New at Reason

June 12, 2007

Michael Moynihan reviews Al Gore's new book.

Comments

Edward|6.12.07 @ 3:06PM|#

So how do you explain the large number of Americans who believe that Saddam Hussein was behind the 9/11 attack?

|6.12.07 @ 3:14PM|#

"foreknowledge of the impending 9/11 attacks and 'consciously failed' to act."

Bad wording in the poll led to misleading results. We now know, for certain, that Bush was given a briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in America," and responded by going on vacation. Unfortunately, the phrase "foreknowledge of the impending 9/11 attacks and 'consciously failed' to act." can apply to that situation, just as well as to some 9/11 Truther conspiracy theory.

When I was in college, some organization polled the question, "Would you be willing to consider evidence that the Holocaust never occured?" When fifty-something percent of respondants answered yes, the organization breathlessly reported that our campuses were in the throes of an epidemic of Holocaust-denial. Er, no, they were in the throes of an epidemic of evidence-consideration-willingness.

So that's really not the equivelant of the "Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11" question.

|6.12.07 @ 3:15PM|#

Gore is deeply concerned "about the potential for exploitation of the television medium by those who seek to use it to manipulate public opinion in ways that bypass reason and logic."

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA Ahhhhhh. That's a good one

|6.12.07 @ 3:16PM|#

Anyway, it's nice of Mr. Moynihan to work some stale cheap shots about Gore right into his opening paragraphs. He saved me quite a bit of time, letting me know he was writing a brainless hatchet job.

|6.12.07 @ 3:21PM|#

joe,
You think being told that terrorists on the other side of the globe were planning to attack the US somehow, somewhere, at some future date, qualifies as "foreknowledge of the impending 9/11 attacks"?

|6.12.07 @ 3:23PM|#

Warren,

I think the language was vague enough that some significant segment of the population could have answered "Yes" to that question without being a 9/11 Truther.

Edward|6.12.07 @ 3:27PM|#

Joe,

Moynihan is just trying to make his bones as a propaganda warrior. Don't take the tile "Reason" too seriously.

|6.12.07 @ 3:27PM|#

Warren,

Other polls that use more precise language have found about 25% of the population being, in South Park's useful terminology, "retards" about 9/11 conspiracy theories.

So when one poll doubles that figure, it's pretty clear that the wording of the question is influencing the response.

|6.12.07 @ 3:32PM|#

"But contrary to Gore's eschatological narrative, the American media landscape is robust, thanks, in part, to technological innovation."
Wishful thinking. It is true that it is easier than ever before for responsible consumers to get at quality information. BUT take up the market share of the two or three big, crappy poor-quality network news venues and they dominate the landscape. It reminds me of Stevenson's wuote when told that every thinking person in the nation supported him for President: "Yes, but I need a majority."

|6.12.07 @ 3:39PM|#

Gore's title could only come from a guy who is more cock sure than he ought to be.

Edward|6.12.07 @ 3:46PM|#

Jason,

For being cock sure, Gore's title doesn't hold a candle to a tendentious political propaganda rag calling itself "Reason."

|6.12.07 @ 3:50PM|#

Attention Reason Online editors: I've found a technical glitch: the link that supposedly leads to a book review actually takes us to some kind of Free Republic op-ed.

Ellie|6.12.07 @ 3:59PM|#

Good article. I am interested in reading the book now, in case anyone I know starts crowing about what a genius revolutionary Al Gore is. The man makes me grow weary with all the eye-rolling he induces.

Edward|6.12.07 @ 4:04PM|#

Here's critical, but more balanced review:

http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/2007/05/assault_on_reas.html

|6.12.07 @ 4:06PM|#

Mr. Moynihan writes:

According to Gore, if we could only squeeze Paris and Nicole out of the media cycle, and tune all television sets to C-Span, Americans might not have consented to the Iraq War.

So, Gore's argument is that if the people were getting better news, they'd be better informed and would therefore make better decisions.

This seems reasonable enough to me, but Mr.Moynihan reads it as "he thinks the rest of us are hopelessly dumb."

Of course, this may not be as bad as the contention that Gore's book promotes "Free Speech for People Who Think Like Me".

Either way, it's a piece of crap review. Hopelessly so.

|6.12.07 @ 4:10PM|#

Hey joe,

I'm looking for those "stale cheap shots about Gore right into his opening paragraphs" you mentioned. I'm halfway through the article and haven't found 'em yet. Does "opening paragraphs" mean the second half of an article nowadays?

