Posts Tagged ‘Al Gore’

I have already finished The Assault on Reason, Al Gore’s new tome, and I have to say that it was a very well written book that would embolden any Democratic soul — if not incite it to protest the government. And there’s a thousand reviews out there that you could no doubt read on it, but I’d suggest picking it up regardless of your political affiliation.

What made me chuckle was today’s piece in El WaPo by Dana Milbank, who, in case you hadn’t noticed, has become my new source of balance and humor since we lost the Great Ivins. But I had a point to make with him based on what he wrote today.

Gore practically oozes gray matter.

“He’s the smartest guy out there,” said a former Gore volunteer named Andy Williams, who snagged a coveted front-row seat.

“He’s very smart,” concurred Alan Schwartz, wearing a T-shirt with President Bush’s image and the words “Worst President Ever.”

“He’s the smartest guy in the pack,” said Eugenia Ayers, who was one of the first in line.

And therein lies a problem for the Gore ‘08 bubble.

Publication this month of Gore’s jeremiad against Bush, “The Assault on Reason,” has fed fervent hopes among environmentalists and others on the left that he will run again for the presidency — an unlikely prospect, but one Gore does not completely dismiss. Yet reading Gore’s book, or listening to his speeches, may remind some of those same supporters what they liked least about him the first time he ran, in 2000. Gore is usually smart and sometimes prophetic — but, all too frequently, pedantic.

“It’s the biggest problem he’s got,” said Schwartz, from Germantown. “People don’t want somebody who makes them feel stupid.”

Okay, firstly, pedantic may be an accurate description of the way Al carries himself both in speeches and in print, but if you know the proper use of the word ‘pedantic’, then you shouldn’t have a huge problem following Al’s points. And that raises my second point.

What I like about Al Gore, as well as many people like him, is that I’m listening to someone who has really done their homework before going in front of an audience and can speak intelligently on the subject matter. With all due respect to Dana’s appearances – one of my favorite moments in television, by the way – he’s not reading up on a bunch of talking points five minutes before air time so that he can score cheap political shots at his adversaries.

One of the main themes of Al Gore’s book is to motivate people to get involved in the national discourse on things other than celebrity trials and reality TV shows — like the decisions that actually effect their lives. Go figure, right? So if someone is up there in front of everyone and makes references that you may not get, it presents you with the golden opportunity of learning it for yourself. It’s the updated version of when your parents or teachers told you to get the dictionary when you didn’t know how to spell a word. (Yes, kids, spell-check is relatively new and we actually had to learn how to spell without it.) He’s nudging you in the direction of seeking knowledge and not just having it pandered to you by the television set.

“I want the smartest guy around to be president,” said Schwartz, in the “Worst President Ever” T-shirt. But, he added, “how do you convince people it’s okay to feel inferior to their leaders?”

I think that quote scares me more than anything else. Why wouldn’t you want an incredibly smart man as President?

Go and get Al’s new book and have Google at the ready in case you need it. Trust me; you’ll be a better person for having read it.

Think Progress has a nice little montage of Diane Sawyer’s interview this morning with President Al Gore about his new book, The Assault on Reason. Well, that’s the reason Al’s doing the talk show circuit, but apparently Diane didn’t get the memo — and apparently didn’t understand the finer points of his book.

There is an active assault on reason, especially in this country. When the promises of science, which we have benefited from in so many ways that they’re almost innumerable, are put to question by the supremely ignorant, we’re a sneeze away from being a frightening hybrid of a Christian caliphate and an Orwellian nightmare. The lobotomized industry that passes for news media in this country has become nothing more than a sounding board from the Have-mores to the Want-mores under the alleged tutelage of a religion that specifically teaches that greed is evil. And what does Sawyer do? Well, she proves Al’s point.

SAWYER: Joining us now is the author of The Assault on Reason, former Vice President Al Gore. And it’s good to have you with us this morning

GORE: Good morning.

SAWYER: OK, you’re not going to tell me again that you have no plans to run, are you? Tell me this morning…

GORE: Well, I’m not a candidate and this book is not a political book, it’s not a candidate book at all. It’s about the fact that there are cracks in the foundation of American democracy that have to be fixed.

[…]

SAWYER: Well, I want to come back to that thesis because part of it involves our jobs in television news, and I want to deal with that. But nonetheless, Mr. Vice President, it’s going to be very hard for people to read this book and say this is not a political book, because this is a book that really does go to the current administration. And my question…

GORE: Just as one of many examples of how our conversation of democracy has turned toward these buzzwords and phrases, like the frame for the discussion, the logo Campaign ‘08, that’s not what this is about. You know, for anybody who has asked the question, Has something gone wrong in our country? this book is about that. It’s about what’s gone wrong and how we can fix it.

[…]

SAWYER: Again, not to come back to this and fall into your thesis that the press only wants the horserace of the political campaign, but one way…

GORE: But back to the horserace.

SAWYER: … back to the horserace.

[…]

SAWYER: And I just wonder, when will you make a decision? And what will it be that causes you to make that decision, if you’re waiting and watching?

GORE: Well, you know, I’m not pondering it, I’m not focused on that.

[…]

SAWYER: We are going dig deeper — in fact, we’re going to come back with another piece, because I really want to talk more about this thesis.

GORE: Oh, great.

