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].
The Seattle Weekly: The Sit-Down: All Steamed Up?
Time Magazine: Dixie Chicks In the Line of Fire
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