Edward|6.12.07 @ 4:11PM|#

Dan T.

You've nailed it. It's Moynihan who thinks we're hopelessly dumb. He's projecting.

|6.12.07 @ 4:18PM|#

Chucklehead,

Second graph: "By way of illustration, he offers this folksy-if bizarre-anecdote: "When I was a boy growing up on our family farm in the summers," he writes, off-handedly acknowledging that he wasn't, in fact, a year-round farm boy..."

Haw haw haw, Gore said he busted sod behind a mule, but he really worked on a farm part of the year!

Don't you remember, this was clear evidence of his pathological dishonesty and proof that he wasn't "comfortable in his own skin" during the 2000 elections.

:-|6.12.07 @ 4:21PM|#

joe: "stale cheap shots"

joe: "Bush was given a briefing...and responded by going on vacation."

Takes one to throw one.

Edward|6.12.07 @ 4:21PM|#

I guess one man's cheap shot is another man's (chucklehead's) objective analysis.

|6.12.07 @ 4:24PM|#

So a comment clarifying Gore's inconvenient truth about his boyhood... is a cheap shot?

M|6.12.07 @ 4:24PM|#

tendentious political

Pleonasm alert! Pleonasm alert!

|6.12.07 @ 4:25PM|#

I report, you deride. I accurately described the events that led people to draw a conclusion, in a thread about people drawing that conclusion.

The fact that Gore worked on a farm in the summer was relevant to the point, how, exactly?

|6.12.07 @ 4:27PM|#

"So a comment clarifying Gore's inconvenient truth about his boyhood... is a cheap shot?"

When it bears no relevance to any point or argument being made, and is thrown in just for the purpose of deriding someone, yes, that's what known as a "cheap shot" in our language, Chucklehead.

|6.12.07 @ 4:28PM|#

Compare to:

When it bears no relevance to any point or argument being made, and is thrown in just for the purpose of deriding someone, yes, that's what known as a "cheap shot" in our language, Chucklehead (whose name is as appropriate as one could possibly hope).

See the difference?

|6.12.07 @ 4:31PM|#

So Gore's own admission, that he was a part-time farmboy, is a cheap shot against Gore?

|6.12.07 @ 4:37PM|#

No, the way the author incorporated that uncontested fact was a cheap shot. This is a difficult point to grasp?

Explaining incredibly obvious points to people with an ideological need to deny understanding them is thirsty work. To the beer fridge!

|6.12.07 @ 4:40PM|#

From what I've read, we have had intelligence dating as far back as the Clinton/Gore administration that al-Qaida planned to fly planes into buildings in the US.

|6.12.07 @ 4:41PM|#

Ah, I get it now. Depends on POV. To someone who doesn't give a crap about Gore, the phrase "off-handedly acknowledging that he wasn't, in fact, a year-round farm boy" is an interpretation of what Gore's previous statement means. But to others, that same phrase is obvious partisan sniping of the worst degree.

Gotcha.

VM|6.12.07 @ 4:49PM|#

*looks up from bier fridge*

um. was anticipating this move?

*sheepishly hands joe a frothy, frosty bräu, and resumes search for more private spot to BATE.

stephen the goldberger|6.12.07 @ 4:51PM|#

i haven't read the book, but as far as I can gather from this review most of the points Gore is making have been made multiple times before about things like "yellow journalism" at the turn of the century and network radio/tv news coverage in the past.

With that said they are valid points and should be made constantly so that people realize who is filtering their information and for what purpose. Of course most people don't care, and If the only news sources were unentertaining purely fact based intellectual news shows, no one would watch.

So the ultimate question really is, is a poorly informed population better than an uninformed one?

|6.12.07 @ 4:54PM|#

Mr. Moynihan wrote:
"The Assault on Reason reestablishes Gore as America's premier besserwisser and moral scold: the politician who both warns that we are scaring people to death and argues that Manhattan will soon be submerged beneath the Atlantic."

having watched the movie several times now, I noticed that NOWHERE did Gore 'argue' as much. He only showed what would happen if Greenland did melt down, not when.

In later interviews, he described such an event as a 'wildcard', meaning noone knows when it would most likely occur; but he has said that he thinks it is possible to happen within 100 years...but still no idea that it will happen within 100 years.