SAWYER: But to dig not very deep, once again, at my peril here…I just want to say, Donna Brazile, your former campaign manager, has said, If he drops 25 to 30 pounds he’s running. Lost any weight?

GORE: I think, you know, millions of Americans are in the same struggle I am on that one. But look — but listen to your questions. You know, the horserace, the cosmetic parts of this — and, look, that’s all understandable and natural. But while we’re focused on, you know, Britney and K-Fed and Anna Nicole Smith and all this stuff, meanwhile, very quietly, our country has been making some very serious mistakes that could be avoided if we, the people, including the news media, are involved in a full and vigorous discussion of what our choices are.

SAWYER: Former Vice President Al Gore.

Watch the video. It’s absolutely stunning how shallow Sawyer is — and she appears to be completely aware of it and doesn’t seem to care at all.

…before you label the person telling it a liar? This is a question I have for Joe Scarborough and the of the TV journalists who insist on televising people like Terry Holt.
Whilst over at C&L, I came across this little nugget and I just couldn’t let it pass.

Last night on Scarborough Country, Republican strategist Terry Holt advanced for the umpteenth time the right’s favorite Al Gore smear — that he claimed to have invented the internet.

This picture remains one of my favorite internet pics of all time:

Why? Because Al Gore is one of the major reasons I’m able to write and the reason you’re able to read this post. That’s not reaching or embellishing his efforts at all. The bill called the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991 was called “The Gore Bill”. That was not due to its high content of Clive Barker references; it was because Al Gore drafted it.

Terry Holt is a either a typical Republican idiot or he is deliberately attempting to denigrate the authority and prestige of someone whose accomplishments he is obscenely jealous of. Take your pick, Terry. It’s one or the other when someone in this day and age can step in front of a national audience and make a statement so untrue that it kills small children with its mere utterance.

This also goes for the lot of you who insist on hanging on to this lie. You are so irrecoverably misguided that you really need to go live in the mountains somewhere — a place that you can’t hurt anyone but yourself.

From the people who actually fathered the internet:

Leonard Kleinrock – considered the father of packet-switching theory:

A second development occurred around this time, namely, then-Senator Al Gore, a strong and knowledgeable proponent of the Internet, promoted legislation that resulted in President George Bush signing the High Performance Computing and Communication act of 1991. This Act allocated $600 million for high performance computing and for the creation of the National Research and Education Network [13-14]. The NREN brought together industry, academia and government in a joint effort to accelerate the development and deployment of gigabit/sec networking.

Vinton G. Cerf and Dave Farber – “Founding Fathers” of the internet:

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.
…Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet. The fact of the matter is that Gore was talking about and promoting the Internet long before most people were listening.

So here’s a call to end all of this bullshit. If another person goes on Hannity’s show or Scarborough Country and let’s this lie fly and the host lets it go, I swear to God and Sunny Jesus that I will have Al Gore call you personally and tell you to get off his fucking internet.

Oh, and Terry Holt is not to be believed about anything until he publicly apologizes for being that fucking ignorant, whether it was intentional or not.

I would also add that it probably pisses off the tighty-rightes something fierce that Al Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to educate the world about global warming.

Two Norwegian parliamentarians have nominated former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize for raising awareness of climate change.

Since leaving office in 2001 Gore has lectured extensively on the threat of global warming and last year starred in his own documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” to argue for immediate action to deal with the problem.

“I think climate change is this century’s most important and most threatening environmental issue, and I think Al Gore has made a difference in putting climate change on the global agenda,” Conservative MP Boerge Brende told Reuters.

Oh I so want to be a fly on the wall of Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force right now…if they even existed.

And, call me crazy, I think his chances are a wee bit better than Rush’s.

This is one of my favorite exchanges in the movies – from When Harry Met Sally, Jess is about to go on a blind date set up by his friend Harry.

Jess: I don’t know about this.

Harry: It’s just a dinner.

Jess: You know I’ve finally gone to a new place in my life where I’m comfortable with the fact that it’s just me and my work. If she’s so great why aren’t you taking her out?

Harry: How many times do I have to tell you, we’re just friends.

Jess: So you’re saying she’s not that attractive.

Harry: No, I told you she *is* attractive.

Jess: Yeah but you also said she has a good personality.

Harry: She *has* a good personality.

(Jess stops walking, turns to Harry, raises his arms in the air)

Harry: What?

Jess: When someone is not that attractive, they’re always described as having a good personality.

Harry: Look, if you would ask me, “What does she look like?” and I said, “She has a good personality.” That means she’s not attractive. But just because I happened to mention that she has a good personality, she could be either. She could be attractive with a good personality, or not attractive with a good personality.

Jess: So which one is she?

Harry: Attractive.

Jess: But not beautiful, right?

(Harry walks away.)

This is the way the media is treating the whole “Will Al Gore run in 2008?” thing.

You know what? The last I heard he said he wasn’t going to run. If he throws his hat in now or at any point during the election season, I doubt he will garner as much interest as so many believe. The fact is that he doesn’t poll well. And as much as I would love to call the man President of the United States, I firmly believe he’s a much better person in the private sector and can do more good there at this stage. It’s also probably true that his Democrat brethren will crucify him for making a decision that would be construed by many as a “flip-flop”.

But yet the media, still trying to find the connection between a good personality and beautiful, will grill him time and again over whether or not he has come to terms with his own words.