It appears that William Shatner made a pointed remark about global warming after his successful 11-minute trip to space in the Blue Origin capsule, but, as reader Plunky says, “This perspective wasn’t widely reported in MSM” [mainstream media]. Shatner’s musings on life and death, and his emotional reaction to the trip, however, was reported all over the place.
Indeed, if you search for “William Shatner global warming” on the Internet, you find precious little save at yahoo! entertainment and MEDIAite, and nothing about the omitted sentence that this piece gives. (Of course, I must have missed some stuff.) Plunky called my attention to the piece below from Informed Comment (click on screenshot) noting the omission. They impute it to Bezos cutting off Shatner because of possible bad publicity for his mission.
From Cole’s reporting:
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Wednesday, pop culture icon William Shatner, Star Trek‘s Captain James Tiberius Kirk, explained the enormity of seeing the earth from a suborbital flight on Blue Origin’s New Shepherd space craft. Part of what he said when he returned from 66 miles up got lost in all of the news reports I’ve seen, and it is the most important part.
Here’s a portion of what CNBC printed in what they alleged was the complete transcript of Shatner’s remarks:
“I mean, the little things, the weightlessness, and to see the blue color whip by and now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. This covering of blue is this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue around that we have around us. We think ‘oh, that’s blue sky’ and suddenly you shoot through it all of a sudden, like you whip a sheet off you when you’re asleep, and you’re looking into blackness – into black ugliness. And you look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there, and there is Mother Earth and comfort and – is there death? Is that the way death is?”
But here’s the crucial takeaway, the last phrase of which is omitted by CNBC:
“What I would love to do is communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see how vuln– the vulnerability of everything. It so small. This air which is keeping us alive is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have it. It’s so thin. And to dirty it…”
In fact, Shatner adds, after “to dirty it”, “I mean that’s another whole subject.” So it wasn’t just the four words that were omitted, but an entire sentence. And then Bezos breaks in. I have to say that he looks like a bit of a jerk, especially when he interrupts Shatner to spray champagne all over the place.
Informed Comment continues:
“The jeopardy . . . And to dirty it!” To fill this precious atmosphere, unique in our solar system, with clouds of burned coal dust and with greenhouse gases, Shatner says, is . . . what? Despicable. Unthinkable.
Just when Shatner is getting on to the subject about how what he saw reinforced his horror at the way we are polluting the atmosphere and imperiling the earth with man-made global heating, Bezos interrupts him: “It goes so fast.” Bezos doesn’t want Captain Kirk expounding on the evils of climate change on his promotional clip. He gets him talking about the experience again. Not the conclusion he drew from that experience.
And yes, Shatner did say that and yes, Bezos interrupted him. You can see it at 7:13 in this video, as well as the “I mean, that’s another whole subject” comment.
Even the New York Times reports only these words of Shatner’s:
It was unbelievable … To see the blue cover go whoop by. And now you’re staring into blackness. That’s the thing. The covering of blue, this sheet, this blanket, this comforter of blue that we have around us. We say, ‘Oh that’s blue sky.’ And then suddenly you shoot through it and all of a sudden, like you whip the sheet off you when you’re asleep, you’re looking into blackness.
. . . You look down, there’s the blue down there, and the black up there. There is Mother and Earth and comfort and there is … Is there death? I don’t know. Was that death? Is that the way death is? Whoop and it’s gone. Jesus. It was so moving to me.
You’ll be hard pressed to find that whole paragraph beginning “What I would love to do is communicate as much as possible the jeopardy. . . ” in the mainstream media, ad I haven’t found “And to dirty it. . . ” anywhere, not even The New Yorker’s report. The Informed Comment piece observes that Shatner has been deeply concerned with climate change for at least five years.
I suppose are a couple of explanations for their omission. The innocuous one is that the MSM just omitted one phrase from Shatner’s soliloquy—a fragment that wasn’t even a complete sentence (but was followed by a complete sentence, also omitted!). After all, the “MSM” largely leans Left, and reports frequently on climate change, so what motivation would they have for omitting that bit?
On the other hand, that phrase was important, and should have been part of the story, even though in some accounts (not the NYT’s above), they do say Shatner’s worried about humans despoiling our planet.
Informed Comment appears to be a progressive Leftist site, so they of course impute this to Bezos trying to keep Shatner from damaging the Blue Horizon enterprise, which of course is a for-profit operation. Cole quotes the Washington Post‘s 2016 interview with Shatner to show his concern, and winds up this way:
“People like yourself — young people like yourself should be screaming at the top of your lungs to the people who lead.”
That’s what Shatner wanted to say on his return to earth. He wanted to say that our thin, fragile, vulnerable, unique atmosphere is in danger from petroleum, gas and coal, that this mothering “blue blanket” of the earth is in danger of being enveloped by the grim blackness of galactic emptiness because of the way we are treating it.
