Gored

Here is a great little rant on the treatment Al Gore has received both of late and long ago. Some things never change.

more awards for Al Gore

Now an Emmy? Via JekyllinHyde @ dKos, it appears that Al Gore has won an Emmy for Interactive Television Series with Current TV.

The big one, of course, might come in on October 12, when the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is announced.

Vanity Fair on media coverage of Al Gore in 2000

It's really good, especially if you haven't heard it all before. That being said, it will make you mad, especially the part at the end where you find out that the 2 reporters most responsible for torching Gore's credibility still work in the nation's marquee newspapers. The snippets of their work that Peretz quotes here make you want to vomit, and make you wonder how anyone could ever trust a word they say. It isn't just the stories themselves, though they were sometimes egregiously twisting the truth to slap Gore around, but the language they use in their articles is the kind of bile you normally expect only from the most naked partisans.

But hey, judge for yourself:

Building on the narrative established by the Love Story and Internet episodes, Seelye, her critics charge, repeatedly tinged what should have been straight reporting with attitude or hints at Gore's insincerity. Describing a stump speech in Tennessee, she wrote, "He also made an appeal based on what he described as his hard work for the state—as if a debt were owed in return for years of service." Writing how he encouraged an audience to get out and vote at the primary, she said, "Vice President Al Gore may have questioned the effects of the internal combustion engine, but not when it comes to transportation to the polls. Today he exhorted a union audience in Knoxville, Iowa, to pile into vans—not cars, but gas-guzzling vans—and haul friends to the Iowa caucuses on January 24." She would not just say that he was simply fund-raising. "Vice President Al Gore was back to business as usual today—trolling for money," she wrote. In another piece, he was "ever on the prowl for money."

She was working for The New York Times, by the way.

Especially interesting, however, is what the media decided was so wrong with Gore. The problem, you see, is that he's just so damn smart and knowledgeable:

Maureen Dowd boiled the choice between Gore and Bush down to that between the "pious smarty-pants" and the "amiable idler," and made it perfectly clear which of the presidential candidates had a better chance of getting a date. "Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."

And he's just insufferable the way he won't shut up about issues!:

And Gore just kept going on about issues. Alluding to five speeches he made in two months on education, crime, the economy, faith-based organizations, and cancer research, Seelye wrote, "Mr. Gore becomes almost indignant when asked if his avalanche of positions might overwhelm voters." The Washington Post's David Broder later found Gore too focused in his convention speech on what he'd do as president. "But, my, how he went on about what he wants to do as president," wrote Broder. "I almost nodded off." As for the environment, while Gore was persuaded by his consultants not to talk about it as much as he would have liked, whenever he did, many in the media ignored it or treated it as comedy. Dowd wrote in one column that "Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating." In another, referring to his consideration of putting a Webcam in the Oval Office, she wrote, "I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction."

Why am I not in any way shocked to hear that David Broder, the "dean" of political punditry, was exasperated by Gore talking about policy?

And of course, who could stand a president who not only knows the names of foreign leaders, but doesn't mangle them with poor pronunciation?:

For the Times's Frank Bruni, the sighs weren't as galling as Gore's familiarity with the names of foreign leaders. "It was not enough for Vice President Al Gore to venture a crisp pronunciation of Milosevic, as in Slobodan," he wrote. "Mr. Gore had to go a step further, volunteering the name of Mr. Milosevic's challenger Vojislav Kostunica."

The scariest revelation of all: these same clowns will be narrating the upcoming election, too.

The Assault on Al Gore

If I were the former vice president, I'd hold a press conference tomorrow, walk up to the mic and say, "I rest my case," and walk off. These people are just unbelievable. Maybe he gets such a cold, sneering reception from them because he's living, walking proof that their shitty reporting sent the country off in a direction it was never supposed to go. Or maybe it just pisses them off to have to deal with someone notably smarter and better educated than them. Everyone becomes a folksy anti-intellectual when the guy across from them is an expert.

I'm reading the book, by the way; I'll let you know how it goes.

this guy has his own show... on CNN

There are just so many ways to slice up Glenn Beck that choosing any one tack wouldn't do justice to the grand cynicism, malevolence, and buffoonery of this:

On the May 2 edition of CNN Newsroom, while previewing his May 2 special, "Exposed: The Climate of Fear," CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck told host Don Lemon that he is doing the special because "the scientific consensus in Europe in the 1920s and '30s was that eugenics was a good idea," adding: "I'm glad that a few people stood against eugenics." Those comments recall remarks Beck made on the April 30 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio program, in which he likened former Vice President Al Gore's fight against global warming to Adolf Hitler's use of eugenics as justification for exterminating 6 million European Jews. On that program, Beck stated: "Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government."

