Two interviews have really hit me over the last couple of days. One interview is a Seattle Weekly interview with Al Gore, who appears to be doing all of the ‘liberal’ media press engagements he can get at the moment, promoting his new ‘film’. He’s also in the news and talked about because so few people are publicly championing the cause of global conservationism, using it as an aspirational word rather than an insult. I choose this interview because it comes across as more casual and available than others I’ve read. Gore and the interviewer seem to have a repartee that is absent in most. The second piece, in Time Magazine, looks at the Dixie Chicks in their post 2003-boycott candour. When they originally were repentant for disrespecting the office of the president, they now apparently have no respect for GW Bush. Their new song, ‘Not Ready to Make Nice’, from the album ‘Take the Long Way’ is a step up into the faces of all those who spurned them, rejected them and hated them when their lack of Republican politics became apparent. When radio stations banned them, stores no longer stocked them and fans left them, they had to take on 24 hour security and really watch their words. Now they’ve decided it’s better not to placate those opponents by hiding but to establish a new, better fanbase who supports them for their true values and music:
“I’d rather have a smaller following of really cool people who get it,” says Maguire, “who will grow with us as we grow and are fans for life, than people that have us in their five-disc changer with Reba McEntire and Toby Keith. We don’t want those kinds of fans. They limit what you can do.”
Both these interviews address individuals who have courted controversy with public endeavours, and been burnt. But they have come back to try and show what they feel despite being groomed to ‘public acceptance’ by media overlords and masters of spin. The truth, for those prepared to listen, is more powerful than artificially concocted images because the truth with always come out. Both are really worth reading.
Seattle Weekly: OK, but back when I was a college student in the ’80s, there was a big movement to shame universities into divesting their South African stocks. Could the environmental movement do the same with corporations and shareholders today?
AL GORE: I hope so, but here’s the main thing: We really have to get the information about the climate crisis before the American people. That’s why I want everybody to see this movie. I’ve been trying to tell this story for 30 years, and the debate’s over. The debate’s over. There are five points on which there is a strong and enduring global consensus: Global warming’s real; we human beings are mainly responsible for it; the results are catastrophic; we have to fix it; it’s not too late. Those five points are now no longer subject to debate. The debate now has shifted: What are the best ways to solve it? How quickly can we move? What are the most cost-effective approaches? How can we get started? And yet, here in the United States, we are still living in a little bubble of unreality, one of only two developed nations on the planet that doesn’t have any intention of ratifying [the Kyoto Protocol].
God, I love this country … just like the mother of a brain-damaged child loves her stumbling spawn.
But Marshall, how the hell does the rest of the world GET the attention of the Americans? They need to wake up and realise that their selfish attitude to the environment is killing us all. Driving smaller cars would be a start, paying the same price for petrol as the rest of the world, and getting rid of that dangerous, bigot in the White House would be a start.
Caroline, I think Europe and the rest of the world are doing plenty to try and get our attention. And in fact there are tens of millions of us here who do get it … and are doing what we can to bring the rest of the country around. I may have a slightly sardonic sense of humor, but in my more rational moments I like to remind myself that Mr Gore actually did win the election in 2000; that millions and millions apparently are actually starting to see through the pathetic and mean-spirited lies that pass for Republican policy (both foreign and domestic) and will soon be showing their displeasure at the polls. Now, if only the left end of the political spectrum would stop pussy-footing around trying to capture the so-called swing voters among the active electorate and start espousing policies that would energize the nearly half of all eligible electors in this country who no longer participate from sheer disgust with both major parties, we might start to really get somewhere!
But of course I am an unrepentent socialist-internationalist from way back, so I have no business even pretending to talk about American politics. We have been “put in our place” here since at least the Joe McCarthy days and most people seem to assume we are all simply lunatics of some kind.
You know, this is what I think is most interesting about these two interviews. They both tell the stories of people who’ve decided that hey, they’ve had enough of prevaricating by trying to gain everyone’s support. They now just want to say what they believe. They’ve seen that the right in America may pretend to be bipartisan, but when it really comes to it, they’d rather eat their own hats than take input from the other side of the isle. When Bush has to start immigration amnesties that aren’t actually amnesties, against all thoughts of nationalism and fear of foreigners, it makes you think that there is power in the people when they show their real feelings.
Of course Al Gore and a country music band aren’t going to change US politics, but it comes down to educating people that there is a choice. The American media is largely to blame for covering over the opportunities for change, and the well founded disputes that the rest of the world has with the United States (like US policy towards Iran), but with time this may change. Some people would say that there’s a liberal bias in US media. I would say there’s a right-wing franchise established. Though many journalists may try and stay neutral, their overlord bosses are not. Gore doesn’t have free reign with his slick slide show of science, some people are still (remarkably) contesting the facts. I just like the fact that many people clearly believe in what these scared lefties have to say, and one day they may be able to be publicly praised for their open words of wisdom.
“The happiness of governments like ours, wherein the people are truly the mainspring, is that they are never to be despaired of. When an evil becomes so glaring as to strike them generally, they arouse themselves, and it is redressed. He only is then the popular man and can get into office who shows the best disposition to reform the evil.”
Thomas Jefferson to Richard Price, 1 Feb 1785, The Portable Thomas Jefferson, (Merrill D. Peterson, ed. New York, Viking Press, 1975), pp.372-3.
I see that book quoted all over the place but sadly have never been able to get to a copy myself. Clearly, it’s one of those classics that has been so popular it’s been ‘lost’ in some academic’s office!
Yes, the one’s that love it don’t want to take it back to the library and the one’s who hate it … ditto!
Eh, when did I start randomly apostrophizing plurals? I really am turning into a German!
Lol. we all have slips of brain function occasionally! Today’s your day!