Word: greene
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...Damon for clean water. Whether the famous are effective advocates for good is debatable, but Madison Avenue long ago proved they are great advocates for buying stuff. Ironically, considering the tonnage of celeb-inspired purchases choking our landfills, this also makes them ideal pitchmen for the environment. After all, green issues are about consumption: what to eat, how to build your house, what junk to fill it with and how to dispose...
...when Discovery Networks launched environmental cable channel Planet Green last month, it hired lots of celebs, from former St. Elsewhere star Ed Begley Jr. to Entourage's Adrian Grenier to Leonardo DiCaprio. Later this month, star chef Emeril Lagasse debuts an organic-cooking show. Battleground Earth will pair rocker Tommy Lee and rapper Ludacris on an eco-buddy road trip...
...timing is right, as movies from M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening to Pixar's Wall-E rap viewers' wasteful ways while selling huge tubs of popcorn. But Planet Green's ecotainment is also a study in what kind of Hollywood activism works and what's just noise pollution...
...Planet Green's most promoted--and most vapid--shows is Grenier's Alter Eco, in which the HBO star and several fashion-plate friends bring eco-consciousness to the deprived world of upscale Los Angelenos. They visit organic restaurants and sip biodynamic cabernet sauvignons. They build a home compost bin for a chef from Spago and work on a "green" mansion large enough to dry-dock an aircraft carrier. And they cap off each episode by sitting down to cocktails or dinner and telling one another how awesome they are. ("Why are you such a mensch?" Grenier asks...
...fitting that the smug Alter Eco's title is a twist on the word ego, because the show is a perfect marriage of sanctimony and self-regard. It's ecotistical. It's compostentatious. Grenier and company mean it to be aspirational--it's cool to be green!--but the effect is exactly the opposite. Hey, I compost and recycle too, I think as I watch. Do I look like that big a tool...