Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The I Luv Ralph Nader Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tom Clarke who wrote (73)	2/22/2007 1:30:13 AM
From: average joe	Respond to of 111

Discovering a different Ralph Nader 2/21/2007 5:55 PM By: Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly Ralph Nader in "An Unreasonable Man" NEW YORK -- Was the Ralph Nader who ran for president in 2000 and 2004 a cranky, ego-driven spoiler? Did he knowingly tip those elections to the Republicans and take a devil's-advocate delight in doing so? Or was he just a citizen following his conscience? Before I saw "An Unreasonable Man," a perceptive and beautifully made documentary portrait of Nader, I'd have said, with more than a little contempt, that Nader was a spoiler, a passive-aggressive has-been sticking a monkey wrench into a system that no longer had any use for him. Having seen the film, which was directed by Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel, I no longer think it's that simple. The movie takes a look into the intriguing life of Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who ran for president in 2000 and 2004. In the 1960s, Nader became famous as a "consumer advocate," but as "An Unreasonable Man" makes clear, that humdrum bureaucratic term didn't begin to do justice to his courage, his vision. He fought and defeated giant corporations like General Motors and the pharamceutical industry, back when no one else was even trying to. He had the audacity to believe that fighting for safety and quality and transparency was a quintessentially American thing to do. As it moves forward to the presidential campaigns, "An Unreasonable Man" widens its focus to take in the spreading corporate control of American life. We see lobbyists gain power in the Democratic party, and the movie reveals Nader's fixation on this issue to be as complex in its idealism as his activism was in the 1960s. Yes, he "spoiled" the presidential race, but the movie raises a question at once radical and haunting: How much does it profit a democracy to gain a better leader if that democracy rdu.news14.com