Beck continued: "You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming." He added: "Then you get the scientists -- eugenics. You get the scientists -- global warming. Then you have to discredit the scientists who say, 'That's not right.' And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did."

All bad enough, of course, in its mean-spirited absurdity. But are you ready for the punchline?

Later in the interview, Beck addressed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who called Beck "CNN's chief corporate fascism advocate." In response, Beck said: "[P]eople who question global warming, they're called Nazis. They're put right up next to Holocaust deniers." [emphasis mine]

Without the slightest hint of irony. That's how stupid they think we are.

Dear Salon

Camille Paglia makes me want to shoot myself in the face. Seriously, I'm setting up a hunting trip with the Vice President as I write this.

Just thought you should know.

Cheers,
el ranchero

No! It CAN'T be true!

As Upton Sinclair famously said, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Meet Senator James Inhofe:

Top contributor for 2006 by industry sector, 1) Energy and Natural Resources: $604,965.

Top contributor for 2006 by industry: 1) Oil and Gas: $319,708, 2) Electric Utilities: $195,907.

Top individual contributors for 2006, 1) Murray Energy Corp: $22,800, 2) Koch Industries: $22,750

Travel Financed by Special Interests for 2006 Cycle: 34 trips

Total Cost of trips: $45,131.92

Sponsor of most trips: Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Assn.

Top contributor for 2004 by industry sector, 1) Energy and Natural Resources: $590,219.

Top contributor for 2004 by industry: 1) Oil and Gas: $304,156, 2) Electric Utilities: $188,713.

Top individual contributors for 2004, 1) Murray Energy Corp: $33,200, 2) Koch Industries: $22,750

Top contributor for 2002 Election by industry sector, 1) Energy and Natural Resources: $533,519.

Top contributor for 2002 Election by industry: 1) Oil and Gas: $284,706, 2) Electric Utilities: $162,213.

Top individual contributors for 2002 Election, 1) National Republican Senatorial Cmte $33,500, 2) Murray Energy Corp: $33,200, 3) Koch Industries: $16,750

I know, I know, you could've guessed as much without the proof, but Senator "No queers in my family line!" Inhofe pissed me off yesterday by doing his moronic grandstanding with Big Oil's most misleading talking points.

Hey Jimmy boy, Al Gore doesn't think those "thousands of scientists" are wrong and he's right; he thinks they're wrong and the vast majority of scientists worldwide are right. As well as those of us with a 9th grade science education. Or are the nation's science teachers also in on what must now be the world's largest conspiracy ever?

James Inhofe, R-Exxon.

Gore back in Congress

Al Gore testified today to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce over climate change. Watched part of it. All I have to say is I was feeling pretty blue (pun intended) about how Joe Barton always manages to make Texans look like chest-thumping, sanctimonious dumbasses, but then I remembered that James Inhofe, sanctimonious dumbass extraordinaire, represents Oklahoma, and I felt a little better.

Bob Shrum: countering sound judgment since 1976

Why does anybody listen to this hack? (via Digby):

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was skeptical about voting for the Iraq war resolution and was pushed into it by advisers looking out for his political future, according to an upcoming book by one of his former consultants.
Democratic strategist Bob Shrum writes in his memoir to be published in June that he regrets advising Edwards to give President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq. He said if Edwards had followed his instincts instead of the advice of political professionals, he would have been a stronger presidential candidate in 2004.
...
Shrum writes that Edwards, then a North Carolina senator, called his foreign policy and political advisers together in his Washington living room in the fall of 2002 to get their advice. Edwards was "skeptical, even exercised" about the idea of voting yes and his wife Elizabeth was forcefully against it, according to Shrum.
But Shrum said the consensus among the advisers was that Edwards, just four years in office, did not have the credibility to vote against the resolution and had to support it to be taken seriously on national security. Shrum said Edwards' facial expressions showed he did not like where he was being pushed to go. [emphasis in Attytood's post, but probably not in original report]

As Digby correctly notes, even without the benefit of hindsight this advice is so patently myopic that it's amazing anyone ever paid this wanker to consult a campaign for the local school board:

The mistake was not only in the rank immorality of voting for this ridiculous war (on the basis of 10 points in the polls, no less.) It was also a huge tactical political error. If the war went well, it was going to be nearly impossible to beat Bush in 2004 and everyone knew it. If the war was going badly, then a vote for it was going to tie these candidates up in knots and make them look weak and irresolute, which is exactly what happened to Kerry. There was no margin in Democratic presidential candidates voting for the war.

