Pajamas Media

The Right’s Obsession With Al Gore

Is it time for Al Gore to get over the election of 2000, or for Conservatives to get over Al Gore? Mariel Garza argues that critics of Gore's Nobel Peace Prize are just angry that the former vice president "had the gall to go and do something meaningful with his time."

October 19, 2007 - by Mariel Garza

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Conservatives just can’t get over Al Gore’s post-presidential loss (or win, depending on who you ask) success. And it’s probably not due to jealousy over his corpulent good looks. Nor is it really about the supposed “junk science” he’s selling. Even Republicans now embrace climate change as the future of American competitiveness; just look at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

No, there’s some deeper animosity at work here. I suspect it has something to do with how he refused to slink away to the Land of Failed Democrats once he was creamed by George Bush, the U.S. Supreme Court and the machinery of the GOP in 2000. Worse still, he had the gall to go and do something meaningful with his time.

“Oooh, the nerve!” You could almost hear the frustration and teeth gnashing Friday after the announcement was made that those known liberals over there in Norway had awarded Gore the Nobel Peace Prize. Conservative commentators across the nation from Rush Limbaugh to my own colleagues at the Los Angeles Daily News rushed to denounce Gore, the Nobel prizes, and even polar bears.

Limbaugh, a long-time Gore basher, said that by picking Gore over himself for the prize the Nobel committee had lost all credibility.

Ann Coulter was too busy responding to an outcry over her comments about Jews and promoting her new book to trash her favorite “total fag” (her words, not mine). But she did manage to mock Democrats’ concerns for polar bears during a visit on Bill O’Reilly’s TV show on Monday.

Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (one of the leaders in the climate-change deniers camp), said on CNN on Friday that Gore is manipulative and misleading. “He is presenting global warming as a planetary emergency.”

And many simply dismissed the news by saying that it was a “joke.”

Yeah, they’re mad alright.

The typical argument that Gore doesn’t deserve the Nobel Peace prize goes something like this: Gore isn’t a peacemaker because he hasn’t stopped an actual war, just advanced some loony cause about the Earth getting warmer and ending life as we know it that he’s managed to sell to just about everyone, except the corporate apologists and ardent Gore haters (who are smarter than everyone else - especially scientists.) Plus, he flies around in a personal jet as part of his environmental crusade, not some solar-powered hovercraft vehicle made out of vegetable skins that can be composted after each use.

The argument is as silly as it is prevalent. Even if you don’t buy that humanity has been engaged in a war against Mother Nature (which I, as a green sympathizer, do), being a peacemaker is about much more than the cessation of war. The Nobel committee - that collection of liberals that conservatives like to sneer at for celebrating other peacenik liberals such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama - understands that.

In announcing the prize for Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the committee was acknowledging the now widely accepted understanding that human-related climate change will, if not dealt with, cause serious violence and death, not to to humans, but to the Earth’s fauna and flora. Many scientists believe it already is, as is evidenced by more extreme weather such as Hurricane Katrina.

“Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states,” the committee said it its official announcement.

If Gore doesn’t deserve the prize for not stopping a war, then many past winners don’t either. Medicins Sans Fronti√®res (which won in 1999) ministers to the medical needs of people all around the world regardless of politics, but that’s not directly working toward peace. In fact, some clever debater could probably make the case that the group even supports and prolongs war by indiscriminately patching up people who might one day go to fight in one. I don’t remember conservatives griping about that.

Heck, President Woodrow Wilson won the award just a couple years after signing the United States up for World War I.

The second part of the complaint is even less compelling: The prize is just political anyhow, so it doesn’t count. The obvious answer is, duh. When was the prize not political? It’s not like my mom, the life-long anti-war activist, will ever win it. World leaders (who are usually politicians) are typically the only ones with enough influence and power to change the world in quantum shifts.

Truth is, Gore fits right in with the long list of Peace prize winners. So what’s with all the stamping of conservative feet?

