you know who hectors
Posted on March 9, 2007 by Tito
Ted Leo, musician / media watchdog (you feel the rant):
Man, where are the frigging editors out there? I’m talking about every possible publication, on-line and in print. I keep seeing contradictions and bad journalism that’s driving me crazy! In an op-ed in today’s NYTimes, Gregg Easterbrook pulls a classic Fox News “Obama went to a mdarassa/say whatever you want with no accountability” trick while discussing Al Gore’s house’s energy consumption and the company, TerraPass, that he buys carbon offsets from. He explains that “Gore pays extra for wind energy, and buys carbon offsets,” and says, a few paragraphs later, “I may be annoyed by Mr. Gore’s hectoring, but I’m not going to accuse him of hypocrisy on this one.” Gee - thanks - we were all worried that one more voice accusing Gore of hypocrisy on this one would just break him and reverse all the evidence about global warming. But setting that little bit of cynical self-aggrandizing reactionary moralism aside for a second, it should be noted that before he gets into the truth of Gore’s energy consumption, he gets his dig in by writing in the second paragraph,
TerraPass estimated that the power use of a house equivalent to Mr. Gore’s causes 377,000 pounds of greenhouse gases annually. That is roughly the annual carbon emission of 20 Hummers. Next time you see Mr. Gore wagging his finger about the energy sins of others, picture a caravan of 20 Hummers driving to the Academy Awards.
HOW IS THIS ALOWED?? In the very next paragraph, it’s explained that the negative effects of Gore’s energy consumption are COMPLETELY offset by those aforementioned wind power and carbon offset buys, and the methane reduction that TerraPass handles by covering landfills! He goes all the way to carbon neutral! AND THIS IS IN THIS GUY’S OWN ARTICLE - HE’S WRITING IT - HE’S SAYING THIS IS A SMART THING - A GOOD THING!!
So why? Why should you picture a caravan of 20 Hummers driving to the Academy Awards? This guy is not one of those nay-sayers with a selfish little bug up his or her ass about having to worry about something other than maintaining his or her own decadent self-obsessed lifestyle, with Al Gore being the perfect scapegoat for the displacement that their own guilt leads all of these false skeptics to require. He believes global warming is happening, and has written quite a bit about it! Yeah - it’s worth noting that if Al Gore reduced his front-end energy usage, as we all SHOULD, he wouldn’t create so much carbon in the first place, wouldn’t have to buy so much back, and could even wind up flipping it past neutral into negative, but that doesn’t seem to be the point - the point seems to be “I don’t like Al Gore’s hectoring.” But how is that relevant to the ultimate point of his article? And anyway, I don’t see Al Gore “hectoring” anybody! He’s just doin’ his goddamned thing. You know who hectors? YOU KNOW WHO HECTORS???
You know who hectors.
» Filed Under Liberal Media Conspiracies, Weather
