Have you ever developed a crush on a movie villain, the kind of Dr. Evil-ish sociopath you don’t need to marry, but just want to know more about? Darth Vader, the Joker, Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates . . . sure, they’re bad boys, but with an insidious, appealing mystery about them. That’s how I feel about Tim Phillips, the vile, folksy president of the Koch brothers-sponsored Americans for Prosperity. He appears late in this slick, unsurprising doc by Robert Kenner, but he’s been making cameos in other exposes of a political system polluted by dark corporate money. Phillips was recently seen in Citizen Koch, but Merchants of Doubt is a much higher-quality indictment. Based on the 2010 book by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, the film lays out a convincing, follow-the-money trail from the tobacco industry’s postwar efforts to prevent (or forestall) government regulation to a profitable lobbying specialty today. Fake scientific experts and “teach the controversy” subterfuge have now infiltrated all public-policy debates where billions are at stake.
Harvard historian Oreskes, prominent in the film, helps advance the thesis that PR consultants perfected a strategy of obfuscation and delay (“There is no consensus”) during our government’s decades-long war against Big Tobacco. Though scientific evidence in the ’50s was clear that smoking caused cancer, the industry reaped billions—and inflicted even more costly damage to public health—before eventual settlements and admissions of guilt. After those payouts, a professional class of liars found eager new clients in the oil, chemical, and food industries.
Merchants of Doubt is about D.C.’s permanent lobbying establishment and those false-front organizations always espousing individual liberty and responsibility. Constrained by fact, it’s not so entertaining as Thank You for Smoking, but most of its points are well familiar. Scientists and environmentalists are defamed by shills on FOX News; phony grassroots bodies are funded by the Fortune 500; and a weird old faction of Cold War-holdout Ph.D.s—so like Dr. Strangelove himself—are willing to testify against the scientific consensus because, you know, GUBMENT REGULATION IS SOCIALISM!!! (Citizens United isn’t mentioned, but we all know its pernicious effects.)
This is a film designed to make you angry, and it succeeds as such. But rather than finally consoling us with a few heroes (e.g., former NASA climate scientist James Hansen), Merchants should’ve focused more on those mavens of spin who control the debate today. Their side is winning. They’ve successfully tapped into a tribal belief system that trumps empirical evidence. “It’s all about distraction,” says Oreskes. Why does that distraction work so well? That’s a question for Phillips and his colleagues to answer in a future documentary, after they’re rich, retired, and free from their NDAs.
film@seattleweekly.com
MERCHANTS OF DOUBT Opens Fri., March 27 at Sundance and Meridian. Rated PG-13. 93 minutes.