Why is it that Reason contributaors can't seem to get their facts straight when it comes to Al Gore??

Edward|6.12.07 @ 4:56PM|#

Sem-Hec

Facts? You must be kidding.

|6.12.07 @ 4:57PM|#

Sam-Hec,

Yeah, there's nothing untoward about that. Why didn't he show what would happen if aliens attack?

|6.12.07 @ 4:59PM|#

What bothers me about Gore here is he acts like, well, Ayn Rand. He rolls out a number of issues that are and were complex and acts as though anyone with a brain would agree with his views on them. He rolls his eyes at dissenters and calls them irrational, duped, or most annoyingly, liars.

I'm sorry that the satellite data didn't resolve to match the ground based GW picture sooner. I'm sorry your error bars are so huge. I'm sorry that people really didn't know what Saddam had in Iraq.

You form a view and you move forward. Sometimes that view is more skeptical. You have a tough case to make that no one else was employing reason.

|6.12.07 @ 4:59PM|#

For a book called The Assault on Reason...

|6.12.07 @ 5:09PM|#

Jackass,
yeah the book is just begging to be assaulted,.

|6.12.07 @ 5:27PM|#

Actually, there are a crapload of bad links in that article. Good read, though.

|6.12.07 @ 5:29PM|#

"Why didn't he show what would happen if aliens attack?" Maybe because there is not a wide ranging consensus among scientific experts on alien invasions. But there is on global warming. I guess that's all just a big coordinated conspiracy by the saucer people, reverse vampires and the RAND corporation.

|6.12.07 @ 5:34PM|#

"I'm sorry that the satellite data didn't resolve to match the ground based GW picture sooner."
This is brought up quite a bit around here, as if the doubters were disinterested sky watchers just flumoxed as to why this one piece of the puzzle was failing to confirm the other many forms of data pointing to GW, rather than blinded ideologues grasping at whatever gaps they can. The 95% of PhD experts in the relevant fields, a varied group of well trained folks working in the field, did not decry GW and then suddenly admit things when the satellite data discrepancy resolved. Interestingly only those with an ideological cross to bear did so...

|6.12.07 @ 5:34PM|#

I trust that none of the people arguing that "Al Gore thinks we're stupid" because he criticized the media and its effect on political discourse are going to go on and criticize the Liberal Media, or suggest that said Liberal Media is influencing opinions about the Iraq War.

|6.12.07 @ 5:41PM|#

I think it's fair to dislike Al Gore and to find him, generally, untrustworthy, based on his previous actions.

But I think the article would have benefited from less snark and more focus on Gore's arguments. It isn't the media's fault that Americans aren't well-informed, just as it isn't the government's fault that Americans aren't well-educated. It's the fault of individual Americans.

|6.12.07 @ 5:44PM|#

But cha gotta have faith!

http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/religion.htm

LarryA|6.12.07 @ 5:53PM|#

Gore is on firmer ground when bemoaning "the culture of fear" that has flourished since the World Trade Center attacks,

But a lot of that fear is origionally being generated by the government, not the media. Gore needs to get the political house in order before he throws stones.

|6.12.07 @ 6:00PM|#

So, Gore's argument is that if the people were getting better news, they'd be better informed and would therefore make better decisions.

But the idea he is REALLY trying to present is:
"If the media was more regulated by the government, then people would be better informed and would therefore make better decisions"

There is no way an activist government can promote "good" media, without stopping "bad" media. Are you willing to give the next Republican president or congress the power to supress your favorite news source when they decide it isn't meeting their high standards?

I trust that none of the people arguing that "Al Gore thinks we're stupid" because he criticized the media and its effect on political discourse are going to go on and criticize the Liberal Media, or suggest that said Liberal Media is influencing opinions about the Iraq War.

The trouble is, people mistake reactionary populist yellow journalism with a specific bias. Liberals call it "Corporate Media", because Bill Orielly supports Bush and the Iraq War or whatever... But if they were to actually pay attention, they would see that Bill O'Rielly has plenty of spit and venom against the "Big Evil Corporations" and such... He would be the first person to support nationalizing the oil industry, he supports a nationalized health care scheme, and in general gives plenty of ammo to those who see some sort of "liberal bias".

|6.12.07 @ 6:07PM|#

"Global Warming as Religion and not Science"
Well, hell, G. Micheal, now you've convinced me, all those thousands (about 95% of the relevant experts) of scientists are the ones convinced for religious reasons, why the many political zealots with little or no expertise on the subject who claim there is no global warming, are the ones convinced by clear cut secular evidence. Riiight. Now stay outta those public restrooms my friend!

