t even meet with him. That’s when he decided that neither republicans nor democrats will do what he thought needs to be done and decided to run himself. Throughout his career Nader was a target of threats, lies and lawsuits. However, even he acknowledges how “mean” the democrats were to him after Gore lost the election in 2000 (footage of pie thrown in his face included).
The movie shows unprecedented support of the voters enjoyed by Nader. Interestingly enough his supporters in 2000 elections Michael More, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins and other dirt bags turned out to bash him in 2004. I understand that views, circumstances and allegiances change but if you are on record supporting a candidate, the least you can do is to shut up and not spout completely opposite b.s. next time around. In the movie Nader says (and I agree) that he was not the reason the democrats lost. He drew more voters to the polls, he presented a different (maybe flawed but sincere) point of view, he didn’t read the script, he appealed to voters who were crapped upon by both democrats and republicans. The reason democrats lost was that they didn’t have worthy candidates that people could support. They found it much easier to blame it on Nader.
The movie is trying to be balanced, informative and even fun for a documentary. No matter what your opinion of Ralph Nader is, he undeniably taught this country many lessons in honesty, determination and good citizenship.
Unfortunately, current batch of presidential candidates were too busy fund raising to learn anything.