Giving credit where it’s due…

Updated on June 28, 2007 By Ken Begg 19 Comments

I’ve never had much use for Al Gore, whether as our Vice President or in his current role as a huckstering evangelical minister for the fundamentalist evironmental movement.  However, I had to give him props when I saw he’d entitled his new book ‘The Assault on Reason.’ 

I mean, at least he’s being upfront about it.

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  • Mark

    I wonder who Al claims is assaulting reason. I wonder if he will blame ManBearPig.

  • Food

    I understand it was released the same weekend The Reagan Diaries was released, and Reagan outsold Gore by only 5 copies, 49,626 to 49,621.

    I wonder if Gore will demand a recount.

  • I did not laugh at that…I promise I did not laugh…

  • FS

    Hello in there, Ken. Tell me, what color is the sky in your world?

  • Ericb

    Well, on the other side of the isle you have Newt Gingrich who’s kinda like the Bizzaro Al Gore.

  • PCachu

    That could only be an improvement.

    “Me am save environment! Me know how! Me EAT THE EARTH!”

  • Ken HPoJ

    Why do people always have to state the obvious? Yes, there are nuts and fools on both sides of the political aisle. When somebody, anybody, actually denies this–ever–then it might be handy to point this out.

    That said, Al Gore definately is a member of that universal tribe. At this point he’s basically Michael Moore without the sense of humor.

  • Ericb

    Michael Moore has a sense of humor?

  • Ericb

    “Why do people always have to state the obvious? Yes, there are nuts and fools on both sides of the political aisle. When somebody, anybody, actually denies this–ever–then it might be handy to point this out.”

    Sorry, I guess I’ve just encountered too many people who seem to think that one side wears halos and has all the sanity while the other is all evil and irrational so whenever I hear someone complain about X politican being a nut a reflex action hits in.

  • Eric — Sorry to get testy! It’s just that stuff like this always seems to me to be less saying “You’re wrong” (acceptable) and “You’re a retard.” (Not acceptable.) It’s like spending ten minutes going into the Constitutional and philosophical reasons behind why you don’t support affirmative action, and then have somebody say, “Oh, so you hate black people.”

    Since conservatives can hardly find even one person in the Republican party they don’t actively want to punch in the face these days (see the near-shoving of that grossly unpopular immigration bill down our throats for a huge example of why), I can assure you that nobody I know who’s even vaguely conservative has any illusions about the intellectual or moral purity of the politicians pretending to be on our side.

  • Ericb

    ” It’s just that stuff like this always seems to me to be less saying “You’re wrong” (acceptable) and “You’re a retard.” (Not acceptable.)”

    Oh, I certainly didn’t mean it that way. Really, I was just looking for an excuse to get my Bizzaro quip in.

  • Ericb

    I mean, both Ginbrich and Gore deserve the Bizzaro tag as they are both kind of Sci-Fi politicians.

  • I agree. And as soon as Newt writes a book called The Assault on Reason, I’ll make the same joke.

  • Ericb

    Well, he’s got a book called “A Contract With the Earth” coming out. That’s seems like a pretty ambitious undertaking.

    A Contract With The Earth

  • monoceros4

    Hurr, Al Gore is teh sux0rz! Bet nobody ever made that joke before! *rolls eyes*

  • Yeah, conservatives really hate those stupid Republicans that they mindlessly re-elected several times. They’re under no illusions!

    As for who’s assaulting reason? I don’t know, maybe the people insisting creationism needs to be taught in schools, or denying the existance of climate change? Just a thought. But then, I’m one of those fundamentalist environmental fanatics. Because, you know, anyone who believes in a cause must be just as fanatical as Jerry Falwell.

  • Prankster, Gore has repeated pushed fraudulent info and exaggerated the entire ‘global warming’ thing. This guy is a nut, a hypocrite and a blow-hard. Yes, he is a Jerry Falwell-type, only *much* worse because Gore pretends to be pushing an empirically true world belief rather than an explicitly faith-based one. Instead of answering critics–and there are more and more of them all the time–folks of Gore’s stripe either dismiss them for at some point getting money from industry (as if sucking at the government’s tit like Greenpeace is intrisically purer, somehow), or just begin to shout about the largely chimerical THE CONSENSUS.

    And yes, many of us voted for people who have since let us down, and are angry (not “hateful”) about it. That happens in a democracy. Just being better (and increasingly slightly so) than the Democrats on an ever smaller handful of issues is not cutting it anymore. I think we’ll see a valid third party pulling centrist voters from both sides in the next decade or two. Hell, Perot got like 20% of the vote, once, and he was patently crazy.

    No offense, but aren’t you connected with CHUD? The site where one of the contributors once boasted onsite, with warm reader response, of actually telling a woman he disagreed with on global warming that he quite seriously hoped she would die of cancer? Did you ever disassociate yourself with that guy? (I’m honestly asking, to give you the benefit of the doubt. I would sincerely hope so.) Because yeah, that would fall into my defination of fanatical behavior.

