Montage: Media Exploits 16-Year-Old Climate Activist with Mental Health Problems
The major media has a fever, and the only prescription is 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg.
In case you haven’t heard, Thunberg is the person behind the “climate strike,” movement, where students are skipping school on Fridays, ostensibly over their concern about global warming.
Thunberg, who suffers from Aspergers syndrome, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and selective mutism, is becoming a media darling.
The Swedish teenager says came down with a case of serious depression at age 11 over her fear of global warming. Eventually she decided, she says, to embark on her crusade against a changing climate.
Thunberg’s mother, former Swedish opera singer Malena Ernman, has been accused of helping orchestrate her daughter’s non-stop publicity tour to help sales of her own book about Greta’s struggles with mental illness. The Daily Mail reported her mother has worked with PR guru Ingmar Rentzhog, who specializes in environmental activism, to engineer Greta’s rocketship rise to global stardom. Rentzhog’s firm is called We Don’t Have Time; Rentzhog is a member of Al Gore’s Climate Reality Organization Leaders and has received training from Gore. After media reports surfaced about Thunberg’s mom’s relationship with Rentzhog’s PR firm, Thunberg took to Facebook to announce the two parties had cut ties.
Meantime, Greta’s meteoric rise in the media continues apace. The 16-year-old recently landed in New York City after sailing from Europe to attend a United Nations Climate Action Summit on Sept. 23rd. America’s media is treating Thunberg like the second coming of Elvis Pressley, the Beatles, and Mother Theresa all rolled into one woke eco-activist global celeb.
“A world-famous teenage climate activist is in New York now after crossing the Atlantic in a solar-powered sailboat, wow,” CBS’s Gayle King gushed, perhaps one of Greta’s biggest media fans. “I am so smitten with this little girl. I keep reminding myself she’s only 16, and what she’s doing.”
After landing in New York, NBC’s Craig Melvin cheered, “Go, Greta, go!”
But for anyone who watched Greta’s post-transatlantic press conference, this media adoration appears misplaced. The teen struggled throughout her 15 minute remarks, struggling to string sentences together and often losing her train of thought. When she wasn’t speaking, her facial expressions revealed deep distress. The actual content of her comments reflected virtually no understanding of climate science.
This is a person clearly needing to focus on her own mental health. Unfortunately, the major media is instead using her to advance their political agenda.