As the news stories about people urging him to run for president in 2008 start appearing, it starts to all make sense. It’s not anger; it’s fear. Who’s got a polar bear’s chance in hell against the man who saved the world?

Mariel Garza is a columnist and editorial writer for the Los Angeles Daily News. She blogs at Friendly Fire. Write to her by e-mail at mariel.garza@dailynews.com.

35 Comments

Taipan:

Do you really believe what you write? Please…I actually felt happen for Gore winning the NPP because he’s such a frist class losser and life finally gave him a bone. The NPP and his jet setting life means very little to normal people. As far as your Schwarzenegger comment he’s a RINO girly-man who rolled over to stay in power.He didn’t lead. Gerza, YOU sound like a angry democrat.

Oct 19, 2007 - 3:11 am B Dubya:

I know you are trolling for this response, and I really didn’t want to fish, but I also cannot resist an attempt to repudiate both you and the Gorical…

The problem with Al Gore’s Nobel, aside from the absurdity of a Peace Prize coming form the man who made the slaughter in the trenches of WWI possible, is that he is totally cynical about the subject of anthropocentric global warming. You, on the other hand, are merely another weak minded follower of the latest progressive fantasy ideology, designed primarily to frighten the great herd of ignorant, unwashed, unenlightened, and undeserving mother Gaia rapists that you wish us all to be.
The Religion of the Wholly Hockey Stick, so warmly embraced by the self loathing left and so roundly endorsed by the increasingly corrupt and manipulative UN, is not science, but instead is the latest vehicle for social change, for those who know better than we how our lives should be led and how our resources should be spent. In religious matters, which this issue is for you, there is no refutation with fact, or with scientific methodology, or with the extraordinary hypocrisy that those of you who have elevated themselves to the BDR/GW priesthood display daily.

The so called consensus so tightly clutched by the UN IPCC is an illusion, an outright lie, fabricated by the political UN apparatchiks of that bureau from data and a draft report written by the scientific participants that did not support the official finding of the committee.

This is not the first time that a movement like this has been initiated by the left. DDT.
Remember “Silent Spring”? Another religious movement, founded in junk science and self loathing projection. Is DDT a carcinogen? Well, no, not even a little bit. How many of the people in 3rd world countries have died as a result of malaria since it was banned? Maybe as many as 300 millions.

The fact that the left tends to kill the ones it says it loves and wishes to protect is so absolutely V.I. Lenin as to be unmistakable. Can you feel the irony?

And here I thought that we had refuted Marx and Lenin and the slow strangulation that is progressive socialism and its attendant redistribution of wealth (a state operated criminal enterprise).

No. It’s not because Gore is a second rater and truly mediocre. It’s not because he personally leaves a carbon footprint the size of Tennessee. It’s because it is yet another leftard fabrication, an artifact of bad science and outright dishonesty, that will be used by you people to gain power. In the doing of it, you have the potential to kill as many people as Hitler, Joe Stalin and Chairman Mao combined.

You don’t need to be validated by us, you need to be shown to be the manipulative, thoughtless, and passive aggressive homicidal maniacs you really are.

Oct 19, 2007 - 4:34 am KarenT:

Oh, please. Anyone who takes Rush Limbaugh’s comment at face value loses credibility. Most reasonable people understand that Rush Limbaugh’s nomination for the Peace Prize was meant as a vehicle to point out in an ironic manner the farce that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee has become. No matter who had won, he would have used their choice to point out their political bias.

While they may pick someone worthwhile from time to time, several of The Committee’s recent choices have turned out to be terrible embarrassments. Bill Clinton reportedly blamed Yassir Arafat for robbing him of his chance at a legacy (He was not The American President who brokered peace in the Middle East). Arafat started murdering again immediately after winning the Peace Prize. Then his widow formalized the theft of aid money intended for the Palestinian people. Some prize.

