Robert McHenry: Norway Decides the U.S. Presidency?
It’s the trifecta for Albert Gore, Jr. – Emmy, Oscar, and Alfred. No matter how you feel about his position on global warming, this much must be confessed: The man knows how to create a wave, and he knows how to surf.
Gaia’s future seems secure now. In part this is because that future was never as bleak as Gore painted it in his Hollywood-wowing movie “An Inconvenient Truth” (yes, that would be the same Hollywood that thought “Ishtar” was a good idea).This same week in Britain, where the film had been distributed to schools by the government, a High Court judge ruled that on nine points the film significantly exaggerates the likely future effects of a warmer climate. Those of you with children will be happy to be able to reassure them that one of the grosser exaggerations in the film concerns the imminent extinction of polar bear.
Gore has brought together in his campaign for a cooler tomorrow some very large groups that are not always comfortable with one another: the Paranoid-American community, the wildly diverse Anti-Whatever You Gots, the Florida Should Be Expelled from the Unionists, and a few thousand Repentant Naderites for a Do-Over. This leaves the Democratic Party pretty evenly divided between the Hillarious and the Not So Funny blocs. The big question is, how much of the NSF vote is ripe for a hero?
The Emmy was for starting something called Current TV, which labels itself “the TV network created by the people who watch it,” which comes perilously close to sounding like Wikpedia for vidiots. My cable provider doesn’t provide me with Current TV, but I see on their website that the top current feature is something about neckties. When the prize was announced, the press release explained that “The academy presents the Founders Award to an individual or organization which crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.” I guess I’m missing something.
But as for the Nobel Prize for Peace, irony is not quite the correct tone. This is a prize that has been awarded to, among others, that noted peacemaker Yasir Arafat, who made peace by temporarily suspending the war he had begun and that he later resumed and directed until his death. And then there was Henry Kissinger, but let’s not get into that. Interestingly, yet another honoree was Rigoberta Menchu, whose dramatic and wrenching autobiography also turned out to depend much on exaggeration if not downright falsehood.
Still, a little falsehood in the name of truth, or peace, or some other virtue, should not shock us. We are grownups, after all, and we have all been around the block once or twice....
Read entire article at Britannica Blog
Gaia’s future seems secure now. In part this is because that future was never as bleak as Gore painted it in his Hollywood-wowing movie “An Inconvenient Truth” (yes, that would be the same Hollywood that thought “Ishtar” was a good idea).This same week in Britain, where the film had been distributed to schools by the government, a High Court judge ruled that on nine points the film significantly exaggerates the likely future effects of a warmer climate. Those of you with children will be happy to be able to reassure them that one of the grosser exaggerations in the film concerns the imminent extinction of polar bear.
Gore has brought together in his campaign for a cooler tomorrow some very large groups that are not always comfortable with one another: the Paranoid-American community, the wildly diverse Anti-Whatever You Gots, the Florida Should Be Expelled from the Unionists, and a few thousand Repentant Naderites for a Do-Over. This leaves the Democratic Party pretty evenly divided between the Hillarious and the Not So Funny blocs. The big question is, how much of the NSF vote is ripe for a hero?
The Emmy was for starting something called Current TV, which labels itself “the TV network created by the people who watch it,” which comes perilously close to sounding like Wikpedia for vidiots. My cable provider doesn’t provide me with Current TV, but I see on their website that the top current feature is something about neckties. When the prize was announced, the press release explained that “The academy presents the Founders Award to an individual or organization which crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.” I guess I’m missing something.
But as for the Nobel Prize for Peace, irony is not quite the correct tone. This is a prize that has been awarded to, among others, that noted peacemaker Yasir Arafat, who made peace by temporarily suspending the war he had begun and that he later resumed and directed until his death. And then there was Henry Kissinger, but let’s not get into that. Interestingly, yet another honoree was Rigoberta Menchu, whose dramatic and wrenching autobiography also turned out to depend much on exaggeration if not downright falsehood.
Still, a little falsehood in the name of truth, or peace, or some other virtue, should not shock us. We are grownups, after all, and we have all been around the block once or twice....