11/19/07 "ICH"
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No entity in this once-proud nation is more corrupt
than its shallow, hubris-infested media. Any pricks
of conscience the media may have felt for covering
up the treasonous seizure of the 2000 election were
swept away in the swirl of terror following the
attack on 9-11. The "big story" to confront George
Bush when he returned from his month-long vacation
in September 2001, his approval numbers tanking, was
that Al Gore got more votes than any Democrat in US
history -- nearly a half-million more than Bush. It
was that five conservative Supreme Court judges
stopped the vote count that would prove Gore won
because, in their unsigned decision, they wrote such
a democratic win would cause "
public acceptance,"
which would "
cast a cloud over Bush's legitimacy"
and thus harm "
democratic stability."
Into the Abyss
The election coup was a shot across the bow of
democracy, a power seizure orchestrated by the
ever-present, hands-on man who leaves no
fingerprints, James Baker III, and carried out by
mob leader John Bolton. Luckily for Bush, he
blundered into 9-11 and managed to hit the trifecta
before the papers managed to hit the newsstands.
And, thanks to the media and its burgeoning power to
manipulate citizen opinion and form legislative
attitudes, Bush demanded -- and was given -- a
license to kill.
The beast was loosed.
The last seven years have been a hell of a ride for
Bush, Dick Cheney and their toady media --
continuous, absurd politicking for the next
election, blood-gushing adventure abroad and a
Constitution-shredding free-for-all at home. Power
is a heady thing, and they grow more powerful and
immoral with each lie they tell, each freedom they
destroy, each crime they cover up.
For the rest of us, those years have just been hell.
Like our fellow Americans in New Orleans caught up
in the
despair of waiting
for help that will never come, we remain mired in a
Samuel Beckett wasteland,
waiting for our own "Godot" to return and claim what
is rightfully his. Rightfully ours. Our rights, our
freedoms, our civil liberties -- our government.
Gore tested the water in 2004, and the media met him
head-on, fangs bared, in a concerted effort to
ridicule and destroy him and to keep their corporate
benefactors and war profiteers in office. From the
New York Times to the
Washington Times
to the
Los Angeles Times the message to
Gore was the same -- get lost.
Over at CNN, Paula Zahn and Judy Woodruff each did
an "exclusive" interview with Gore. Each pointed out
how popular and wonderful Bush is; each asked Gore
virtually the same question -- "Do you really think
YOU can win?" Each looked at Gore in stunned
amazement, and Woodruff even added in her intensely
oh-so-blonde bewildered way (eyes wide, hands
spread) -- "
People are saying that nobody
out there likes you, even the leaders of your own
party. Given that (you're such a ridiculously low
lying slimeball) -- what makes you think you can
win...?"
People are saying. Should anyone doubt who those
"people" are, during the same period, CNN's Suzanne
Malvoux opined to then morning anchor Soledad
O'Brien, "There's a connection between Bush 43 and
the public -- it's a comfort level...Bush has a
glow about him." O'Brien announced a bit later,
as if noticing it herself, "Bush seems to have a
glow about him." Later, Woodruff credited
Malvoux with reporting earlier that "Bush is so
relaxed, he has a
glow about him." Later in
the day, Wolf Blitzer commented, "
Some people
are saying that Bush has a
glow about
him..."
Gore was determined that the election be more than
some "media" people saying he is boring, he is fat,
he is a liar. He knew that Bush, if forced to
address the issues facing this country, if forced to
explain the disconnect between his words and
actions, explain to Americans why their civil rights
were being desecrated in the name of freedom,
explain how a "man of God" could morph so
effortlessly into an "Angel of Death," he could not
-- and should not -- survive. So Gore withdrew,
hoping to set the stage if not for Bush's defeat, at
least for him having to answer some critical
questions about this nation's economy, its domestic
chaos, and the pathological lies that took this
nation into a bloody, senseless war.
Going Quickly, Alone
That didn't happen. So Gore set out to continue his
lifelong quest of awakening the world's population
to the reality of global warming. In spite of the
media's vicious efforts to discredit him, Gore
soared to new heights of credibility with his book,
"An Inconvenient Truth," published concurrently in
May 2006 with the documentary film of the same
title. The film, by far the most popular at the 2006
Sundance Film Festival, was mocked at home but
received well-deserved acclaim in foreign media and
captured not one, but two Academy Awards. It went on
to become the fourth-highest-grossing documentary in
US history.