And expecting conservatives to just “get over” Gore when the movement he is fronting is trying to totally revolutionize the world’s economy is pretty brazen. Are we just supposed to accept these changes without comment? “Go with the flow”? Buy Carbon Credits from one of his favored outfits, whether or not they reduce greenhouse gasses? Put other vital issues on the back burner and wait for the world to “come together” to fight middle-class consumerism?

Oct 19, 2007 - 5:19 am william jonas:

More leftie opinion on the PM.
As if they haven’t got enough spectrum space for their particular brand of poison.

Oct 19, 2007 - 6:01 am Michael B. Babbitt:

What a bunch of rehashed, respun, logically irrelevant, silly, environmental claptrap.

Oct 19, 2007 - 6:46 am David Thomson:

“So what’s with all the stamping of conservative feet?”

Al Gore, Jr. has become the laughing stock of those scholars who truly understand climate change. His writings and documentary on the subject are laughable—and dangerous. American voters need to know that his global warming proposals will minimally push our economy into a deep recession. The Nobel Prize committee honored the former vice-president merely because they despise the United States. This is why it gave the same award to Jimmy Carter a year earlier. Gore is also an intellectual coward. When everything is said and done, he deserves the ridicule of everyone who values rational thinking, not just conservatives stamping their feet.

Oct 19, 2007 - 6:52 am INQ:

Mr. Mariel is asleep at the wheel. Willfully and happily I might add.

Perphaps if Mr. Mariel could review the legal findings of a British judge, as well as Mr. Gore’s “great” science academic record while shill at Harvard, he would discover that in spite of all the puffing and to be fair, great potential, Mr. Gore was and still is utterly bored with all things scientific. And hence makes up for the lack of knowledge the same way that most politicians do… lie. Shocka!

British judge’s rulling
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486969&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source

“Gory” scientific and academic records
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A37397-2000Mar18

Bonus: what scientists (not politicians) really think
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/gore-gets-a-cold-shoulder/2007/10/13/1191696238792.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,258462,00.html

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22579081-5003419,00.html

Oct 19, 2007 - 7:37 am Roger L. Simon:

While I am certainly no fan of Al Gore’s pronouncements on global warming - or of those of any politician on the subject for that matter (they are woefully unqualified and you would think intelligent people would vastly prefer to hear from scientists) - the other PJM editors and I found Garza’s article stimulating and definitely worth publishing. There is an obsession with Gore on the part of the right that ought to be examined. And, yes, I have been part of it. Furthermore, the post Arafat Nobel Peace Prize is so discredited, why even bother about it?

That said - and contradicting some of what I have just written - as a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I was appalled at the Oscar for Gore’s doc on AESTHETIC GROUNDS. It was truly humdrum film making not the slightest bit worthy of an award of any sort, no matter what your view on the subject. Like a stodgy show on the Discovery Channel (worse, actually).

Oct 19, 2007 - 8:35 am dee:

I just read a great column on Gore. I thought it was pretty good. Makes some of the same points you did.
http://joeleonardi.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/the-man-the-myth-the-legend-nobel-prize-winner-al-gore/

Oct 19, 2007 - 8:46 am HerrMorgenholz:

What garbage. We are all dumber for having read this.

Oct 19, 2007 - 8:58 am Fred Beloit:

“Even if you don’t buy that humanity has been engaged in a war against Mother Nature (which I, as a green sympathizer, do), being a peacemaker is about much more than the cessation of war.” Where to begin? (1) Being a peacemaker IS TOO about participating in ending a war or battle or argument. (2) The argument about global warming now going on was started in the public mind by Al Gore, he hasn’t helped end it. (3) How can humanity be at war with nature when humanity is part of nature. Are elephants at war with nature because they eat trees?

Oct 19, 2007 - 9:24 am KarenT:

Roger, I think you make a valid point concerning obsession with Gore on the Right. I fully support your decision to publish this opinion piece to stimulate discussion. And the author correctly states that Gore fits right in with many other Nobel Peace Prize winners.