James|6.12.07 @ 6:44PM|#

What bothers me about Gore here is he acts like, well, Ayn Rand. He rolls out a number of issues that are and were complex and acts as though anyone with a brain would agree with his views on them. He rolls his eyes at dissenters and calls them irrational, duped, or most annoyingly, liars.

Unfortunately, he has been this way for years. You can see it in the interviews he has given for this book. It makes it difficult for me to take him seriously even when his views are not very far from my own.

Six|6.12.07 @ 7:35PM|#

"Why didn't he show what would happen if aliens attack?" Maybe because there is not a wide ranging consensus among scientific experts on alien invasions.

There is not consensus among scientific experts that believe Manhattan will probably be under water in 100 years either.

Please don't conflate Gore's specifics w/all global warming science.

It's completely possible to think Gore is an idiot for his specific predictions or policy recommendations and still believe in man-made global warming.

|6.12.07 @ 7:59PM|#

>Pleonasm alert!

Thank you, M, for exposing me to a very useful vocabulary word. Love it.

Gahan|6.12.07 @ 8:31PM|#

"So the ultimate question really is, is a poorly informed population better than an uninformed one?"

It's been said that a country has the government it deserves. I'd say a country has the media it deserves, too.

Department of Redundancy Depar|6.12.07 @ 8:35PM|#

vocabulary word

;-) /M

|6.12.07 @ 8:47PM|#

Stupid is as stupid does. The reelection of GWB in 04 has convinced me that Gore is onto something here.

I don't loathe or fear our future but have you ever watched "Jaywalking" on the Tonight Show?

Charles Pierce did a great piece called "Idiot America" for Esquire a couple of years ago. It is a must read.

Big Dick Cheney|6.12.07 @ 10:10PM|#

"From what I've read, we have had intelligence dating as far back as the Clinton/Gore administration that al-Qaida planned to fly planes into buildings in the US."

Yeah and instead of passing it on they spent the end of 2000 trying to steal the election and most of January 2001 vandalizing the White House and looting AirForce One.

I wonder if there had been say a transition, instead of an attempt to subvert and overturn the election, we would have a shot at stopping the Islamofascist 9/11 attack. Sandy Burglar knows- too bad he stole the documents.

biologist|6.12.07 @ 10:34PM|#

hey, little dick troll: try getting your news from somewhere other than talk radio and Fox News opinion shows.

hmmm|6.12.07 @ 10:55PM|#

Biologist

so Sandy didn't shove documents down his pants??

I suppose you don't know what the SCOUS decision said??

|6.13.07 @ 8:42AM|#

I feel like I opened a thread on DailyKos or on FreeRepublic for some reason.

I do love the irony of Al Gore arguing against scare tactics.

|6.13.07 @ 9:01AM|#

Gawd damn. Insulting Americans makes me feel soooooo good.

|6.13.07 @ 9:03AM|#

Certainties in life:

-Death
-Taxes
-Democrats being hypocritical
-joe jumping to a fanbois defense anytime "Gore/Clinton" is on a blog post

Dave W.|6.13.07 @ 9:21AM|#

Joe:

Do you think it is reasonably possible that Bush had a greater degree of "foreknowledge" of the 9/11 attacks than is indicated in the famous disclosed memo?

As you point out, "foreknowledge" is a relative term. There are many shades of degree between what the memo disclosed, and a full prior briefing on the specifics. When considering plausibilities of the theoretical possibilities, where along this spectrum do the considerations become retrded?

Or, to put it in plain English: are you sure that we have the best evidence of what Bush knew and when he knew it?

biologist|6.13.07 @ 10:07AM|#

little dick troll:

that Sandy Burger stole documents is probably the only fact in your previous comment. the rest is unsupported assertions, ad hominems, and non sequiturs.

Liberty Dog|6.13.07 @ 11:32AM|#

Lamenting a surfeit of "electronic images that can elicit emotional responses," Gore is deeply concerned "about the potential for exploitation of the television medium by those who seek to use it to manipulate public opinion in ways that bypass reason and logic."

Shit, I just spit a perfectly good mouthful of tea all over my monitor.

|6.13.07 @ 12:22PM|#

Dave W.,

No. That's nuts.