Will Bunch points back to a Washington Post article that covers a little of Shrum's history. Folks, this guy has consulted 8 presidential campaigns, including two against George W. Bush, the depth of whose personality flaws is matched only by his intellectual ones ("peeance and freeance," anyone?), and he has never won. Never. His tutelage helped make war hero John Kerry look like less of a man than his draft-dodging opponent. Thanks in part to his advice, the prescient climate change crusader Al Gore looked like a serial liar who had no more to say about the environment than his oilman opponent who's entire public face was a fraud conceived in 1999.

And now we see he convinced John Edwards to sell out on his better judgment to make the biggest mistake of his political career. What would have happened if all of those people looking for a candidate smart enough to see the war for what it was had not only Howard Dean, but also John Edwards? It's hard to see Kerry having survived the primary had Edwards been able to say that he was in the Senate, too, and he had the good sense to vote nay (and that's assuming Edwards wouldn't have poached a lot of Dean's followers in the process!).

This is what when there are no hiring consequences to advising Democrats and losing. This shit doesn't happen in the GOP because if you can't win, they will cut your ass loose without thinking twice. Is it any surprise that they've been more successful campaigners despite being on the wrong side of virtually every major issue lately?

Kos, who devoted part of his book to the consultant problem, distilled his commentary on this revelation in one word: Dumbass.

One slightly more positive note, however: this article sure does make you love Elizabeth Edwards even more, doesn't it?

what might have been

There's been a growing phenomenon of people looking back on a certain election in a way I've never experienced. Take this, for example, from Richard freakin' Cohen (c/o mcjoan at dKos):

There were so many reasons not to vote for him -- none, in retrospect, much good...

Gore would not have taken the United States to war in Iraq. He would have finished the job in Afghanistan -- it was al-Qaeda and its Taliban enablers who were responsible for the attacks on us on Sept. 11, 2001, not Saddam Hussein, no matter how vile he might have been. Gore would not have dealt with the Iranians and the North Koreans in such a juvenile fashion -- axis of evil, after all -- and all over the world, wherever you and I went, we would not detect such anger toward America. The last time I saw Gore was at a screening of his now-acclaimed movie, "An Inconvenient Truth." I wrote at the time that, on paper at least, he was the near-perfect Democratic presidential candidate -- right on the war, above all. This observation, hardly original with me, is being echoed elsewhere, and it would be impossible for Gore to ignore it. Jimmy Carter said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that he thought Gore ought to run and had told Gore so insistently. "He almost told me the last time I called, 'Don't call me anymore,' " Carter said. What Gore told me was something similar: "I think there are other ways to serve."

And what about this, from an SNL opener several months ago?

It's weird: in both of these pieces (and countless other references to Al Gore in public and private discourse) there's an underlying sense of sadness, a national understanding that we, enticed by the siren songs of W's faux folksy everymanness and Nader's angry righteousness (or perhaps, self-righteousness), made a horrible mistake in 2000. It's not just that we allowed a vindictive, arrogant man-child to take the presidency (and inexplicably re-elected him with the first honest-to-God majority in 16 years) or that we allowed an election to be essentially subverted. We've seen buyer's remorse of that stripe before. People often joked about how Clinton should've lost, or Bush Sr., or Reagan, but the difference lies in looking at their opposition. In Clinton's lowest moments, people may have wished he'd lost, but there was no widescale gazing sadly at Bush Sr. and wishing he'd won. There were no masses pining for the return of Dukakis, or Mondale, or tellingly, John Kerry, even despite the admirable fight he's been waging in the Senate over a host of issues ever since his loss.

In what has to be a truly scary moment for the current resident and his fixation on his legacy, how "history will judge his presidency," the country is starting to openly wish it had elected Al Gore instead. Perhaps even scarier, above we have Richard Cohen, no flaming lefty, implying that he wishes it had been Al Gore at the helm on 9/11, steering our military policy. My guess is that most voters aren't there yet, but more and more people are coming around every day, and with Gore getting and Oscar and potentially a Nobel peace prize, and with influential media personalities openly pining for his candidacy in 2000 and hoping for the same in 2008, we could someday, perhaps before this administration is even over, see a poll indicating just such a sentiment.