deja vu? Gore accused of same hyped up trash last summer

[Tuesday_Morning]

This bs is sure getting old, isn't it?

:grr:

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/8/17/133652/848

Peter Schweitzer, Al Gore, and hypocrisy
Posted by David Roberts at 1:36 PM on 17 Aug 2006

About a week ago, USA Today published a piece by Peter Schweitzer, who's a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. It accused Al Gore of hypocrisy, for asking viewers of An Inconvenient Truth to scale back their lifestyles and carbon emissions while ... well, there were a number of charges. According to Schweitzer, Gore owns three homes and stock in Occidental Petroleum, still receives royalties from a zinc mine on his property, does not participate in the green-power option his utility offers in Nashville, and lets Paramount pay for his carbon offsets.

As per standard practice, the conservative media machine spread the charges far and wide -- most recently they popped up on Glenn Beck's show on CNN and, bizarrely, in a recurring poll on AOL's homepage.


Gore's communications director, Kalee Kreider, sent a letter to the editor to respond to the piece, but we all know only a fraction of the folks who read the original piece will read the letter.

First things first: I talked to some of Gore's people today, including Kreider, about the specific charges. Suffice to say, they're false. Gore receives no royalties from the mine, which shut down in 2003. (USA Today actually printed a correction about this, way down on page 10A.) Gore owns no stock in Occidental, and never has (his father did; it was all sold over six years ago). Gore does in fact take advantage of the green power options his utility offers, and was in the process of adding photovoltaic solar cells to his house when the article came out. He pays for his own personal carbon offsets, in addition to the institutional offsets purchased by Paramount (movie distributor) and Rodale (book publisher), which make both the book and the movie completely carbon neutral.

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more

[itsmesgd]

1. Gore will skate to a victory in 2008 if that's all they have on him

recycled garbage

[AX10]

2. So the Hoover Institution is now posing as a journalistic outlet?

[knowbody0]

3. speaks loudly of their level of desperation

[sce56]

4. Watch the rebrodcast of Keith Olbermann tonight he Debunks this story

An Incoherent Truth: Al Gore has been getting a lot of good press lately, so the right wing attack dogs are out in force to "balance" the coverage with some political hit-jobs and unfounded charges of hypocrisy. The facts, as usual, are not on their side.

[OHdem10]

5. Except for this new smear about his house,

travel(Jet fuel) his energy bills, everybit of this
was used over and over and over in the last campaign.

The RWers have this looney idea that anyone who is
the least bit environmentally inclined should
be a tree hugger who lives in a tiny little home
with as few modern conveniences as humanely possible.
They would prefer to go back to horse and buggy days.

Therefore when people who happen to be upper income
is concerned with environmental issues, the RWer
cannot grasp this. First of all it is incomprehesible
to them. Rich people should be Republican. When
you are not living the previously described horse
and buggy lifestyle, they are thrown for a loop.

It is too bad we did not fight back when they first
started this depiction of "envrironmentalist".