The Day After Tomorrow has one of the most absurd and implausible plot turns I’ve seen in a movie, ever. Global warming melts the polar ice caps, which makes the oceans rise and disrupts the Gulf Stream. There are lethal hail stones in Tokyo and ravaging tornadoes in L.A.; and after New York City is flooded by sea water, the temperature plunges at a rate of 10 degrees per second so that people are transformed into ice sculptures where they stand. Tens of millions are dead, and the upper United States is uninhabitable. Now, here’s the implausible part. The vice president (Kenneth Welsh), who is closely modeled on Dick Cheney, who has pooh-poohed all evidence of global warming, goes on TV and says, “I was wrong.”
What would Dick Cheney actually say? How would he spin it? Whom would he blame? What would he acknowledge or fail to acknowledge in the face of an actual environmental apocalypse?
Send us your version of Dick Cheney’s address to the nation at the start of the new ice age to movies@slate.com (please put “Cheneyspeak Contest” in the subject line) no later than tomorrow (May 27) at 5 p.m. ET. The author of the pithiest and most characteristic statement will win a copy of The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg. The winner and runners-up will be posted along with my review of the movie around 7 p.m. ET.
