In inconvenient overreaction

May 23, 2006

At a certain level, it seems [tag]Fox News[/tag] is intent on offering [tag]Al Gore[/tag]’s [tag]An Inconvenient Truth[/tag] as much publicity as the network can muster. For a movie with an initial run of a few hundred theaters, FNC is acting awfully nervous.

For example, there’s the right’s inevitable [tag]Nazi[/tag] comparison.

[tag]Sterling Burnett[/tag] is a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, an organization that has received over $390,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. This afternoon on Fox, Burnett compared watching Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, to watching a movie by Nazi propagandist Joseph [tag]Goebbels[/tag] to learn about Nazi Germany…. ExxonMobil doesn’t have a substantive answer to Gore’s movie, so it bankrolls people like Burnett to smear Gore personally.

And then there’s Fox News’ belief that Gore and his movie could ruin the national economy.

This weekend on Fox News, host [tag]David Asman[/tag] asked his guests to discuss the following question: “If people buy into [Al Gore’s] global warming hysteria, will it put him in the White House and our economy on the skids?” [tag]Steve Forbes[/tag] answered yes, and called Gore’s new movie “a real recipe for more socialist regulation.”

Haven’t these guys heard the phrase, “Never let ’em see you sweat”? If Fox News and its cohorts don’t think Gore has a powerful, persuasive message, then why are they in such a panic?

At this point, if An Inconvenient Truth starts making some real money, or worse, gets nominated for a few Academy Awards, Fox News personalities might get on-air vapors.

The vapors?

If we’re all lucky, their heads will implode.

  • And for some reason that I still can’t fathom, it’s OK for all these rethug pundits to utter the “other N word” at any time and against anyone. But let anyone from the Democratic party use it and everybody goes bonkers. It’s amazing that no one calls them on this.

  • If CBS compared going to a Republican’s movie to Nazi propaganda, the reaction would be see the hateful media bias! When fox does, ho hum.

  • If “Inconvenient Truth” starts to do well, you can bet the right-wing smear machine will do its best to squeeze Al Gore into the same straitjacket they put Michael Moore in. I can hear the war cry already: HE’S CRAAAAYZEEEE!

  • Maybe Senator Durbin should stand up and lead the charge to call Faux News on this?

    But at least Stevie Forbes admitted this could put Gore in the WH!

  • Yeah, John Tierney of the NY Times goes on in E&P today about how Gore doesn’t say inconvienent things like the need for a gas tax and nuclear power, but given how An Inconvenient Truth is about the fact of global warming and was not intended to promote any specific remedy, Tierney is just pointing a finger and jeering at his own strawman.

  • What amazes me is that a “war” on global warming entails a massive investment into alternative energy technologies, which in turn requires huge subsidies to American corporations to develop them. Why aren’t the Republicans embracing this? We are wasting hundreds of billions on a useless war machine and the debacle in Iraq, when we could be using the same money to develop clean, renewable energy. The economy would surge, not deflate. Millions of jobs would be created. And the end result would be of untold value to our nation and the rest of the world. What do we get for the bloated war machine and the billions wasted in Iraq? Sure, corporate profits, but nothing else. The “war” on global warming would produce greater profits and would benefit everyone on the planet.

    Why are they so against it? I can’t figure it. And who would profit more than the energy companies themselves?

  • I hope the movie does well, because I don’t live in NY or LA and I want to see it.

  • CB,
    You’re taking Fox way too seriously. Who around here doesn’t know that Fox exists solely for entertainment purposes only, like palm readers and psychic hotline?

    It’s even better than the Daily Show in some ways because Fox’s humor is inadvertent. What could be funnier than some delerious ranting about “Oh my god! Gore has a movie! We’re all going to die! Die! DIE!!!”

  • One need not worry about Gore’s movie or the actual global warming itself ruining the economy. Bush has already taken care of that with help from Greenspan. By the time Bush leaves office, we will already be in a full-blown ugly recession. As the housing market bubble implodes upon itself in the coming year, you’ll finally get to see just what a illusion these economic good times were. And then, with a crippled economy, already low interest rates that cant be driven lower due to our desparate need for external financing, and fiscal policy that is handstrung by the idiotic tax cuts and reckless spending there will be little way out but waiting. Bush without a doubt will be seen as the worst President this country has ever had. A disaster on every front.

  • Hey, the Republican’ts have been given every opportunity to put forth their agenda and have dropped the ball every step of the way. From foreign policy to energy policy to fiscal “conservatism”, they’ve succeeded in stepping on their own toes and hurting the American public. And they have no one to point fingers at but themselves.

    Global warming is the only issue left that they can rail against and then point the finger at Dems (in this case Gore and some hollywood types (George Clooney)) for “ruining the economy” when solutions are offered. Never mind that their deficit spending, tax cuts and incompetence have done more damage to this nation and its economy than any Three Mile Island incident.

  • Hark,
    My guess is that the GOP only represents a few corporations, rather than corporations generally. The business world is not a monolithic entity, but is riven by factions.

    Just a guess, but the reason the GOP doesn’t embrace something that would create jobs and US energy independence (besides clearing the air) is because Big Oil and the House of Saud owns the GOP.

  • Mr. Flibble, comment #12 is spot on. When the retail sector declines because of high gas prices, who should the Walton Family, Sears Holdings, J. C. Penneys, and Federated Department Stores blame? None other than Big Oil. (smiley face)

  • Yes, Mr. Flibble, that needed to be said. Actually, needs to be said over and over again.

    I’m stuck with waiting for the movie to get into Netflix’s warehouses (date unknown). But note that it’s already getting high ratings over there. This is one of those films which should be released simultaneously on DVD.