But I do not think Mariel Garza’s other positions are particularly well-supported, particulary the bit about a connection between the American Right’s obsession and the 2000 election.

I think a big factor contributing to any obsession with Gore on the RIGHT (i.e., “Planet Gore” - National Review Online) may be obsession with Gore on the LEFT. And you don’t even have to be an American to notice this:

http://timblair.net/ee/index.php/weblog/even_the_nobel/

I think the most fascinating thing I have learned from the Al Gore “let’s all come together to save the world” phenomenon has been about the way environmental science is apparently now being taught, with an emphasis on consensus over evidence.

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/03/post-normal-science-as-proof-for-global.html

http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2007/03/what-is-post-normal-science.html

Oct 19, 2007 - 9:37 am MarkD:

Let’s see, a person I consider to be an obnoxious crank is thrust into my face by the media. I’m obsessed because I voice my disagreement and note his hypocrisy? This would be the same Gore of the “no controlling legal authority” quote, correct?

I’m not obsessed. I merely disagree with his facts, propositions, and morals. When he exits the stage, I’ll not pursue.

Oct 19, 2007 - 10:10 am David Thomson:

“There is an obsession with Gore on the part of the right that ought to be examined.”

I don’t sense any perverse obsession with Al Gore, Jr. whatsoever. The relentless criticism of the last few years is based on rational analysis. The man is pushing an extremist environmentalist agenda which will severely damage the economy. In other words, Gore is very dangerous—and it is very sensible not to ignore him.

Oct 19, 2007 - 10:32 am Larry Sheldon:

I’ll get over Gore when everybody else stops about spending trillions of dollars to do everything he wants done in the War On Brown People.

Oct 19, 2007 - 11:28 am dclydew:

While I myself am not yet convinced by Global Warming, nor a fan of the Democrats… many on the Right do seem to have the same insanity that many on the left have, though instead of Bush Derangement Syndrome, they’ve contracted Gore Derangement Syndrome. Look at the comments here (look at them on any conservative Blog where Gore comes up) its drivel, drivel run through a ditch of partisanship and served up by people blinded by Red and Blue lights.

Bin Laden is likely LOLing all over Pakistan at how easy it was to turn half of America against the other half.

“Useful Idiots” brought to a whole new level.

Oct 19, 2007 - 12:16 pm newton:

Seriously, Mariel. What the heck are you smoking?

Oct 19, 2007 - 12:21 pm DemocracyRules:

WELL, GINA COBB points out an article by Steven Milloy at Fox News that is relevant. If you take GORE’s movie, and remove the 9 proved false statements, and also correct Gore’s false statement that 2005 was the hottest year on record (1934 was), THEN you have NO MOVIE. The rest is just filler, emotional background, disaster pictures, etc.

I.E., if you make ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ actually true, then there IS NO valid global warming message. None.

Oct 19, 2007 - 1:29 pm reliapundit:

we have linked to a quiz at my blog:

who said this, gore or kazcynski?

based on the answer, maybe the unabomber should have won the nobel!

Oct 19, 2007 - 2:53 pm wj:

1) Since the writer thinks it necessary to bring up the 2000 election and how Gore was “creamed by the US Supreme Court”. This is, to anyone with a basic understanding of the what the Florida Supreme Court was trying to do, simply nonsense. The Florida SC blatantly tried to overturn established and quite clear law on how to handled presidential elections. IF anything, the Florida SC tried to act as judicial dictators to hand the election to Gore. This malfeasance was only cut short by the US SC.

The far left never ceases to amaze me with their ability to think that simply repeating lies often enough somehow makes it true. The Florida SC was the bad guy in the 2000 election.

