AP mocks Al Gore's lack of ignorance
April 27, 2009 11:09 am ET by Jamison Foser
Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman, on Al Gore's appearance before a House committee considering global warming legislation:
"I have read all 648 pages of this bill," Gore bragged, a boast that would surprise no one who caught his teacher's-pet performance in the 2000 presidential race. "It took me two transcontinental flights on United Airlines to finish it."
The schoolhouse metaphor is appropriate, if not for the reason Kellman thinks. There are perhaps only two groups of people who view knowledge as a flaw, and ignorance as an asset: Seventh-graders, and the Washington press corps.
For years leading up to the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore committed the sins of taking policy seriously, and of knowing what he was talking about. As punishment for those sins, reporters like Kellman mocked him as a "teacher's-pet" and a dull, lifeless buffoon. They propped up a dim-witted Texan (by way of Greenwich Country Day, Andover, Harvard, and Yale) who had run business after business into the ground, and skipped out on the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam by virtue of his father's accomplishments. On the other hand, he called reporters "Stretch," and they loved him for it. And so George W. Bush became president.
Given what happened over the following eight years, you would think the media would have enough of a guilty conscience that they would avoid treating Al Gore with precisely the same petty, stupid middle-school-cafeteria derision that led to thousands of deaths in an unnecessary war, torture, warrantless surveillance, a stunningly incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, and a Vice President whose shooting of a friend in the face doesn't even rank among his top fifty most offensive actions.
But no: Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman is still pointing and laughing at Al Gore, because he bothered to read legislation that deals with his life's work before testifying about it. What a nerd.
Oh, by the way: Gore wasn't bragging. He was answering a direct question.
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"There are perhaps only two groups of people who view knowledge as a flaw, and ignorance as an asset: Seventh-graders, and the Washington press corps."
You left out Republicans.
"There are perhaps only two groups of people who view knowledge as a flaw, and ignorance as an asset: Seventh-graders, and the Washington press corps."
You left out Republicans.
No, he put 'em in there.
But what about the carbon footprint left while flying around so much and what of the lost trees making paper for this monstrousity.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElJFYwRtrH4
PS. Still waiting for ozone algore to debate the topic.
That's the best you got?
Whaaa.. Al Gore goes places... Whaa Al Gore says he's for the people but he's not poor.. Whaaa.. Al Gore's house uses electricity. Nice line from the Right-Wing smear book.
So lame.
You do realize that United Airlines flies their routes even if Al Gore isn't on them, don't you? Lets assume Al Gore, with his luggage, weighs 250lbs just because it's not that far off and it's a nice round number.
The maximum take-off weight of a 767 is 395,000 lbs. Let's be extremely generous and call that 200,000 lbs typical. Let's ignore the fact that UAL overbooks flights and bumps the overages so that they rarely fly empty [Al's seat would be full no matter what]..
Assuming all this, if everything scaled linearly, Al Gore's empty seat would save 0.125% of the fuel costs.
Let's look at this another way.. a 767 burns 1lb of fuel per hour per 31 lbs while cruising with a 300,000lb weight.
Lets, again, be generous (to you) and say Al Gore weighs 310lbs this time. On a 5 hour trip from NY to LA, a 767 burns 50lbs of fuel. That sure seems like a lot.
Al Gore should do the responsible thing and drive a Prius, no? Assuming 50mph average (very generous) we're talking about 1 mile per 1/5oth gallon of gas. Gas weight varies by composition but it's generally around 6lbs per gallon so that comes out to 0.12 lbs/mile. 2462 miles * 0.12 lbs/mile = 295.44 lbs of fuel for a Prius drive from NY to LA.
Hrm. nice try loser.
This article also suggested that Gore avoided answering the question about the costs of addressing warming. Not true. He had already addressed costs prior to Barton's question, and he addressed it again, later, too. (More than once.)
I cannot help but notice the complete lack of reporting on the substance of Gore's remarks -- not only the rapidly accumulating and alarming new evidence of global warming he recited in specific detail (was this the lecturing?), but also his very direct and forceful attack on those who deny this evidence for their own purposes.
A terrible article, really. Was Gore really hogging the response time? Or was Sen. Warner content to defer to his colleague? Because Sen. Warner seems perfectly capable of making his views known when he wants to. And, btw, where was the reporting of those newsworthy views? Yet another non-report report.