That is what for-profit news did not report about Shatner’s profound experience and his articulation of it. He wants you screaming at the top of your lungs that our pale blue dot is in danger of being burned up and engulfed by an unfeeling, black cosmos. And that only we can stop it from getting worse, because we are the ones making it worse.
Well, maybe Cole is wrong trying to psychologize Shatner in this way. After all, Shatner did say “that’s another whole subject”, and may have left it there. But surely the media could have reported that final phrase, particularly in what was purported to be a complete transcript.
You be the judge!
” Shatner’s musings on life and death, and his emotional reaction to the trip, however, was reported all over the place.”
As someone quipped, the final fronTEAR.
Shatner sounded like both a 90 year old fumbling for thoughts (as I age, I see this happening to me) and a human being trying to put into words a unique experience that can’t be conveyed in words (which happened to me seeing a total solar eclipse.)
I both can side with Journalism trying to codify all of this into a news-worthy report as well as some political-leaning rags not wanting to “go where Shatner has gone before” (hee, hee)
Thank goodness we have the audio/video for the full report that you and all of us can follow up on.
And thank goodness we have *this*!
Hee, hee. Well, … it was a different era. He was “experimenting”. 🙂
I have a friend who’s got that album.
Nice, but does he have two copies of The Shaggs “Philosophy of the World” – one still in the original shrink wrap with the Tower Records sticker on it? That would make for a painful listen-off.
If you enjoy a mix of understated-yet-knowing electric guitar with your weirdness, give Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert with Dirtwire a listen.
At the risk of going far off the rails of the thread, Dirtwire is really worth a listen if you’re the sort of person that becomes homicidal at the thought of current pop music.
As well as “Elegy for the Brave” from the same album, which has its considerable merits and ought be no less referenced:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WND35C4mg70
🙂
I think “rambling about another subject (environmentalism)” is a legit reason for Bezos to have cut him off mid-stream.
I don’t think “rambling” is a legit reason for news sources to have reported 80% of his ramble and left off the last 20%.
My personal guess is the media sources that reported the edited version are not at all concerned about offending Exxon etc., but rather concerned they would lose clicks/viewers who get upset at the notion of humans ‘dirtying’ the planet.
Shatner at 90 and a half and just returned from the adrenalin-soaked euphoria of a sub-orbital flight does a lot better than many if not most of today’s “like” and “sorta” locution-employing and attention-deficited twenty-something couch-slouchers (who could stand a few elocution lessons and vocabulary-building from Hitch). And it beat all the bloviating of Bezos’s PR announcers covering the flight. In my modest experience I have not seen a 90 year-old functioning as well as Shatner.
“The Informed Comment piece observes that Shatner has been deeply concerned with climate change for at least five years.” The irony of someone “deeply concerned” about climate change after burning an untold number of litres of fuel for 11 minutes of fun… Totally clueless. A simple question to ask oneself: “what would be the consequences if everybody on Earth did what I’m about to do?”
While there is certainly a carbon cost to the flight, it isn’t in the burning of fuel. The exhaust of the Blue Origin rocket is water.
A valid point, as far as it goes. One would have to know how the fuel was created in the first place (from Wikipedia: “As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (∼95%) is produced from fossil fuels by steam reforming of natural gas, partial oxidation of methane, and coal gasification”). Also, the fuel could have been used for something more useful than sending a few tourists in space.
Google told me the fuel is liquefied natural gas mixed with oxygen. That should make water plus CO2 in the exhaust.
My first thought was that Bezos cut him off because he did not want to draw attention to the fact that they had just done some disproportionate dirtying themselves for a space hop, and that space tourism for the rich and famous is not an “equitable” way to spend parts of the world’s left over CO2 allowance.
It does seem odd that a comment supportive of climate change action would be cut. Perhaps it was just a question of length. Or maybe the producer didn’t feel the comment was worthwhile given the generally emphasis on the topic.
I sure wish people would reserve the use of “enormity” to mean “extremely bad or wicked or serious.” I know, I know, I know, there are dictionaries that give hoary citations for the meaning intended by Juan Cole in the piece quoted above, but there is a perfectly adequate word for that — “enormousness.” To my knowledge there is no no one-word synonym for the primary meaning of “enormity.” This isn’t a matter of prescriptivism; it’s a matter of promoting precise understanding (particularly in a piece touching upon the enormity of climate change).
Same thing with “disinterested” and “uninterested.”
Off-topic rant over and out.
Yes, right on.
And let’s all stop this pathetic ‘moving forward’ for ‘in future’. as well.
And also stop the use of the odious “right side of history.” It strongly implies being on the winning side, and getting “touted” (another “ugh” word) for it. Why won’t “Do the right thing” suffice? History will be whatever it’s going to be.
Am reminded of “use” v. “utilization.”
