There are so many, many things to say about Al Gore’s incredibly hypocritical sale of Current TV to Qatar’s al Jazeera that I simply don’t know where to begin.
First there is Captain Hypocrite’s taking $100 million of money made by carbon-spewing oil sheiks. Oh, and trying to get the deal done before January so he wouldn’t have to pay the higher tax rates that his good buddy Barack Obama put in place. Don’t worry though–he’s grossing about $70 million in petrodollars on the sale.
“It’s reeking with irony,” said Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean at the Yale School of Management, who studies corporate governance. “It seems to be at least a paradox in terms of his positions on sustainability and geopolitics.”
Abe Foxman says that Al Gore’s sale of Current TV to al Jazeera “may” lead to anti-Israel coverage. Really? Al Jazeera? Anti-Israel coverage? This is what we call “a keen grasp of the obvious”.
Then there’s the illiberal state of Qatar, run by a monarchy. No elections or freedom for Qatar!
Glenn Beck said he tried to buy Current TV and was turned down by Gore due to his politics. So ant-Israel, anti-US views are fine. Just not conservative.
Mr. Beck said on his radio show Thursday that his company’s interest was rebuffed “within 15 minutes.”
“We were not allowed to the table,” he said. “He didn’t sell to the highest bidder. He looked for, Who do I ideologically align with?” Mr. Beck’s producer Stu Burguiere added, “The guy who was vice president of the United States and was 537 votes away from being president during 9/11 is ideologically aligned, by his own definition, with the network that Osama bin Laden went to every time he wanted to get a message out.”
There are some liberals who won’t stand for the anti-U.S., anti-Israel, anti-Semitic “news” channel. Jennifer Granholm, a Current TV star and talk show host, is quitting over the new ownership. Good for her!
Then there’s this tool, who is shutting his eyes to the anti-Israel, anti-U.S. tone of the network and blaming the Israel Lobby, like a good spokesman for the anti-Israel network. Note how he doesn’t go into specifics about the anti-Semitism. He just pretends it’s a “different” editorial slant.
My own opinions may be shaped by experiences with al-Jazeera’s English-language channel. The Arabic part of the network has a separate staff, housed in more modest quarters across the street in Doha from the English channel. And in my few appearances on the Arabic channel, the editorial slant seemed a bit different.
Whether I was invited to comment on congressional elections, global warming or race relations, the questions inevitably veered toward the pro-Israel lobby. As in, after a few questions on the scheduled topic, something like: “Interesting point about liberalizing relations with Cuba, and how does that affect the Israel lobby?”
And he can write an op-ed saying that it’s no big deal. Ignore the anti-Semitism. A Jew, writing that. On the same media company that gives you Joseph Massad’s anti-Semitic claptrap. Well done, moron.
You know, in the 80s and 90s, I saw the hypocrisy of Republicans who loudly proclaimed they were pro-family, pro-“values”, and then got caught cheating on their wives. But today’s hypocrites go against our very way of life, our very values of freedom and equality and protection of the minority against the majority, and pretend that they are not.
Mr. Gore, who will have an unpaid seat on the board of the new Al Jazeera channel, does not see it that way. Al Jazeera, he said, is one of the most popular media companies in the world.
“Their global reach is unmatched and their coverage of major events like the Arab Spring is thorough, fair and informative,” he said.
That there are no problems, that things like al Jazeera are “fair”
I’ll take the cheaters in a New York minute.