The
New York Times' Michiko Kakutani did
review Gore's book,
pointing out that it was "largely free of the New
Age psychobabble and A-student grandiosity that
rumbled through" his 1992 book, "Earth in the
Balance." Kakutani reminded readers that Poppy Bush
had earlier dismissed Gore as "Ozone Man," but
conceded that Gore's "passionate warnings about
climate change seem increasingly prescient," and
that his "wonky fascination with policy minutiae has
been tamed in these pages..." Finally, while noting
that Gore wrote the Introduction for (1994 reprint)
Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," Kakutani wrapped it
up by sneering that Gore "isn't a scientist like
Carson and doesn't possess her literary gifts," and
accused Gore of writing "as a popularizer of other
people's research and ideas."
Perhaps if Kakutani had known that, just 18 months
later, Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) would be awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize for "their efforts to build up and
disseminate greater knowledge about manmade climate
change, and to lay the foundations ... to counteract
such change," she might have mentioned that the
premise of Gore's book was clearly that global
warming is not just about science nor is it just a
political issue. It is a moral issue and we -- all
of us -- have a responsibility to do something about
it. Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" is, as
Kafka wrote, "the
axe for the frozen sea inside us."
Al Gore is a "larger than party" guy, and stands
head and shoulders above the hypocritical Bush
clones in both parties who are flip-flopping all
over the campaign trail. Since 2000, he has wielded
that axe again and again via op-eds, speeches and
face-to-face interaction with the people -- a
wake-up call to resist the imposition of tyranny by
the powerful. As early as 2003 Gore was ahead of the
pack,
warning Americans
about the loss of civil liberties, unwarranted
searches and seizures, and illegal surveillance.
In a September 2005 speech in San Francisco, a
heartbroken Gore spoke of the
morality -- or lack
of it -- in the Bush administration's belated
response to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Don't
point fingers -- don't hold us accountable --
appeared to be the only plan in place to deal with
catastrophe.
However, "When the corpses of American citizens are
floating in toxic floodwaters five days after a
hurricane strikes," Gore said, "it is time not only
to repond directly to the victims...but to hold the
processes of our nation accountable, and the leaders
of our nation accountable..."
Gore had personally responded to the tragedy by
arranging to have 270 evacuees airlifted on two
separate flights from New Orleans to Tennessee. He
agreed to pay $50,000 for each flight, recruited
doctors and cut through government red tape to allow
the planes to land in New Orleans. The media did not
mention this act of courage and compassion, perhaps
because Bush had not yet arrived for his belated
flyover and cathedral photo-op where spotlights cast
a
glow about him.
Going Far Together -- Quickly
For millions of us who wait for Gore, each day
begins anew, with hope that he will return -- yet
each night ends in despair because he did not. We
have hope because we know that each step Gore has
taken in his entire career -- representative,
senator, vice president and, yes, president -- has
been forward. The grassroots movement to
draft Gore is
spreading across the nation, and will continue
unless Gore himself says "Stop!" To date, he has not
done so. Perhaps that is because he knows -- as do
we -- that both the earth and our democracy are
teetering on the brink of disaster, and their
restoration depends entirely upon the person
occupying the Oval Office.
We have hope because we read his explosive new book,
"The Assault on Reason," wherein he exposes the Bush
administration for what it is -- traitorous. Gore
wrote more than once in his book,
"Where there
is no vision, the people perish." Gore shares
the vision of the Founders that we are a government
of laws, not of men. He warns that a "president who
breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of
our government."
Gore is a Tom Paine, a Paul Revere, who tells us --
"It is time now for us to recover our moral health
in America and stand again for freedom, demand
accountability for poor decisions, missed judgments,
lack of planning, lack of preparation, and willful
denial of the obvious truth about serious and
imminent threats that are facing the American
people."
Al Gore is
for the people who are rising to
the challenge of restoring democracy. He is
of
the people who long to "rekindle the
true spirit of
America." And Gore will be re-elected by the people
-- because he is the last Founder standing.
