Generation Zero documentary looks at another inconvenient truth: US debt

Just as 'An Inconvenient Truth' mainstreamed global warming, a new conservative documentary hopes to focus Americans on their unsustainable federal debt.

Remember how Al Gore mainstreamed global warming with the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth"?

Now, a conservative political group is warning America about another inconvenient truth: the burgeoning federal debt.

Called "Generation Zero," the documentary lays out how the government's burgeoning debt threatens America. It debuts as a DVD March 22 (although it's already been screened twice and Fox's Sean Hannity showed long clips of it Tuesday).

You may or may not buy the movie's explanation for the financial crisis – that selfish baby boomers brought the crisis on themselves. They're the Generation Zero that will cause the next generation to start from zero.

Liberals will be outraged that the documentary's producer, Citizens United, is the group that challenged parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance laws and won a big victory last month in the Supreme Court.

Wealthy Republicans will take umbrage at documentary's populist argument (from Tea Party activists and others) that financial elites have gamed the system to the detriment of everyone else.

By focusing on America's exploding federal debt, however, the film delivers a message that every liberal and conservative can relate to: Our government is spending money that we don't have. The longer we wait to fix that problem, the tougher the solution and the greater the sacrifice.

Other documentaries (like I.O.U.S.A.) have focused on the debt problem. So have some federal officials and a few deficit hawks in Congress. One of these days, the message is going to break through to the mainstream.

It is an inconvenient truth.