Against the Stream

Gored Again

Well, it seems that it hasn't taken long for the media to begin the ritual practice of "goring" Al Gore. This isn't really surprising (see the last post). But they do move fast. The first sign was when a mouthpiece for the oil industry compared Gore to Josef Goebbels. This is apparently not an example of irony. But! Not to be outdone, this week another oil industry shill compared him to Hitler. Other examples have multiplied as well, from Adam Nagourney's gratutious slap to Howard Feinman's unflattering anectdote, to Jonah Goldberg just deciding to disbelieve something that Gore said for no other reason than that he's Al Gore.

It is truly amazing to me that putatively responsible journalists would take character traits and remarks which would be considered to be completely harmless in any other political figure and turn them into enormous character flaws in Al Gore. Looking back on the last six years, hasn't it occurred to even one of these guys that George Bush's very real character flaws have proven to be far, far, FAR more damaging to the country than the almost entirely fictional character flaws that they attribute to Al Gore? Hasn't it occurred to even one of them that they were partly responsible, by their incessant focus on triviality at the expense of substantive policy, for thrusting upon us literally the worst president in a century? Hasn't it occurred to even one of them that by any measure of presidential competence, we would have been better off by every measurable standard if Al Gore had been President?

And, most importantly, given rising global temperatures, given glacial retreat, dying forests, and massive floods, not to mention the total consensus among climate experts, hasn't it occurred to them that on the most basic policy issue of the coming century, Al Gore is right and has been right for twenty years?

And yet, here they are again, rolling out the exact same slurs they used the last time.

Lindsay, I think, has it about right:

In 2000, Gore ran a decent campaign as the VP of the most popular president in living memory. Yet, somehow the election was still close enough for the Republicans to steal in Florida.

Gore's public persona wasn't as polished as it could have been, but the real problem was that the mainstream media wouldn't cut him a break. They decided early on to cast him as the stiff, arrogant, geeky, unlikable, stuffed shirt.

When Gore didn't do anything wrong, the press made up "fibs" to pin on him. Gore never claimed to have invented the internet, or to have inspired Love Story. Yet, the press kept repeating these truthy little chestnuts, even after they had been debunked. At first they warned him against being cold and haughty. Then when he followed their advice and warmed up his demeanor, they slagged him for being phony and desperate.

The media sandbagged Gore the first time around, and they still hate him.

The election of 2008 is too important to allow the media morons to screw it up again. If Gore runs (and I sincerely hope he does), then not a single one of these slurs can be allowed to stand. It will be necessary at every stage to savagely, savagely respond to any and all attempts at a repeat goring. What is needed is an independent strategy to widely disseminate and publicize those responses, so that nobody to the left of the John Birch Society can repeat them with a straight face, or at least not without being laughed out of the room.

Fortunately, this is a place where the blogs can play an important role. The job is already underway, but more needs to be done. The responses need to moved from the blogosphere to the mainstream, so that even Tim Russert won't let these smears go unrefuted.

And that, in all honesty, is the hard part.

Why Al Gore?

Although it's a bit early for presidential endorsements, and I reserve my right to change my mind later on, I am now officially engaged in the Draft Al Gore movement for the 2008 Presidential election.

In part, I'm joining because the new movie is yet further evidence that Gore has a Big Brain, and at least a desire to try to answer the biggest problem facing global society today -- Global Warming. He was right 20 years ago; he was right in 1992 when Bush Père referred to him as "Ozone Man." He was right in 2000 when he was savaged over many things, including his stance on Global Warming. He was right when he supported the Kyoto Protocols. He was just plain damn right! And the last eight years have simply further confirmed how right he was.

But another reason for joining is because I'm increasingly of the opinion that we need to stop the "Hillary Clinton is Inevitable" train as early and as completely as possible. She may wind up being the nominee, but she shouldn't be the presumptive nominee.

This weekend's hit piece on the Clintons' marriage is exhibit A as to why a Hillary candidacy would be a bad idea. It's not that its her fault that the New York Times of all publications chose to run a tawdry and base tabloid article on an issue that has nothing to do with her candidacy. Hillary would be right to be outraged by the piece. But lets face it, this is the kind of treatment that we can expect to see for the next two years. Added to the fact that she is (again unfairly) a horribly divisive figure in U.S. politics, and that there are many states that might otherwise swing Democratic that would never vote for her in a million years, and I can't imagine a scenario where a Hillary nomination wouldn't be a de facto act of handing the Republicans another 4 years in the White House.

Of course, the obvious rejoinder is that Al Gore is also a divisive figure whom the media habitually treat unfairly. Why prefer Gore to Clinton if they can both expect the same treatment?

Well, two responses: In the first place, Gore hasn't gottenn the same treatment that the Clintons (both of them) have over the years. The character assassination directed toward him is custom designed to his personality. It's character assassination nonetheless, but of a different sort. Furthermore, it's the kind of character assassination that it's easier to overcome, if only Gore can find the right strategy to overcome it.

But there is one very important reason that Gore has the advantage over Hillary: He has already won the majority of the popular vote in a national election even with the kind of character assassination that has been cast at him. And the past eight years have only been one continuous example of why the final outcome of the election was a huge mistake. So I would argue that the case can be made fairly strongly that, all things considered, Gore's results ought to be better in 2008 than they were in 2000.

Therefore, I'm endorsing Al. Click this link, and do thou likewise.

Gore on the Today Show

Via Atrios.

Da Vinci

Let me put my head above water for just long enough to mention my recent editorial in The Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago paper, on The Da Vinci Code. Here's how it begins:

To the uninitiated, the furor over Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" must seem somewhat mystifying. On the one hand, the book has sold millions of copies, and it seems that there is not a Barnes & Noble in Christendom that lacks the requisite massive table display of Da Vinci-related books, commentaries, stationary, and board games. For a man who has been dead since 1519, Leonardo da Vinci has managed to spawn an impressive franchise industry that covers the landscape of contemporary American literature.

Click the link to read the rest.

How Times Flies

Well, the last few weeks have certainly been busy, and so I've taken a break from blogging. Try not to miss me too much. I hope to get back to regular posting when this quarter is over.

See you then!