I Just Realised That the NIMBY Douche on My Twitter Timeline Also Wrote “Don’t Look Up”
So, here's my four-years-too-late review of "Don't Look Up"
In the haunted carnival of freaks that populates my Twitter timeline, one weirdo who always catches my eye is a guy named David Sirota. Sirota’s malformity is that he is an adult human who does not seem capable of understanding the concept of supply and demand. His operating theory of housing prices is that high prices are caused mostly by corporate oligarchs creating an artificial shortage, but he also sees the influence of corporate oligarchs behind the so-called “abundance agenda”. So, which is it, David: Do oligarchs profit from constricting supply or from expanding it? Sirota rejects the NIMBY label but also thinks that loosening zoning laws would cause a housing bubble, and he recently attempted to deflect alleged slander of him as a NIMBY by trumpeting his support for a proposal that is, in fact, restrictionist.1 He’s also a “greedflation” guy and a defender of rent control, he’s one of the most illogical people I’ve ever encountered, and that includes my two year-old son, who likes to put orange slices in his sock drawer and say “For the duckies!”
The other day, I finally decided to google this asshat (Sirota, not my son). It turns out that he was an adviser to Bernie Sanders (that tracks), is an editor-at-large at Jacobin (I should have guessed), but there was a bullet on his résumé that I didn’t expect: He co-wrote the 2021 climate-change-allegory movie Don’t Look Up. Maybe you knew that — I didn’t. Don’t Look Up was a tough watch for me: It’s about a topic I care about, stars several people I like, and Sirota’s co-writer (Adam McKay) has written several funny things.2 But watching this movie was like getting a lecture about appropriate office attire from a guy wearing a crotchless gimp suit. It worked for me on zero levels — as comedy, as allegory, or as a minimally coherent piece of storytelling — and now that I know that Sirota was involved, that all makes sense. So — four years too late — here’s my review of Don’t Look Up.