If Drudge is claiming Gore's speech was “depressing,” then it probably wasn't

The Drudge Report is hyping a severely edited video of former Vice President Al Gore's recent commencement address at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville under the mocking headline, “Gore Gives Depressing Commencement Speech On Global Warming.”

Drudge links to Real Clear Politics, which posted the video -- produced by Americans for Prosperity, the tea party-affiliated group reportedly financed by oil and gas tycoon David Koch -- and echoed AFP's derisive headline, “The Most Depressing Graduation Speech Ever.”

Essentially, AFP grabbed about two minutes worth of cropped comments from Gore's 20-minute speech -- during which he discussed some of the potential effects of global warming -- and spliced them together to make it seem like Gore spent his time ripping the joy and emotion from graduation day by warning of Earth's impending doom. In a blog post that RCP dutifully reprinted, AFP mockingly wrote: “Instead of providing encouragement for the graduates of the University of Tennessee, Al Gore takes the opportunity to promote his doomsday global warming scenario.”

In reality, Gore did not “promote” “doomsday global warming scenarios.” The full video of Gore's speech makes clear that while Gore discussed serious problems facing not only the United States but the entire world -- primarily the effects of climate change and the global economic crisis -- he used the opportunity to issue a challenge to the graduates to find solutions to these problems that will lead to “economic renewal with millions of good new jobs being created in this transition to a sustainable economy and a sustainable society.” In fact, he rejected the idea of a “world filled with chaos because the predictions of the scientists were allowed to come true,” saying that he believed this generation of graduates would “find the moral courage to rise up and solve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve.”

Gore also said: “I believe in my heart that we are going to solve this crisis. I believe that this is the greatest opportunity that our society has ever had. And I'm excited about the fact that from this day forward, you're going to be a part of all of the great work that our society is doing.”

Surely this sent the graduates into a fit of despair. Here's how one graduate described Gore's speech:

Bo Cox, a newly-minted graduate, said he was unsure about Gore's appearance at first.

“I was a little skeptical about what he'd say but really impressed by it. It was fun to have him speak and fun to have a big name at our commencement,” Cox said.