Hype, all hype
Of today’s fashionable causes, the environment is the most fashionable of them all. And no Hollywood activist is more dedicated than Laurie David, who used her ex-husband, Larry David’s wealth to finance Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Gore lavishes praise on her work: “Laurie David has done more than any one person I know to raise awareness of the climate crisis,” said Gore last year. Gore is a great example of an Econazzi, our new preferred term for celebrity hypocrites and corporate greenwashers.
Econazzi Laurie David reviles SUV owners as “terrorist enablers.” She hangs out with her friend Cheryl Crow who recently warned the world about the perils of using toilet paper.
In her many media interviews, Laurie David details her own contributions to the cause: She uses only recycled paper products and she has made her two children take shorter showers.
Although she owns and operates the Web site, StopGlobal-Warming.com, Gulf Stream-flying tree-hugger Laurie, 49, and her strapping 44-year-old landscaper boyfriend Bart Thorpe, have been all over the place since Laurie split with “Curb Your Enthusiasm” crank Larry David.
Asked by reporters for reaction to the divorce, Larry David answered, “I went home and turned all the lights on.” At least he is being honest as well as witty.
Laurie and Bart made a foray to the Faith Hill-Tim McGraw show at the TD Banknorth Garden last month then jetted back to Martha’s Vineyard where they are building a 25,000 foot home. Are we reducing our carbon footprint??? Note again what Mrs. David’s new amour does for a living. He’s a builder, specifically the builder of Mrs. David’s new 25,000-square foot house on Martha’s Vineyard. That’s a bigger home even than her friend Al Gore’s. Gore’s Tennessee house uses 20 times as much energy as the national average. And he only owns one place — Laurie own two.
You may wonder: How does a Los Angeles resident like Mrs. David travel between her west coast home and her new east coast summer place? Answer: She charters a Gulfstream jet. Environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook calculates that a midsized Gulfstream G200 burns as much fuel on one transcontinental flight as a Hummer monster SUV consumes in an entire year. Easterbrook sourly comments: “But then, conservation is what other people should do.”
Eric Alterman, a liberal journalist friendly with the Davids, has worried in print about the hypocrisy of Hollywood environmentalists. “The response,” he writes, “has been not so much explanation or excuse as a plea for indulgence — as if one were, after all, dealing with children.”
This seems to be Larry David’s own assessment of his domestic situation. Larry David contributed a comic introduction to his wife’s 2006 book, Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You.
“Thirteen years ago, I met a materialistic, narcissistic, superficial, bosomy woman from Long Island. She was the girl of my dreams