  • Someone needs to put this charge of collectivism or socialism to rest. Why are the defenders of the earth so villified? What kind of alien culture would level such accusations?

  • I’ll bet if Al Gore gets elected, he’ll let a hand-picked group of environmentalists design our energy policy in secret. Anyone who tries to see what went on or even who was in attendance will be stonewalled.

    /snark

  • Mr. Flibble is 100% correct on comment 12, but comment 9 is incorrect. The danger of Fox News needs to be taken seriously:

    “Our estimates imply that Fox News convinced 3 to 8 percent of its audience to shift its voting behavior towards the Republican Party, a sizable media persuasion effect,” said Stefano DellaVigna of the University of California at Berkely and Ethan Kaplan of Stockholm University.

  • Global warming destroys wealth. Your beach home, washed away. Your ski lodge, slid off the mountain. Your shares in ADM owned farm land, blown away in a dust bowl.

    But while this is happening, the old oil economy keeps sucking up income. And as Cheney is benefitting, it won’t stop until he is impeached.

    Energy alternatives would create a huge new economy. But only visionaries support new economies. And we know all Republicanites are afraid of vision, especially the Texas Mafia and their Boy George II.

  • You’re right, jhupp–but I was only talking about folks who usually visit this blog. None of us here believes anything Fox says, so we can’t really say that it’s serious news. And it it isn’t news, then it must be entertainment. Or an infomercial.

    As for media effects, you’re absolutely right. If propaganda didn’t work, then nobody would use it.

  • Has anyone ever wondered why Republicans fart so much and are so fat? Anyone wondering whether there is a zipper along the hairline, for the space aliens to get out of their “human suits” when they’re with their own? Just a thought I had watching the 2-parter “Aliens of London” on Doctor Who.

    It would certainly go far to explain their environmental policies – they’re “reverse terraforming” Earth for the colonization by their own species.

  • Mr. Cleaver, a frivolous “woo-hoo” for the Doctor Who reference. Speaking of terraforming, I highly recommend one Slartibarfast (see Douglas Adams) for preparing a “Bush-free” world.

  • GREAT LEADERS OF FUTURE WON’T BE FROM AMERICA — Weak, Mediocre Men Lead the USA”
    And our mediocre dissolute leaders will act like all bankrupt aristocrats. They’ll start selling state assets for private gain.

    “A friend of mine once told a college class that nobody ever woke up in 476 A.D. (the date historians define as the fall of the Roman Empire) and said, “Gosh, I’m in the Dark Ages.” His point is plain enough. Transitions happen gradually, and the people who live through them never realize what is happening.
    So it is with Americans. We are living in the ruins of a once-great republic. Now an empire utterly devoid of moral authority, the United States has nothing left but its military power and its capacity to consume on credit.”
    Nor do I agree the people living “through them never realize what is happening.” Oswald Spengler realized what was happening. Adolf Hitler could see “what is happening” in 1919. Plenty of others in all western countries have recognized what is happening all through the 20th Century. It’s the people who don’t realize what is happening who both mock the foresighted and resist changes necessary to stop or alter “what is happening”. They serve as a ready pool of useful idiots for evil minded folks who not only realize what is happening but profit from it, assist it, and speed it along.

  • “For example, there’s the right’s inevitable Nazi comparison.”

    Only the Reich News itself could think up such tripe as to compare Gore to Goebbels, and I’ll agree that POX is a pretty strong symptom of the fear-factor that’s starting to work its way through the adminstration. They can’t answer to the allegation, so they’ll roll back on their heels and scream “A pox on this! A pox on that!”

  • Tom Cleaver: Oh, I see your point, but as you no doubt noted, that last zippered alien chose to be reborn and change. Pure fantasy? Maybe we’ll see, come November, if the Rethugs can be overthrown and slink away to think things over and reckon what they’ve wrought.

    Slip kid no more: We can’t wait for Slarti to whip up a planet–even with fjords. We need our peril-sensitive sunglasses now as we ponder the answer to life, etc etc… Clinton’s number, wasn’t it…?

    Nice to see kindred spirits.

  • I forget where aI saw it, it might even have been on these pages. But I remember reading that the cost of implementing Kyoto and getting down to real business on cutting greenhouse gases would likely cost under $500 Billion. This is less than what is being spent on Iraq, and the Iraq spending, according to the GOP, isn’t harming the economy. So it really is difficult to see how doing what we can at this point would really harm the economy.

  • Re: #26

    Bubba –

    It would “hurt the economy” in that it would break the stranglehold Big Oil has on our country, therefore it would jeopardize CheneyCo’s limitless supply of money.

  • Slip kid no more: We can’t wait for Slarti to whip up a planet–even with fjords. We need our peril-sensitive sunglasses now as we ponder the answer to life, etc etc… Clinton’s number, wasn’t it…?

    Nice to see kindred spirits.

    Comment by Frak — 5/23/2006 @ 10:15 pm

    Yes, I have a couple of pairs of Joo Janta 2000 Peril Sensitive Chromatic Sunglasses stashed away for future needs. I think this is the first time I have seen the connection noted between president number 42 and the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything, though… and I think you should have used Prak instead of Frak ’cause you keep saying stuff that’s true.

    But I have to draw the line at Slartibartfast designing even more fjords. Think of all the Norwegian Blues that will be pining for them!

  • Hark,

    Why are they so against it?

    Because their investments are all located up in fossil fuel exploration, refinement and distribution. Any movement away from fossil fuels would be crippling for big oil. You would think that Exxon’s $800 Million profit was a lot, but given the size of their investments its actually pretty small.

    There is nothing more frightening to big oil than a renewable energy future.

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