Al Gore on the threat to American democracy

[electricland]

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of "The Daily Show," when he visited CNN's "Crossfire": there should be a distinction between news and entertainment.

And it really matters because the subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: it leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

Read it. Seriously.

Comments

[llnaughty.livejournal.com]

i suppose there's no hope for a gore/clinton ticket in 2008... :(

[electricland.livejournal.com]

I think Hillary's way cool, but I'm not sure that would be such a great idea.

Also, maybe Gore is better as a gadfly. I can't see this speech going over so well as a sound bite.

[life-on-queen.livejournal.com]

And yet another reason why we need the CBC back. The quality and informative content of Canadian news owes a great deal to the CBC and its ability as a publicly-funded broadcaster to resist the trend to turn all news into info-tainment.

[jaanquidam.livejournal.com]

It kinda makes me wonder: where the hell was Al Gore when he was running for president??

[mr-weasel.livejournal.com]

Gore was being black-balled by the media, which America's right-wing nutjobs insist has a "liberal media bias". Anything he said got twisted around to make him look like a putz. Most viewers won't or are unable to check out the source the TV report is based on so the spoonfed impression is what sticks. It's also likely that Gore is a little to smart for most Americans to want for a leader. They want people like Arnold Schwarzenegger for office.

Read Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them: And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them...A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken. He gets into a lot of detail of what happened the first time Bush got into office.

[jaanquidam.livejournal.com]

I can certainly believe that. You're right though, that Gore comes off as smug (I think) and too smart. But he's coming off as a populist now! I wish the populist Gore would run again. Actually, Kerry had the same problem, I thought, of being smart and competent, but not clear on what ideas he was rooted to. I'm beginning to think that talk about a professional consulting class that keeps losing elections really is the problem here. There was an article in The Nation about that a while back....

I did read Al Franken's book! Loved it. Funny thing about him, though, is that I never thought he was funny, but his economic analyses were spot on. I wish he'd run for something. And not be funny about it.

[electricland.livejournal.com]

:)

You have to admit, that speech is far from soundbite-quality. Superb and thought-provoking yes. Short and sweet, not so much...

[jaanquidam.livejournal.com]

But you know, given what ShrubCo says when he's being short and sweet, you'd think more people would be longing for Gore....