2) Is it climate change or man-made global warming that is the problem??? Cause I doubt there is anybody who does not think that the climate has changed up and down over the last several BILLION years many, many, many times. I thought Gore and his acolytes were pushing the man-made global warming theme. The author only mentions “human related climate change”. So does the author now abandon the man-made global warming theme for the more encompassing climate change?? The climate is ALWAYS changing, the issue is whether man is now, at this one particular time in the history of the Earth, the primary cause of any climate change.

3) It is not the Right that is obsessed with Gore, it is the Left. Gore and the media constantly put him in the spotlight trying to dictate our entire way of life in a government controlled way. The right is just responding to something that is out there. I bet if Gore would stay out of the spotlight, the Right would not respond to something that wasn’t there.

Oct 19, 2007 - 3:27 pm GM Roper:

You have it backwards dear lady, it’s not that we can’t get over his “loss (or win)” its that we love pointing out turkeys, liars and charlatans.

The Left can’t get over our being right and Gore being all wet.

Oct 19, 2007 - 4:51 pm Uhh:

While I agree that Gore exaggerates to the extreme, the climate in this discussion is surprising.

You all seem to denounce man-made global warming as “leftist extremist crap”.

Well, it¬¥s not.

There¬¥s actually a whole lot of scientists who believe the current climate change is a result of our co2 emissons.

I don¬¥t know shit about the science myself, so I¬¥ll just not speak my mind of it.

That include not denouncing a whole lot of serious scientists as loony lefties. That¬¥s just not very intellectual, you know..

Oct 19, 2007 - 5:22 pm ThirstyJon:

I don’t hate Gore. I am not afraid of Gore.

But I haven’t bought into what he is doing either.

I would consider myself an environmentalist (although I don’t like to use that word anymore because it has been hijacked by a much broader agenda than taking care of our earth). But I don’t buy that humans are causing global warming.

I can hardly believe that you are connecting Hurricane Katrina to global warming. There have been more violent storms. What are you talking about?

Bizarre article my friend.

ThirstyJon

freedomthirst.com

Oct 19, 2007 - 6:19 pm Valerie:

What about us scientists?

What about the people who keep pointing out that the effects of carbon dioxide are swamped by those of other greenhouse gasses, such as the big one — water? That the really big controller of the earth’s overall temperature is the sun — just like it is for Mars, which is also having a warming trend? That CO2 levels have increased after the overall temperature goes up? That the temperature has been higher before, at times when CO2 was lower?

These are not political points.

Oct 19, 2007 - 6:23 pm Barb:

I think the only obsessed with Al Gore are the left and of course Al Gore.

Oct 19, 2007 - 7:40 pm Reliapundit:

Roger;

the right isn’t obsessed with Gore.

the left-wing dominated MSM throws him in ALL our faces and only the right has the courage to smack his BS down.

if he’d go home and shut up, we’d ALL leave him alone happily.

ex veeps used to do that.

so did ex prezidentz.

those were the days my friend…

Oct 19, 2007 - 9:20 pm Ken Hahn:

It is truly sad that the Left is so afraid that someone might not go along with the Gore deification. I’m hardly obsessed with Gore. If he disappeared, I’d hardly notice. His dedication to a pseudo-scientific religion that demands nothing of us except all our money and all our freedom does bear watching.

The Left is obsessed with Gore. Having no other beliefs, his global warming faith fills the same hole in their belief system that Islam does to other fanatics. It requires total devotion, admits no dissent and requires that unbeliever be reduced to sub human status.

By the Left’s odd logic since we don’t buy Gore’s obsession, we are obsessed with it. Let Gore have his prize. Like the Holy Grail, it is a relic that is meaningless outside the faith.

Oct 20, 2007 - 1:54 am Crimso:

“except the corporate apologists and ardent Gore haters (who are smarter than everyone else - especially scientists”

This is one scientist (who has been on faculty with Gore) who knows better.

