Seriously. That’s what the Americans For Prosperity tea-baggers were shouting at the passing traffic outside the Keller Auditorium this evening:
Fortunately they had some competition from some other folks ironically protesting Oregon’s $10 corporate minimum tax: “$10 fogs up my monocle,” said one. And then, “Global Warming raises all yachts.” Or “Screw polar bears. My poodle needs a manicure.”
Dude himself certainly flogged a lot of books tonight. “I am Al Gore, I used to be the next President of the United States,” he said, introducing himself to laughter. “You think that’s funny?” he asked. Funny! Buy the book…
“In the three and a half years since I published An Inconvenient Truth, I have held 30 summits and gathered the leaders in the world to talk about a solution to the climate crisis,” he said. “This book really represents their generosity in explaining their insights.”
Did I mention you should buy the book?
“If we were to decide in this generation to take for granted all the hard work of previous generations, and then give the back of our hand to all generations following us,” he said, “that would be the most immoral choice that any generation on the planet has ever made.”
All the press were in the nosebleed seats. There was no wi-fi, of course. “Did you see that naked PETA chick?” asked one of the news anchors, about another protester outside—she wants Gore to become a vegetarian and was handing out fliers quoting Paul McCartney. “I just talked to her for a while so I could stare at her tits.”
Meanwhile, I wished I had one of these, like the dude from the O:
But I didn’t. So, Al Gore looked like this:
“We’re at the front of a rollercoaster and we’re in the front seat,” said Gore, launching into the usual Al Gore lying crap, about evidence for global warming being “unequivocal:” “To those who want to still reject that scientific concensus, I’d say, okay, but help us become less dependent on foreign oil,” he said, to applause.
We’ve had more forest fires and more lightning strikes, said Gore. People are dying. Global warming is terrifying. It’s all driven by greed. We’ve got to stop it!
And then this: “For every one of us 6.8 billion people on the planet, there will soon be one billion transistors per person,” said Gore.
That’s a lot of transistors!
There were no other surprises.
MANBEARPIG
I can’t tell which parts of this were supposed to be sarcastic and which were supposed to be true.
That dumbass protester misspelled “monocle!”
He or she has set the cause of irony back decades with this amateur hour bullshit.
Why can’t protesters ever be bothered to spell-check before writing ginormous signs?
@skrizach: All of it is 100% sincere, all quotes real. The only piece of (I would have thought obvious) irony was “the usual Al Gore lying crap” in the 5th from last paragraph. But that will teach me for being English. People often say they can’t tell if I’m joking or being sincere.
One of the teabagger signs says, “Hey Mr. Gore, how hot is the earth’s core?” as if it were a sincere rebuttal. I’m having a much harder time wrapping my head around that than any of Matt’s characteristic understatement.
“That dumbass protester misspelled “monocle!” “
Except that you can’t satirize the teabaggers and their protesting without generous heapings of illiterate, misspelled, grammatically retarded signs.
Who the hell is Al Gore?
Where are the pictures of the naked PETA chick? That should be front and center, dammit. Al Gore should show up in paragraph #2.
The dumbass tea baggers and the half-assed counter protesters and the naked PETA protester all serve to distract from Gore’s subtle shilling for the twin fictions of “clean coal” and “safe nuclear” and his not-so-subtle faith in market forces to solve a problem that market forces created.
There’s no legitimate debate about climate change or its human causes. It’s real, and it will be devastating to human civilization if we don’t do something. But just because Gore is right about that, doesn’t mean he’s right about the solutions.
Matt, I know you’re capable of grasping this kind of nuance, even if you are momentarily distracted by the noise. It’s your job to tease out the substance for your readers.
Who really cares about a few dozen protesters, Oregonian photogs’ nice lenses, or whether the Keller has wi-fi? I’d love to see some critical reporting about what Al Gore actually said regarding perhaps the greatest crisis ever faced by human kind.
“Matt, I know you’re capable of grasping this kind of nuance, even if you are momentarily distracted by the noise. It’s your job to tease out the substance for your readers.”
