Ha! Not even the tech press escapes County Fair's all-seeing eye.

And actually, if you study your media misinformation, it was a tech outlet, Wired News, that first put the Al-Gore-invented-the-Internet meme into play. So it's kind of fitting that Gore again is at the center of this bout of bad journalism.

Here's the dreadful CNET headline, which has ricocheted around the right-wing blogosphere as a way to mock Gore. The bloggers used the item to show that even at liberal Apple, Gore was coming under fire for his supposedly bogus climate change push:

Al Gore a lightning rod at Apple shareholder meeting

Here's the only real proof of the lightning rod angle [emphasis added]:

At the first opportunity for audience participation just several minutes into the proceeding, a longtime and well-known Apple shareholder--some would say gadfly--who introduced himself as Shelton Ehrlich, stood at the microphone and urged against Gore's re-election to the board. Gore “has become a laughingstock. The glaciers have not melted,” Ehrlich said, referring to Gore's views on global warming. “If his advice he gives to Apple is as faulty as his views on the environment then he doesn't need to be re-elected.”

Another shareholder immediately got up to defend Gore and endorse his presence as an Apple director.

So, a single climate change denier took advantage of an open mic at a shareholder meeting to insult Gore, and CNET typed it up as news; as Gore being a “lightening rod.”

Seems pretty weak.

UPDATED: From non-CNET news sources, you can learn that Ehrlich's attack on Gore was, in the man's own words, "politically motivated." You can also learn that he lashed out at Obama, calling him a socialist, and that Ehrlich rambled on about a criminal conspiracy Gore was involved in.

CNET left that part out, though.