  • I am not officially associated with Chud.com in any capacity. I post frequently on the message boards and have contributed a couple of freelance articles. I enjoy Devin’s writings, even as I frequently find him obnoxious, just as I do with you. You are, after all, the guy who labelled Minnie Driver an “evil bitch” because she mentioned she was planning on researching and writing about sweatshops in Indonesia. So please don’t take the holier-than-thou attitude.

    There is, in fact, a scientific consensus on global warming; various businesses need this not to be true, so they fund studies that say what they want to say, and right-wingers obligingly muddy the water at every opportunity, just as you’re doing now. And of course, saying this gets people derided as tinfoil-hat wearing lunatics, despite the fact that every study that questions the existence of global warming (which doesn’t happen as much these days) or tries to cast doubt on whether it’s caused by human activity (which is the current flavour of the month) can be traced back to oil money. This is very easily researchable.

    No, I don’t think you’re part of a vast conspiracy. I just think that’s the mentality that the American right has played to for the last couple of decades–“root for your team”. Which is why the faithful 49% wouldn’t hear anything negative against Bush before he was safely ensconced in his second term, but are now, grudgingly, willing to admit that the current administration may have its problems. To show how objective they are. This stuff was all blatently obvious 5 years ago at least, which is about the point I gave up on Bush–and I was one of the reluctant holdouts on the left. Of course, since you seem more hung up on stuff like the immigration bill than the fact that Bush and co. let a major port city drown, I guess your reluctant criticism may be at least honest.

    But science isn’t subject to mass opinion. It needs to remain fairly neutral in order to work correctly, which is what has made the corporate interests’ politicizing of science so appalling, and which is what Gore is writing about.

  • Ken HPoJ

    “You are, after all, the guy who labeled Minnie Driver an “evil bitch” because she mentioned she was planning on researching and writing about sweatshops in Indonesia. So please don’t take the holier-than-thou attitude.”

    First, that is an incredible benign take on what Ms. Driver was up too. She was, in fact, threatening to take away the sole source of income from people in dire straits, without worrying about the effect this would have on the very people she was supposedly crusading for. I was operating from a “First, do no harm” principle in this case. Ms. Driver was not. So, yes, I called her a name.

    Second, and this is the real thing, do you really consider Devin actually telling a woman that because she disagreed with him on a political issue, he sincerely hoped she would die a long, horrible, lingering death from cancer, merely “obnoxious”? Because I would call that evil. And I use that term with care. If you really see any equivalency between what he did and what I did, then there is a far greater gap between you and I than the fundamentally petty political one.

    As for the idea that I am only “rooting for my team”, I can only laugh. Look in the mirror, my friend. When I note the manifold issues I and other conservatives have with Bush and the Republicans in Congress, you sneer at the idea. All this goes to show is that you really don’t have any idea of what conservatism is. Were you angered by the fact that Bush got reelected? Here’s an idea. Next time try to get the Democrats to put up a better candidate than John Kerry. There were plenty of people looking for a valid alternative to Bush. Too bad they weren’t offered one.

    You know something? When Pelosi and the Democratic congress came in, and immediately passed a bill on earmark reform, I told a bunch of my friends, “Wow, I might have to vote Democratic next time.” I actually, now to my shame, I must admit, felt somewhat hopeful and giddy at that moment. Since then, of course, the Democrats have done everything in their power to stymie actual earmark reform, circling their wagons with creatures like Trent Lott. Want to win some of us over? When explicitly running on a platform of being against the Republican’s “culture of corruption,” don’t gain power and then do the exact same stuff.

    There’s increasing anger from the centrist right and the centrist left over this sort of thing, which is why I do think we’ll see a valid third party in the near future. Not one that I’ll agree with on all issues (since such a thing would never exist to start with), but maybe one that doesn’t just pay lip-service to the ones we do share, as both parties do now.

    On the whole global warming issue, you can again assert THE CONSENSUS, and (really?) continue to throw about laughable and tired rhetoric about “corporate interests.” However, you aren’t convincing any of us doubters. We’ve been down this road before, you see, with the Rachel Carlsons and the (especially) Paul Ehrlichs and now the Al Gores, and all the Malthusians before them. It’s global cooling or overpopulation or global warming or nuclear winter or the hole in the ozone or whatever the latest threat is. You see these guys speaking THE TRUTH, I see the guys who stand on the corner with THE END IS NEAR signs.

    And since you have apparently told yourselves that it is pointless to even try to convince us, as it is impossible because we are, after all, only “rooting for our side” and not actually making an intelligent and informed judgment of the ‘evidence’ you put before us, then you neuter your own cause. But then, since there’s quite possibly no there, there; that cause might be neutered before it begins.