{"id":525,"date":"2007-03-02T09:40:49","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T15:40:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/03\/02\/patricians-of-a-feather\/"},"modified":"2007-03-02T11:36:15","modified_gmt":"2007-03-02T17:36:15","slug":"patricians-of-a-feather","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=525","title":{"rendered":"Patricians Of A Feather"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whenever a smug, sanctimonious, unctuous liberal demigogue anywhere is under attack, you can count on someone <\/em>in the Strib front office to stand up and be counted.<\/p>\n

And with Algore’s hypocritical, power-guzzling ways (and, moreover, his lame “carbon-credit” defense) being heckled off the stage of public opinion, it makes sense that that someone is Nick Coleman.\u00a0 A fellow child of political power, a fellow patrician grown accustomed to lecturing the hopeless hoi-polloi, <\/em>both with hours of, um, fascinating stories to relate the sixties to today, Coleman is the Algore’s perfect defender.<\/p>\n

It’s all so – unfair<\/em>, says Coleman:<\/p>\n

After his film about global warming won an Oscar on Sunday, Al Gore basked in the adulation of Hollywood.<\/p>\n

You knew he’d get paid back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, Nick.\u00a0 We knew he’d give us plenty of material. <\/em>You do understand the difference, right?<\/p>\n

The right-wing wood-chippers have been chewing Gore into little pieces ever since.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

COLEMAN BS ALERT:\u00a0 Actually, the story came out in The Chattanoogan<\/a> –\u00a0not exactly part of the Right Wing Noise Machine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They didn’t enjoy the joke when Gore reached into his tux and pulled out a phony presidential campaign announcement before the Oscar orchestra drummed him off stage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Truth be told, I actually did get a laugh out of that.\u00a0 Whatever his faults, Algore – like the President, actually – can <\/em>occasionally poke fun at himself.\u00a0 I’ll give him that much.<\/p>\n

Strike two, Nick.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The very sight of Gore offends people who think the Supreme Court ruled he should never again be seen in public. Those folks can’t forgive Gore for continuing to draw breath.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Closed circuit to Nick Coleman’s nonexistent editor:\u00a0 Isn’t that not only a little hyperbolic, but kind of clubfisted and inarticulate?\u00a0 And, by the way, as we saw with Vice President Cheney’s brush with the Taliban this past week, it’s not the right that goes about wishing death on people…)<\/p>\n

But what really got the phlegm flying on talk radio\u00a0was the “gotcha” from a conservative group that outed the former vice president as a Limousine Electricity user. Zap.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Last year, Gore’s mansion used almost 20 times as much electricity as the average American home. Take that, you Hollywood types.<\/p>\n

Everyone loves a juicy bit of hypocrisy, and I am prepared to believe a politician might say one thing in public and act another way in private. But the Gore electricity kerfuffle offers an opportunity for Americans to point a finger.<\/p>\n

At ourselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Before Nick begins the real purpose of this column – a rote transcription of talking points – let’s set a few things straight.<\/p>\n

I’m far <\/em>from above conserving.\u00a0 Of course, in my case it’s not a matter of buying into a fabian socialist scare story; it’s because I’m half Norwegian, and I like to squeeze twelve cents out of a dime, and I’m all for sending less of my take-home pay to Excel Energy.\u00a0 Or to the House of Saud, for that matter.\u00a0 It’s a market prerogative, and I’m doing my best to vote with my feet and my wallet.<\/p>\n

I mentioned “fabian socialist talking points”:<\/p>\n

The science on global warming is convincing [Hah!<\/font>], and so is the need to throttle back on our polluting energy ways.<\/p>\n

“The best response to Al Gore’s energy usage is for us to think about our own,” says Michael Noble, executive director of Fresh Energy, a St. Paul-based nonprofit group.<\/p>\n

The group is working to develop a “clean, efficient and fair” energy system (www.fresh-energy.org<\/a>). “We all ought to be looking at the automobile we drive, how we heat our house, whether it’s insulated, whether we have efficient appliances, and how to reduce our fossil fuel use.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When non-profits start talking about making things “fair”, it’s time to keep one hand on your wallet and the other on your Constitution.<\/p>\n

No, we don’t have to live in cold, dark caves, Noble says. The issue is about taking responsibility for our energy use, while supporting efforts to “change the entire energy system, top to bottom, to substitute energy-efficient and carbon-free energy for fossil fuels which lead to warming.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the market will do that, on its own.\u00a0 It got a major boost this past two years, as gas prices jumped over $3 a gallon; SUV sales plummeted, people took a serious look at hybrids (and found them largely wanting), alternative energy started to show at least fringe-y signs of being viable someday, and even environmentalists started reconsidering their generation-old hysteria against nuclear power.<\/p>\n

Gore, by the way, offsets his fossil-fuel use by paying extra for renewable energy credits.<\/p>\n

This was ignored by the talk-radio goobers, but the idea is simple: For a small extra charge, pennies per kilowatt hour, you can “buy” renewable energy credits from your energy company, which uses the money (it is carefully audited) to buy that amount of nonpolluting power (such as wind energy) for its system rather than building more power plants.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, it hasn’t been “ignored” at all.\u00a0 We’ll be talking about the “Carbon-neutral” flimflam this weekend on the NARN, most likely.<\/p>\n

“The scientific evidence is rock-solid,” says Noble. “The only solution to global warming is to reduce our total carbon emissions by 80 percent. Al Gore has helped get that message across.”<\/p>\n

Even if Tipper leaves the laundry room lights on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The evidence is far from “rock-solid”, and Coleman’s attempt at spin control ignores the real point:\u00a0 Algore, the carbon scold, is an energy-guzzling hypocrite; this past week, his motto – “conservation for me, but not for thee”, became clear.<\/p>\n

And we’re making sure the world knows it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whenever a smug, sanctimonious, unctuous liberal demigogue anywhere is under attack, you can count on someone in the Strib front office to stand up and be counted. And with Algore’s hypocritical, power-guzzling ways (and, moreover, his lame “carbon-credit” defense) being heckled off the stage of public opinion, it makes sense that that someone is Nick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,4,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-media","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}