Dave W.|6.13.07 @ 1:27PM|#

That's nuts.

Why do you say that?

Because the Bush administration would have disclosed on their own if they had any "foreknowledge" in addition to the memo you cite?

Because individuals in the Bush administration, or executive agencies with some independence, would have blown the whistle by now if the Bush had had anything any better than what we know about?

Congressional oversight on 9/11 related matters?

Because Bush wouldn't have gone on vacation if he had anything (even slightly) more specific than the memo we know he had?

Because the very idea that any warning could have been any more specific than the memo we know he had?

Media oversight?

Some possibility I haven't thought of? It is hard to understand why you think that the memo we know about is the maximum degree of "foreknowledge" that the Bush administration could possibly have had, and that any more specific warnings would be known to us at this point in time. You clearly feel strongly about this, but it is difficult to see why.

Dave W. (correct to previous)|6.13.07 @ 1:29PM|#

Because the very idea that any warning could have been any more specific than the memo we know he had is an incoherent concept to you?

|6.13.07 @ 2:55PM|#

Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the claim that George Bush knew about the attacks is extraordinary.

Because Occam's razor, when applied to the Bush administration and its national security responsibilities, leads us inevitably towards incompetance and irresponsibility, not premediated complicity in a mass-casualty murder.

And because I watched every single minute of the footage of Shrub in that Flordia school after he was told about the second plane, and that was clearly a man wetting his pants in a paralyzing mix of confusion, terror, and surprise.

Dave W.|6.13.07 @ 3:20PM|#

Because extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Yeah, well this gets back to the difference you raised about whether one is willing to consider evidence and whether such evidence has actually been presented. To be uncertain about whether GWB knew somewhat more than has been made out is not an extraordinary claim, because being uncertain is the opposite of making an affirmative claim.

, and the claim that George Bush knew about the attacks is extraordinary.Because Occam's razor, when applied to the Bush administration and its national security responsibilities, leads us inevitably towards incompetance and irresponsibility, not premediated complicity in a mass-casualty murder.

If I were Joe, I would call this moving the goalposts. We are exploring whether GWB had any more good, relevant information than the infamous memo. I think you agree that the memo did not give GWB complicity in a mass murder. For the same reasons, a memo incrementally more specific or certain than the one we know about would not give him "premediatated complicity," or "knowledge" either. It would reflect badly on him, for the same reason that the infamous memo we know about reflects badly, but there are quite a multitude of degrees between what we can pin on him today culpability-wise and "premeditated murder."

Does your Occam's razor also prove that GWB made a good faith mistake about the wmd's in Iraq? Cause I kind of thought it showed a willingness to lie in a strategic way when innocent lives and lots of money are at stake.

And because I watched every single minute of the footage of Shrub in that Flordia school after he was told about the second plane, and that was clearly a man wetting his pants in a paralyzing mix of confusion, terror, and surprise.

My read is a little different. My read is that if he really thought that Cheney didn't have a handle on whatever was going on, then he would be running for shelter, as a target. He was certainly nervous about something, but so far as his demeanor evidence tells us, it was not necessarily crazee Arabs in planes. Then again, I find it is best not to read too much into demeanor evidence. It can be misleading.

|6.13.07 @ 4:59PM|#

"Does your Occam's razor also prove that GWB made a good faith mistake about the wmd's in Iraq?"

No, unlike your theoretical warning memo, there is actually a large body of documentary evidence pointing towards the deliberate hyping of the WMD intelligence.

Dave W.|6.14.07 @ 1:03PM|#

No, unlike your theoretical warning memo, there is actually a large body of documentary evidence pointing towards the deliberate hyping of the WMD intelligence.

To the extent that evidence is there (and I have not seen it firsthand), it is only there because people in government and the media demanded to see it. We do not see that evidence simply because it exists. we see it because it exists and because people were willing to fight hard for its disclosure. If people had not fought for the disclosure of this evidence, then presumably Occam's Razor would lead us to believe it was simple incompetence.

OTOH, the people who fight hard for disclosure of 9/11 related materials are derided as nuts, as you do here on this thread. Very different dynamic.

I also think the exaggerated fear and repugnance that people espouse to those who want a better investigation of 9/11 betrays hidden suspicion about the official story, which many harbor and, yet, are in deep denial about. 9/11 is not a story where many are willing, in their hearts, to go wherever the paper trial may lead.