[looks around]
Nope. No takers. HYPER-LOCALISM, mate. It’s THE FUTURE OF MEDIA IN PORTLAND(TM).
If you have time to write 1000 words on this, however, while simultaneously running your day job, I’ll run it on the blog. This is called “free-lancing.” Because you’ll be doing it for free.
The corporations that pay the minimum $10 don’t actually make a profit. All of the money goes to overhead and payroll. Why should a business that doesn’t make a profit have to pay additional taxes? That money should go to pay for more employees. The tax increase should go to large businesses that make gobs of cash but instead Oregon gives them a tax BREAK!!! Where is the sense in that?
Matt, I’ve been running free local media (covering public schools) for a couple of years in Portland. Talk to me about giving it away. If I weren’t up to my eyeballs in an investigative piece right now, not to mention the day job, I could easily toss off 1000 words about Al Gore’s love of clean coal, nukes and free markets. But it’s not my beat, paid or unpaid.
Seriously, you don’t buy the hyper-local BS do you? Even if you do, can’t you talk about how Gore’s happy talk about markets plays right in to Portland’s greenwashing of high-end real estate development?
There’s a real story here, and you’re missing it. I don’t expect the O to get it. They never have. But I do expect more from you. I’ve seen flashes of it from time to time.
@Steve R: You excpect Matt to drop a giant investigative piece on the distinctions between various energy delivery schemes in his blog post reporting that Al Gore was at Keller? Yeah fucking right.
@Graham: no, I don’t expect an investigative piece. But I do expect some critical coverage of Gore’s speech, such as his support for “clean coal,” nuclear power and market-based solutions to global warming.
How about Gore’s monkeyshine about how people move to Portland for the beautiful environment, and how that means an increased standard of living? Matt knows something about gentrification and homelessness. There’s a local tie-in for ya.
Just looking for some critical coverage beyond the lazy “teabaggers vs. enviros” angle I can read at WW or the O. I realize this is a “blog post,” and I’ve got some concept of the audience it’s written for. But isn’t it written by a professional journalist?
@Steve R: Matt wrote 406 words. All of which were things he directly experienced. If you want someone to write the piece you want so badly, take Matt’s advice and write it.
Fuck, why am I defending Matt? Hey Matt! You’re a limey asshle who couldn’t journalism your way out of a wet-papper-bag.
Guess I’m confused… is Matt Davis a blogger or a professional journalist? When the professional media miss a story, we should just write it ourselves?
Bitch all you want about THE FUTURE OF MEDIA IN PORTLAND. But if the pros are just going to turn into bloggers, tossing off 400 cute and ironic words while missing significant nuance and subtext, I despair.
If you’re not part of the solution….
@Steve R: Are you really this dense? You’re reading this piece on a page called, “Blogtown”. Then you create a false dichotomy between bloggers and professional journalists. And yes, if you feel that the professional media missed a story and won’t write it for you. Write it yourself. Shit or get off the pot.
And yes, if YOU’re not part of the solution, YOU’re part of the problem.
Am I dense to expect a professional journalist to report critically on a news event, regardless of medium?
As the O takes a nose dive (good riddance to credulous hackery), there’s a huge opportunity for guys like Matt to step up and model something useful in journalism, even (or especially) on blogs. I’ve seen him do it on the City Hall beat, and on stories concerning homelessness and mental health. He missed a chance here, but I guess if it’s entertaining to somebody, that’s good enough for the Merc. (At least WWeek ran a picture of the naked PETA protester.)
That’s all. Good night.
@Steve R: Dude, what you’re missing here is that not everything has to be the investigative hardhitting articles you want. Matt wrote this piece at 8:30pm the night of Al Gore’s presentation. It was purely and only a recounting of what happened that night. You’re ferverent wishes for him to write 2000 words about the issues with clean coal and nuclear power are not going to happen on what is essentially a show review.
Fuck it, you are too stupid to understand context.