Gas prices too high? Just drink more vino

I just got back from Walla Walla , and tomorrow I’ll be at the bank looking for a loan. Not to pay for the bottles of wine that I bought, nor pay for the house that we rented, nor even the overpriced meal at a French-like restaurant that we visited (I had risotto).

No, I’ll need the money just to pay for the gas that I used getting there and back. At between $3.15 (the low) and $3.22 (the high) a gallon, I didn’t need to spend a dime for anything else to feel as if I’d dropped money like a Microsoft millionaire.

Which is why I ended up liking the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” a lot more than I otherwise might have.

See, the last few years have seen filmmakers throw political docs at us that are really nothing more than one-way arguments. Michael Moore says guns are bad and that the Bush family’s in bed with the Saudis. Wow. Robert Greenwald tells us that the war on Iraq was based on faulty, uh, intelligence and that Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News isn’t exactly fair and balanced. Hold the presses

What both these filmmakers have in common is that they make docs that are strictly one-sided. Entertaining, sure, especially in Moore’s case. But there are times when what you from a doc is two sides. Guns can come in handy, just as Murdoch’s news show is every bit as entertaining, and balanced, as Moore’s movies.

Here’s what they don’t do: Let one side say one thing, the other say something else and then allow the audience to weigh the information, each against the next, and then make up our own minds.

That’s what Chris Paine does with “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Not that he doesn’t have a point of view. He believes that the technology of the electric car once existed, that it is (and remains) a viable business model and that … it was murdered.

But who was the assassin? The government? The state of California? Rumors that the plug-in batteries didn’t work well? General Motors , which seemed to have the biggest investment in the process and then pulled out when it looked as if it just might work?

Or we consumers, who only now are discovering that our Expeditions and Suburbans and Hummers don’t work all that well in today’s oil-costs-are-a-bitch world?

Paine has a bit of blame for them all. But he’s especially suspicious of GM and those who are making enough off of oil sales money to buy Delaware and the largest two Virgin Islands.

And as much Walla Walla wine as they can drink.