Docu-Drama

Docu-drama? No, not the entertainment category. But in the past week, I have experienced incredibly good drama from watching enlightening documentaries.

Last week, the Commonwealth Club hosted a screening of the Academy Award-nominated film, "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." The movie was an amazing testament to how inhumane any decision to go to war can be, and made non-violent protests and free speech/free press the heroes. The information about the Vietnam War based on lies and exaggeration and false reports made the military actions of the 1960s/1970s feel shockingly familiar in my post-9/11 world. And I questioned how I had managed to reach what I thought was a well-educated age of 39 without learning all the details of the deceptions that fueled that entire experience just decades ago. And I wondered why our collective human memory is so short-term that we have repeated the same poor decisions over and over again. The most important self-revelation for me came from the fact that the movie was followed by a panel discussion with Daniel Ellsberg, and the event was in the Marines Memorial Club Theater in San Francisco, so there were many active duty military, veterans, and families of both in the sold-out audience. A Marine commander on the panel reminded everyone (especially those with a limited stereotypical view of what a "military person" is supposed to be or feel or vote as) that the Marines take a singular oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, not the office of the President or the decisions of the Secretary of Defense. He praised Daniel Ellsberg and every newspaper that was suppressed and then vindicated by the U.S. Supreme Court for being heroes that not only ended the Vietnam War, but also "got Nixon out of office." Wow. That struck me as beyond bold. But brave, in the most principled way possible. Maybe my image of a Marine was correct after all. (The word I hear is that this movie is still in limited engagement in some theaters and will air on PBS in the early fall. Definitely a must-see.)

Then last night I watched "The End of the Line." I wouldn't say it was one of the greatest environmental documentaries ever,but it was still as educational and frightening as anything I would see on PBS. So the gist of the movie is that a few decades of our wasteful consumption of seafood and our mismanagement of the world's oceans will not only lead to new environmental disasters (like oceans full of jellyfish and algae) but a complete extinction of the world's fishes, possibly within our lifetime. Apparently, even "fish farming" is not a total repair. Fish stocks are plummeting fast and this has even been confirmed by the United Nations. So forget the "health care debate"...will there even be nourished humans left to debate how we care for each other in future generations? I mean, first the polar bears have no ice floes left, but now even fish will disappear? (And since I've been a vegetarian for about four years now, this subject wasn't even about my own diet...but it was. It's about everyone getting fed. But fed well. And fed intelligently. Maybe even "fed" intellectually through more edu-tainment). Sigh. I had to take a deep breath and ponder, "Well, how do we fix the planet?"

It's possible (so the expert taking heads in these and other documentaries will say). But it will take more than just me wondering about it. It will take action. And principles and values. Can we do it? Will it happen? I hope so. And I hope we have more than just hope.

(And spread the word and watch more documentaries, and less bad reality TV about rich people, please. How about an award for justice through entertainment? The best possible kind of docu(mentary) drama. I highly recommend both of these, by the way. In case you hadn't guessed.)