I will admit that I have yet to watch Katie Couric "do" the news on CBS. I find it to be a cruel joke on the American public perpetrated by CBS News. In an era when, more than ever, we need integrity from our news anchors, pundits and reporters, we instead were given the likes of Katie Couric. Far from Dan Rather and even farther from Walter Cronkite, she is an entertainment bobblehead who has nothing to offer the American public when it comes to news, politics, or world events. Her millieu is the morning sofa where she achieves success only in wringing the tears out of the latest tragic figures in American current events.
But then she became a news anchor for one of the "Big Three" and decided to become serious. So out came the glasses, free speech minute, and her CBS New blog.
Today, Katie has blessed us with some words of wisdom in a blog entry called Katie: Gore Warms Up Hollywood. She's seen An Inconvenient Truth and, donning her glasses and furrowing her brow, is concerned about what its Oscar win might mean for Al Gore and the liberals.
Gore has repeatedly said the environment is not a Democratic or Republican issue; it’s a moral issue. But now that Hollywood has so completely embraced the former vice president, one wonders if this issue will be associated only with liberal causes. The Oscars may give Gore's critics ammunition to reject a school of thought that’s been validated by countless scientists worldwide. Some people I know latched on to a recent Gore global warming conference that was cancelled because of a snowstorm.
Can anyone imagine a serious news anchor saying anything dumber than that?
It's got to be read again to be believed:
The Oscars may give Gore's critics ammunition to reject a school of thought that’s been validated by countless scientists worldwide.
Maybe Katie has spent too much time on the morning couch to realize that Gore's global warming critics have been excoriating him since the publication of Earth in the Balance. They've been rejecting the global warming school of thought for years. Yet she thinks this may give the critics ammo.
They didn't need to wait for the Oscars to give them that opportunity.
Is she really as dumb as she sounds? Can anyone be?
In 1992, a full fifteen years before Al Gore's movie won the Oscar, George H. W. Bush mocked Gore as "ozone man":
This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme we’ll be up to our necks in owls and outta work for every American.
Bush 41 didn't need to see that Oscar before calling Gore "extreme."
Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times wrote this on November 22, 1999. Nearly eight years before Al Gore's movie won the Oscar.
Vice President Al Gore emerges from "Earth in the Balance" (Plume), his 1992 book about the environment, as the quintessential A-student who has belatedly discovered New Age psychobabble. Like his speeches, his book veers between detailed policy assessments (predictably illustrated with lots of charts and graphs) and high-decibel outbursts of passion, between energetically researched historical disquisitions and loony asides about "inner ecology" and "spiritual triangulation"—asides that may help explain his curious affinity with his feminist consultant, Naomi Wolf.
Michiko Kakutani didn't need to see that Oscar to describe Gore's writings as "psychobabble."
NYT's Robin Toner wrote this on April 14, 2000. Nearly seven years before Al Gore's movie won the Oscar.
"Earth in the Balance" has a strikingly reflective tone and is widely considered to be Mr. Gore's midlife crisis book, written when Mr. Gore was trying to recover from his disastrous 1988 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, while coping with the serious injuries of his son, who had been hit by a car.
Robin Toner didn't need to see that Oscar to declare that Gore's global warming stance was a "midlife crisis".
Brit Hume, in January 2004, took his Fox News shot at Gore. Two years before Al Gore's movie won the Oscar.
HUME: In a case of unfortunate timing, former Vice President Al Gore was in New York City today attacking the Bush administration’s policies on global warming. Gore called President Bush, quote, a "moral coward on the environment." He said evidence of the warming problem is undeniable.
GORE (on tape): I really don’t think there is any longer a credible basis for doubting that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up because of global warming.
HUME: As Gore spoke, New Yorkers were freezing in 18-degree weather with a wind chill of one degree. And forecasters were saying that tonight could be the coldest January 15 in 47 years.
And, you know the chorus by now... Brit Hume didn't need to see that Oscar to ridicule Gore about the cold weather.
Sean Hannity went off on Gore in August 2006. It was several months Al Gore's movie won the Oscar.
HANNITY: You know what's funny? I see how the whole global-warming debate, everyone's politicized the whole thing. It's funny. When you go back to the first Earth Day, all of your liberal friends --
COLMES: My liberal friends. Yes. Me and my liberal friends.
HANNITY: Your liberal friends. They were holding up signs that said "The Coming Ice Age." If you look at the history of temperatures, there's a natural ebb and flow to all of this.
COLMES: Yeah.
HANNITY: And I think Al Gore is unhinged.
Nope. Sean Hannity didn't need to see that Oscar to call Gore "unhinged."
And yet, despite fifteen years of ridicule for Al Gore's views on global warming, Katie Couric is concerned that now, yes now that his film has won an Oscar, that his detractors will have "ammunition to reject" global warming.
It would be laughable if it weren't so damned pathetic.
I'll leave you with more of Katie's hopeful words from her CBS blog:
But my fervent hope is that Hollywood’s embrace of Al Gore doesn’t give people an excuse to condemn and mock the effort — and oppose taking steps that we as a society need to take to deal with the issue of climate change. Some people find anything trendy repugnant, but this is a trend that’s really important.
Dear god, do they come any dumber than Katie Couric?