Oct 20, 2007 - 6:02 am william jonas:

I am not obsessed with Al Gore any more than I am opposed to The Clintons. I am in oppostion to those whose lies ,deception and mis information are a tactic for gaining money and power.
The central ,simple claim of Mr Gore is so stupid ,it is beyond comprehension.
World gets warmer. Ice melts . Seas rise. Many drown . Polar bears vanish.
This argument makes the childish assumption that if ice turns into water the PROCESS ENDS THERE. It completely ignores the continuation of the cycle in which WATER EVAPORATES, BECOME CLOUDS AND BECOMES PART OF THE NEVER ENDING CYLE OF THE VAPOR IN OUR ATMOSPHERE.
And this is the quantity that cannot be identified because the number is everchanging.
And we are supposed to believe the conclusions of a man who is selling nonsense and being rewarded for it?
Obsession indeed.

Oct 20, 2007 - 6:30 am Nelson:

Is this article worthy of Pajamas media?

Oct 21, 2007 - 12:29 am Nelson:

Here’s my reply:

http://www.nelsonguirado.com/index.php/asymmetric/2007/10/21/the_right_s_obsession_with_al_gore_answe

Oct 21, 2007 - 2:19 am HU:

Well ken, it¬¥s not only Gore who “believe” in this, you know. There¬¥s a whole lot of very well educated scientists. Infact we are moving closer every day to a consensus among them. No kidding. Are they “religious” leftie loonies too?
The straw-men you put proves nothing.

I agree the Gore movie is kind of Michael Moore¬¥ish. But that does not mean that global warming science is just bull. You should know better than denouncing it the way you do. Perhaps be a bit more humble?!?

Oct 21, 2007 - 3:58 am Ken Hahn:

Well HU,

A vast consensus of scientists have often been wrong. From Ptolomaic astronomy to the several hundred versions of nutrition over the last century. In fact scientific consensus is as often a result of laziness or greed as of scholarship. In this case greed seems to be the driving force. Vast sums are spent for climate studies. These usual conclude two things once the gobbledegook is edited out. One is that we don’t really know enough to predict the weather tomorrow. The other is that vast sums of money and power should be immediately sent to the authors or a catastrophe will ensue.

Climate studies depend on computer projections that cannot predict the current climate, even with historical knowledge, when given data from a half century or century past. Nonetheless we told to believe that they are immensely accurate in predicting the future even without being able to guess social and scientific trends. Real science contains skepticism. Junk science demands belief. The current state of climatology is junk science.

The cost of the consensus is always understated too. Kyoto was rejected because it would have wreaked the economy. But even climate change fanatics admit Kyoto would hardly be a start. It hardly dents the problem. The only way that the consensus can reach a “stable” climate is to reduce human activity to a level that will doom a majority of humanity to death and reduce the remnant to a preindustrial society. You never bring that up. Of course, like Gore, you probably believe that will only happen to other people. You have carbon offsets or indulgences or something.

Oct 21, 2007 - 7:48 pm HU:

“Real science contains skepticism. Junk science demands belief. The current state of climatology is junk science.”

Well, guess what, skepticism does not atomatically imply ridicule/bashing/stone throwing/politics.

I know scientists who disagree that global warming is man-made. But, news flash, they don’t denounce their colleges as “religious junk scientists”. They just disagree with them, as adult scholars do. And your premise, that climatology requires belief, is false. Al Gore may require it, but he aint no scientist, right?

I agree, though, that on the “other side” things are even worse, with Gore and his lot in the lead. But the wrapping does not change the content, does it?

Oct 22, 2007 - 5:50 am Ken Hahn:

HU,
It may be about time to throw a few stones. Winning the debate is not quite as satisfying when your opponent is attempting to bash your head in with a sledge hammer. And the skeptics aren’t winning this debate because the lapdog media won’t honestly report both sides.

The stakes are too high to lose by default. You might be willing to observe all the rules and lose nobly but when the other side enters the ring with a chain saw, I don’t think I am.

Oct 23, 2007 - 5:11 am