Thursday, June 7, 2007

Gore not a hypocrite? *Gasp*

I will freely admit that I used to think Al Gore was a bit of a nutcase. Invented the internet? I had the same mental image that the rest of uninformed Americans had, the one Al Franken lays out in Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: Al Gore, sitting up late at night, furiously writing code for the internet. My God, I thought, how could a man so stupidly make a claim like that?

It turns out I'm the stupid one. Not only was Al Gore relentlessly misquoted, he really did help create the internet--through funding.

The latest Gore "hypocrisy" says that, despite his global-warming crusade, he pays a lot more in electric bills than the 'liberal' media thinks is proper. I was disheartened by this, until I read an article about Gore on the Time magazine website that says:

"The anti-Gore crowd zinged him recently because his electricity bill last August was 10 times the local average. The Gores pay extra to get 100% of their power from renewable sources, and their zealous retrofitting [of energy efficient windows, heating and cooling units, and solar panels] will no doubt bring their costs down."

Wow, the 'liberal' media sure got their facts straight the first time.

Why do we still listen to media slander campaigns? They've done everything they can to demonize liberals; and until they recently realized that most Americans don't like George Bush or his current policies, if a Republican scandal came up (like messing around with underage boys), it quietly went away after a short time. I realize that Clinton broke the law when he lied under oath, but at least his infidelity was legal and between two consenting adults. Also, it was heterosexual, a fact that I wouldn't normally bring into play except to point out the glaring hypocrisy of the Republican party.

A quote in the article, "The Last Temptation of Al Gore," bothered me though. It said, "Why else would you write a book like [The Assault on Reason], they say, if you weren't laying down a marker for 2008 [elections]?"

Do people really think that the book was a publicity stunt? Al Gore wrote that book because we needed that book. We needed someone to step up and speak out about what the current administration is doing to keep the American citizens in check. They want us to be cowed so that they can serve their own interests. Don't make any mistake about Bush's policies: he wasn't sent by God, he was sent by the wealthiest Americans to create policy catering to their own needs.

Al Gore, an American citizen, felt that need as strongly as we all do. The right-wing slander brigade keeps trying to villify him, but I believe Al will come out on top. Hopefully, we all will.

And one more thing: Al Gore is not a hypocrite.

The Last Temptation of Al Gore, Time.com.

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