Liberal cat fights: first Geffen -v- Hillary; now ABC -v- Gore…

It must be delightfully therapeutic for conservatives – still recovering from their political “thumpin” last November – to see liberals cannibalize each other in the press. Recall last week how we were treated to an absurdly-premature cat fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama over the tongue lashing Democratic kingmaker David Geffen gave the Clintons for “lying with such ease…it’s troubling”.

Now comes ABC News – as reliable a political portal for liberals as FOX News is for conservatives – defiling Al Gore’s reputation the day after Hollywood canonized him as an environmental prophet and savior of our Earth in the Balance at the Academy Awards on Sunday. Because it gave wind and credence to a story that was sailing listlessly in the blogosphere, which exposes Gore’s environmental hypocrisy in a manner eerily reminiscent of the hypocrisy he displayed by condemning cigarette manufacturers whilst profiting from their products.

In fact ABC reported the inconvenient truth that – even though he stood up at the Oscars and preached on the importance of everyman being earnest about energy conservation – Gore is the head of an indulgent family that consumed 20 times the amount of gas and electricity the average American family consumed last year.

But, where average Americans (especially liberal Democrats) might be outraged by this report, Gore’s hypocrisy will be completely lost on the Hollywood crowd who canonized him. After all. ABC is a Johnny-come-lately amongst the few conscientious liberals now railing against the hypocrites who comprise the vanguard of the (worldwide) environmental movement. For example, here’s what professor and political columnist Eric Alterman wrote about Hollywood producer Laurie David who, having married Seinfeld creator Larry David, is the de facto mother hen of environmental politics in America:

[Laurie] reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable [a private jet].

And, to put her ironic and misguided self-righteousness into perspective, a reporter from the New Republic, Gregg Easterbrook, calculated that:

One cross-country flight in a Gulfstream is the same, in terms of Persian-Gulf dependence and greenhouse-gas emissions, as if she drove a Hummer for an entire year.

(Makes one wonder why Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger thought it was such a big deal to give up his Hummer but retain his private jet….)

Meanwhile, I’ve been practicing the religion of recycling for almost 20 years. But I felt profoundly betrayed a few years ago when I read about how environmental prophets (curiously all filthy rich people) were polluting the clean air of Davos, Switzerland by flying in on their private jets for annual gabfests on how to continue proselytising their (do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do) gospel of energy conservation to the (conserving-because-they-have-so-little-to-waste) masses; indeed, so much so that I wrote the following:

…perhaps he [keynote speaker Bill Clinton] should not have emitted so much CO2 with his speech [about global warming being ‘the one thing that could end civilization’] and, perhaps, his pals should have thought twice about flying their gas-guzzling, air-polluting private jets to Davos – both of which probably contributed, in equal measure, to the purported global warming phenomenon they’re all so concerned about.

Finally, to get a sense of why the ABC hit piece on Gore is as shocking to liberals as Geffen’s sucker punch against Hillary was, here’s a little of what I wrote about this once-thriving relationship in an article entitled The End of the world according to ABC News and Al Gore:

…until I saw that program, I had assumed that the TV network Al Gore bought last year was nothing more than a cleverly-produced website on which he could recycle streaming clips from his movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which has become the celluloid bible for his climate-change disciples. But after seeing this global-warming Cassandra [Gore] bloviating hot air as the star of this 20/20 special [entitled The Last Days on Earth], I’m beginning to think that he may, in fact, have bought ABC!

NOTE: Apropos hypocrisy, I could not be more indignant at rich environmentalists – like Gore – who seek absolution for their environmental sins by “purchasing carbon credits or offsets”- in the same spirit with which Catholics once sought absolution for their moral sins by purchasing Papal indulgences.

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ABC and Al Gore on global warming
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Al Gore environmental hypocrite, global warming