Eric Boehlert: New York Times continues its War on Gore

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6250

The New York Times continues its War on Gore
by Eric Boehlert | Mar 21 2007

Scheduled for March 21, former Vice President Al Gore's high-profile congressional testimony on the pressing dangers of global warming will likely surpass the March 16 media spectacle that accompanied Valerie Plame's appearance in the House. Wednesday will both mark Gore's first official visit to Capitol Hill since leaving the Clinton administration and offer a sneak peak at the global warming policies his administration would have likely implemented had the Supreme Court not ordered Florida officials to stop counting the votes back in December 2000.

Gore's right-wing critics, anxious to fuel a backlash against Gore and his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, are using his congressional appearance to raise doubts about his global warming crusade. The Republican noise machine is already trying to gin up excitement about a possible global warming showdown, although some of its talking points seem a bit thin. (A Drudge Report "exclusive" this week hyped the fact that following his Senate testimony, Gore might be asked questions by the assembled legislators.)

Busy orchestrating their attacks, Gore's political foes received a gift last week from The New York Times in the form of a front-page Science section article alleging that scientists were raising concerns about Gore's global warming facts. Dredging up the media's 2000 campaign meme about Gore being loose with the truth, the Times resurrected the premise that Gore's an exaggerator who cannot be trusted.

The misleading hit piece was a godsend for Republican partisans. CNN right-wing talker and global warming skeptic Glenn Beck was euphoric the day of the Times report. "Al Gore is finally being slammed in the face for his distortion of science and the facts, and it's being done by The New York Times," Beck told his CNN Headline News viewers. "Some days it just doesn't get any better." And a Rightpundits.com headline cheered, "New York Times SLAMS Global Warming Zealots." The post insisted, "We've always known that Al Gore is a serial exaggerator. Say, remind me who invented the internet?"

Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how closely the Times article echoed conservative talking points about global warming (i.e. alarmists are driving the debate) and about Al Gore (his exaggerations cannot be trusted).

Yet for close readers of the Times, last week's attack came as no surprise. The newspaper's coverage of Gore for years has dripped with an odd disdain; a completely out-of-context contempt for the former vice president. Note that four days prior to its attempted take-down of An Inconvenient Truth, the Times published an op-ed (subscription required) that ridiculed Gore's personal "energy lust" and mocked him as a hypocrite because his utility bills for his home in Tennessee were deemed to be excessive.

more...

[BeyondGeography]

1. No one gave Gore a harder time in 2000 than MoDud

She even subsequently apologized for it in her half-assed snarky way once she realized she contributed to a raft of substance-free coverage that helped open the door for Junior and Dr. Evil.

[Joe Bacon]

4. When did she apologize?

Please show me where Dowd EVER apologized to Al Gore. In fact, show me where she apologized to ANY Democrat. She just tore Obama to shreds and we know her psychotic obsessive hatred of Hillary and Bill.

[BeyondGeography]

5. I'll never find the link but there was a vague statement of regret at one point

a recognition that she probably should have directed more of her scorn at W. in 2000 based on what a disaster he's been.

That said, I despise her brand of info-tainment masquerading as political analysis just as much as you do.

[Rageneau]

2. The New York Whore Times is a big part of our problem.

If we could just get the NY(W)T to stop lying, it might be possible to get our country back on the path of truth and justice.

But as long as the NYWT and Rush Limbaugh sound alike, we've got to fight both the fascists AND their MSM enablers.

[Cha]

3. What I'm envioning is a scenario

where The People take Global Warming into their own hands and leave the swiftboaters at the nyt, barton, inHOfe, and the rest of the busits in the polluted dust.

See ya.