Nader still in the crosshairs (Mickey Z.)

[Tace]

Mickey Z. -- World News Trust

Jan. 31, 2007 -- I was at the gym, walking by a television tuned to one of the many insipid morning chat shows... but that's not what stopped me dead in my tracks. What got my attention was the guest: Ralph Nader. I watched the host begin the interview with yet another rehash/ accusation/ question about the 2000 election. You know the drill by now: Nader spoiled it for Gore, ruined his own legacy, blah, blah, blah. It's been repeated so often that most Americans accept it all as fact.

After having read New York magazine the night before, that first question was all I could stomach. You see, David Edelstein, the magazine's film critic, just reviewed An Unreasonable Man, a new documentary about Nader. The self-important Edelstein spoke of receiving an invitation to see the film and meet Nader afterwards. "I wrote (that) I couldn't make it," said Edelstein, "but to leave my seat vacant in the name of the Iraqi and American dead."

Left unsaid, of course, is his belief that Nader cost Al Gore the election and that Gore would never have invaded Iraq. While neither point can ever be fully proven true or false, I do have a question for Edelstein: If Al Gore cares so much about the Iraqi dead, why didn't he speak out against the murderous sanctions when he was vice president? A half-million dead Iraqi children and Gore did not say one fuckin' word in public to condemn it. I'm also wondering if, during the Clinton-Gore years, Edelstein peppered his film reviews with similar self-righteous political statements. How about when Clinton bombed Iraq in response to an alleged plot to assassinate Bush the Elder and ended up killing Leila Attar, that country's best-known female artist? What did the millionaire morning chat show hosts and the haughty New York magazine film critic say about that? Better question: Were they even aware it happened?

"What we have with Edelstein is the typical liberal phenomena: blame Nader instead of facing the facts," says Joshua Frank, author of Left Out: How Liberals Help Re-elect George W. Bush. "The reason Nader even made any headway in 2000 was due to his ability to tap into the mounting anti-globalization movement that was launched in Seattle one year earlier. Progressive, and even radical, voters saw Nader as their chance to hold the neoliberals' feet to the fire."

more

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=910&Itemid=9999

[Tom Joad]

1. Didn't help that Gore said he supported military intervention time and time again.

I think the folks who supported Bush are the ones who really spoiled it for Gore, even if they were a minority.

[The Magistrate]

4. Is That A Serious Statement, Mr. Joad?

It is very hard to take it as one....

[Mark E. Smith]

2. Yeah, there really wasn't any difference between Gore and Bush in 2000, right?

The reason Nader is still being questioned about 2000? Because he really did help throw the election to Bush. And the consequences have been devastating not only for us, but for the world.

Try enacting this little tapdance for the people of Iraq and see how far you get.

"You see, um globalization, and NAFTA! Yeah, that's it. And, uh, radical voters, you see, um, they were unhappy and stuff."

Take a little responsibility once and a while, OK? Otherwise you come off sounding like Georgie Bush.

[LoZoccolo]

3. Exactly, these irresponsible Nader terrorist suicide bombers cause problems which last years...

...and then go "why are you still talking about how we voted years ago?"

[allskinners]

5. Perhaps because how we voted

years ago is having devastating results on our country and others. Hundreds of thousands dead and it's not really an issue of how the election turned out?

[FreeStateDemocrat]

6. NYT: The Endlessly Maddening (for Liberals) Case of Ralph Nader (new documentary review)

By A. O. SCOTT
Published: January 31, 2007
Early in the documentary “An Unreasonable Man,” it is noted that Ralph Nader is more likely to be remembered for his 2000 presidential campaign than for the decades of advocacy that preceded it. And the movie, an admiring but hardly uncritical portrait of Mr. Nader, confirms this suspicion by devoting nearly half of its more than two-hour running time to the 2000 election and its aftermath.

That event seems at once irrelevant and urgent, lost in the mists of pre-9/11 history and painfully topical. Certainly the passage of time has not cooled tempers or settled arguments. And so, much of the second half of “An Unreasonable Man,” directed by Steve Skrovan and Henriette Mantel (a former associate of Mr. Nader, she is also interviewed on camera), consists of talking heads talking past one another.

To liberal media critics like Eric Alterman and Todd Gitlin, Mr. Nader is “self-deluded,” “intellectually dishonest,” a “megalomaniac” and worse. His moral vanity, in their view (which is hardly theirs alone), cost Al Gore a decisive margin of victory over George W. Bush. Spoiling it for the Democrats, Mr. Nader’s detractors (among them some former allies) contend, was his intention all along.

This charge is disputed by members of his campaign staff, who also repeat his central claim that the Republicans and the Democrats are basically a two-headed corporate oligarchy, rather than genuinely distinct political forces.

contd

http://movies2.nytimes.com/2007/01/31/movies/31nade.html?adxnnl=1&ref=arts&adxnnlx=1170264795-Yl04raGn4c1AbUmO7VmTbw