By Roger Aronoff, Accuracy in Media
It is being widely reported that Al Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize could propel him into the presidential race, but the award is tainted and the former vice president received it shortly after a British Court issued a ruling alleging numerous errors in his film on global warming. In short, Gore’s prize is a joke, something that should be fodder for late-night comedians.
But there can be no minimizing the propaganda value that such an award can garner. If Hillary falters in her race for the Democratic presidential nomination, it could be enough for Gore to make a move, and try to seize the White House for himself. That will depend, in part, on the fickle finger of the Big Media.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has a point in saying the award to Gore is a “sad day” for the Nobel legacy, except for the fact that other recipients of the prize have been as notorious and controversial as Gore.
“Al Gore should probably get a prize for most travel in a private jet, but not the Peace Prize,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Global Warming Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was alluding to Gore’s penchant for using so much of the energy that he blames for jeopardizing the future of the planet. Indeed, Ebell’s comments are precisely the tone that should be set. The prize is something to be mocked, not celebrated. Gore is a first class hypocrite who has not let his theory about the end of civilization inhibit his own luxurious lifestyle.
Read full blog here.
By Quentin Hardy, Forbes
Last July I was privileged to be in Aspen, Colo., where 10,000-square-foot luxury log cabins aspire to the soaring Rockies, billionaires tool Priuses to private jets and the world’s powerful gather for cold salmon and big truths. And they were feeling bad.
About 20 of us--including venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and Washington strategists--were asked to imagine the year 2050. With few exceptions, our predictions were a grim amplification of all of today’s worst headlines: global warming, famine, unending terrorism. Not much different, I’d guess, from what gets forecast at most salons and dinner parties when the talk turns this way: The future as a Mad Max movie, only without the style and thrills.
What’s going on here? We were, by almost any measure of space or time, a group others would kill to become--affluent Americans in 2007. We are longer-lived and with access to more knowledge and experiences than any king or pope who has come before, nevermind the lives of the countless billions whose ordinary tragedies are collectively called “history.” This much luck should make us hug ourselves with delight.
Having slipped catastrophes like the 1914-1945 worldwide conflicts (with 100 million dead), or the nuclear threat of the 44 cold years that followed, there are also reasonable grounds to believe we can work out our problems. The daily advances in science and technology lend hope that on balance things can be even better. Except that we do not feel that way.
The alarming news of the present, raised to a level of continual urgency, has taught us to think of the future in terms of continual catastrophe. It affects some more than others--my friends in Aspen are very well-informed people. In my newsroom days...you read a lot of the stories, and maybe your heart broke enough to scar over, but you gained the perspective to resume some kind of normality. Experience taught that our close world of work and loved ones continued on pretty well. Perhaps we can learn to do that again in our thoughts about the future of the planet. I suspect that it will be harder to gain the necessary experience, though. You only get to play out the next 50 years once. Read more here.
By Noel Sheppard, Newsbusters
As media in America fall all over themselves with glee at the thought of the Global Warmingist-in-Chief winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Wednesday’s findings by a British judge that Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” contained nine material falsehoods has prompted a request to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to strip the movie’s producers of the Oscars they received in February for “Best Documentary.” How delicious.
As reported by The West Australian Friday: A conservative think-tank in New Zealand has written to the president of the America’s Academy Awards asking that the Oscar awarded to the director of an Inconvenient Truth be taken back. Former New Zealand MP Dr Muriel Newman, director of web-based think-tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, said she had taken the measure in response to a British High Court ruling Thursday.
“With the release of the British High Court judgement overnight that found that ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, it is clear that Al Gore embellished the truth to create dramatic effect (see story). Given that the Oscar Award was presented in the documentary category and not the drama category, the only appropriate action now is for the Academy to rescind the Award as it was clearly inappropriately classed as a documentary.
“The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that his so-called documentary contained critical distortions that are quite contrary to the principles of good documentary journalism. Good documentaries should be factually correct. Clearly this documentary is not."This situation is not unlike that confronting sports bodies, when their sports “stars” are found to be drug cheats. In such cases, the sportsmen and women are stripped of their medals and titles, with the next-place getter elevated. While this is an extremely unpleasant duty, it is necessary if the integrity of competitive sport is to be protected. “Just this week Olympic gold medal winner Marion Jones has been stripped of her titles and medals. “If the integrity of the Academy Awards is to remain intact, is wholly appropriate that Al Gore be stripped of his ‘Best Documentary’ film Oscar. Read more here.