Andrew L. Urban
I was a theatre critic at The Australian for four years and a film critic for my online movie magazine urbancinefile.com.au for 20. I mention this at the start to immodestly suggest that I have some experience in professionally assessing acting performance. My review of then tween Greta Thunberg’s debut public performance at the UN back in 2019, acclaimed by many, would have described it as cringe worthy bad. Absolutely fake. Nails on chalk board. Risible. ‘Grating Greta’ the headline …
It’s as if she was coached in how to deliver her lines in the most insincere, overwrought manner, accompanied by pained expressions. Boo hiss stuff. The content itself was outrageously exaggerated: we are in the midst of a mass extinction?
Perhaps my savage criticism is triggered by the global elevation of her as a credible evangelist for global warming. What a double con job. And grown ups world over fell for it. I remember a dinner with good friends in Los Angeles not long after that embarrassing event and having to suppress my desire to guffaw when they spoke in sincere awed tones about the speech. They gasped “wow!” with praise. And they were in the movie business!
You know what they say, in showbiz and politics, if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made … well in my books, she can’t, and she is straddling both.
It’s the same ‘old’ Greta sailing to Gaza. In her latest crusade, she still can’t successfully fake sincerity. Now 22, she doesn’t have the benefit of being perceived as a naive-and-brave teenager (Joan of Arc yet!) scolding us oldies who have stolen her dreams. She is just another uninformed and self-important (thanks to the UN et al) young activist, a rebel without a genuine cause. Confused about her mission to save the planet with her mission to save Gazans, she is the puppet of masters who haven’t mastered the art of ventriloquism.
As in her championing of global warming, exaggeration is her currency. Israel is committing genocide, for example. Which will come first, species extinction or genocide of Gazans?
I wouldn’t be surprised if she next turned up somewhere like riot-torn Los Angeles joining the agitators throwing bricks at ICE officers, crusading on behalf of murderous thugs who had invaded America, soaked up generous welcomes in sanctuary cities and terrorised the locals.
We have been told to always judge people by the company they keep. Greta’s are climate alarm charlatans, Gazan terrorists and violent anti-west agitators. She comes from the north but her moral compass has been set to south.