Kyle Smith writes at National Review Online about the less-than-enthusiastic response to Greta Thunberg’s apocalyptic climate tirades.
“Poll Finds Most People Would Rather Be Annihilated By Giant Tidal Wave Than Continue To Be Lectured By Climate Change Activists,” the Babylon Bee reported in December, adding in an attached news story that one man’s response to hearing “just 30 seconds of a Greta Thunberg lecture” was to scrawl on the survey form, “Come, sweet death.”
The Bee was, as usual, ahead of the pack, but these days it’s becoming common for even left-leaning comics to mock Thunberg. “Iconic”? “Courageous”? Nah. Just tiresome. Far from being a visionary difference-maker who put it all on the line for her righteous cause, Thunberg is increasingly being derided as just another hyperemotional, tantrum-prone, attention-seeking teen brat.
Joan of Arc became Veruca Salt.
Ricky Gervais (a lifelong lefty) saw the opportunity at the Golden Globes Sunday when he smacked the audience and the tiny Nordic doom-monger with a classic double punchline: “You know nothing about the real world,” he told a ballroom full of celebrities. “Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.” BBC Scotland ran a skit in which comics playing Thunberg’s parents talk about all of the fun they’ve been having while she’s been away and blanch when she returns. When the BBC starts making fun of Greta Thunberg, it’s like L’Osservatore Romano satirizing the pope.
Meanwhile, Thunberg has become shorthand for environmentally based vapidity, which becomes all the funnier the more clueless earnestness with which it is delivered.