Shatner said absolutely nothing about climate or global warming in any of his comments after the trip, either in the full transcript or as excerpted. I saw the NBC News piece on his comments, and they were portrayed as a moving statement about the fragility of the earth. I was reminded of Sagan’s reflections on the “Pale Blue Dot” photograph, which is exactly the sentiment Shatner was trying for, and achieving. For Cole to say that Shatner was talking about global warming, and that the media obscured his statement on the “climate crisis”, is a complete crock.
GCM
I disagree: I think this is about global warming:
“What I would love to do is communicate as much as possible the jeopardy, the moment you see how vuln– the vulnerability of everything. It so small. This air which is keeping us alive is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe. It’s negligible, this air. Mars doesn’t have it. It’s so thin. And to dirty it. . . I mean, that’s a whole other subject.”
It must gall certain economists that the atmosphere, the air we breathe, has become one less “externality,” no longer a rug under which to sweep the dirt, “trade-offs” notwithstanding.
I recall one commentator saying earlier, before the launch — this guy is 90 years old? As if to say, this fellow does not act like 90 years old and I would agree with that.
Shatner was attempting to express his experience I think, about how small the blue atmosphere around the planet was before you entered black space. This ride to 66 miles up only takes about 4 minutes if that and this short period leaves a person with the feeling this atmosphere is pretty small. I think the feeling he was having was fragile.
I thought his attempts to put his feelings into words were extremely moving. So different from the blithering idiots splashing champaign on each other and screaming in the background.
I have secret information about the part of William Shatner’s statement that was cut. He was deeply concerned about what he saw through the window: a gnome sitting on the outside of the space-ship busy taking the rocket engine apart.
Here is my own rant of the day. The jeremiads about environmental pollution occasionally include a mention of the vast accumulation of plastic junk in the oceans. But they never specify the obvious source of this junk: the packaging industry. Purchase anything at all nowadays, and it will be wrapped in
impregnable layers of plastic packaging. If the item has parts, each part will have an individual plastic cocoon within the larger plastic wrapping. Who mandated that this be the order of the day?
Probably merchants who were tired of having small items stolen/broken/cannibalized.
The media generally want this to be a celebrity/wow story. Shatner’s “there’s not much atmosphere in the big picture, let’s not ruin it” doesn’t fit that narrative. Media usually have a narrative they want to convey and any facts that don’t fit will end on the cutting-room floor. Compared to a lot of other news coverage (international especially), this particular shoehorning is minor.
++
Nice, but does he have two copies of The Shaggs “Philosophy of the World” – one still in the original shrink wrap with the Tower Records sticker on it? That would make for a painful listen-off.
If you enjoy a mix of understated-yet-knowing electric guitar with your weirdness, give Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert with Dirtwire a listen.
Aaaack! This is supposed to be responding to Jeremy Pereira in coment 2.
>the “MSM” largely leans Left<
Our for-profit corporate media does not 'lean left'. They cannot. Their oligarchic owners would never allow such a thing. We will never see serious muckracking investigative journalism from ABC regarding corruption or malfeasance in the Disney Board of Directors – and we all know why.
Check this: "The Congress, between 1966 and 1973, passed 25 pieces of consumer legislation, nearly all of which Nader had a hand in authoring. The auto and highway safety laws, the meat and poultry inspection laws, the oil pipeline safety laws, the product safety laws, the update on flammable fabric laws, the air pollution control act, the water pollution control act, the EPA, OSHA and the Environmental Council in the White House transformed the political landscape. Nader by 1973 was named the fourth most influential person in the country after Richard Nixon, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren and the labor leader George Meany.
“Then something very interesting happened,” Nader said. “The pressure of these meetings by the corporations like General Motors, the oil companies and the drug companies with the editorial people, and probably with the publishers, coincided with the emergence of the most destructive force to the citizen movement — Abe Rosenthal, the editor of The New York Times. Rosenthal was a right-winger from Canada who hated communism, came here and hated progressivism. The Times was not doing that well at the time. Rosenthal was commissioned to expand his suburban sections, which required a lot of advertising. He was very receptive to the entreaties of corporations, and he did not like me. I would give material to Jack Morris in the Washington bureau and it would not get in the paper.”Rosenthal, who banned social critics such as Noam Chomsky from being quoted in the paper and met frequently for lunch with conservative icon William F. Buckley, demanded that no story built around Nader’s research could be published unless there was a corporate response. Corporations, informed of Rosenthal’s dictate, refused to comment on Nader’s research. This tactic meant the stories were never published. The authority of the Times set the agenda for national news coverage. Once Nader disappeared from the Times, other major papers and the networks did not feel compelled to report on his investigations. It was harder and harder to be heard." (https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-the-corporations-broke-ralph-nader-and-america-too/)
Does that sound 'leftish' on the part of the Times. It does not. It sounds like oligarchy and fascism to me.
N_J
I’m reminded of seeing a video clip of the saintly Milton Friedman (Mr. “Private Morality”) being sarcastically dismissive of Nader.
Go on youtube, do a search for ‘shatner lucy in the sky” and “shatner climbs a mountain”. That’s all you need to know about him. He’s a hoot.