Progressive Democrat Issue 111: MEDIA ACTION: Swiftboating from Tennessee

Al Gore has done more to publicize the real global warming situation than practically anyone else. Through personal presentations (one of which, through MoveOn.org, I was lucky enough to see in the presence of two approving climatologists), an Oscar-winning movie and a book, Al Gore has helped make people aware that we really do have a problem AND that there are very real things we can do about it.

Enter the right wing liars. A story "broke" purporting to show that Al Gore was a hypocrite, consuming huge amounts of energy while preaching to everyone else that they must conserve. Not surprisingly, this smear attack misrepresents facts and is, like most right wing statements these days, a bald faced lie. You can read some of the exposure of those lies here. The main thing left out by these smear pieces is the fact that Al Gore's family offsets their carbon usage with "carbon offsets," and that they get a substantial amount of their energy from green sources (see end of article for more on reducing your carbon footprint). Also excluded was the fact that energy use counted both domestic and business usage. In short, the attacks were one more example of right wing sleaze, reflecting more on the lack of integrity of the right wing extremists than on the integrity of Al Gore.

Well, turns out the origin of the attack on Al Gore comes from Nashville. And on Daily Kos a boycott of the offending paper is being called.

When I wrote local NPR radio to complain about the local news reading a wire version of the story, one of my main complaints was that they shouldn't be spreading the spin of the conservative nuts at the Tennessee Policy Research Center, who were widely credited with starting the story. The e-mail response...I got told the real story - that it was the Tennessean that requested the Gore energy numbers and were running with the story, and was responsible for involving the TPRC.

...the interest here is that the story was produced and pushed from the start by the newspaper, not by "think tank" credited with making news. This prejudicial hit piece is distracting and irrelevant. We need news organizations willing to let public figures shine a light on essential, important issues; not those willing to exploit issues to shine a light on celebrity figures like Gore...

I'm disappointed that The Tennessean was the true initiator. For that reason, I will be discontinuing my subscription to the paper. If you live in Nashville and get the paper, I hope you'll do the same.

I am sick of right wing extremists reporting misinformation, half truths and outright lies as news. I encourage all of our Nashville readers to discontinue their subscriptions to the Tennessean and to complain LOUDLY about their crappy reporting. Some alternative news sources in Tennessee include:

The Nashville City Paper

the Tennessee Independent Media Center,

And of course there are always national sources like Salon.com, Air America Radio and, one of my favorites despite the fashion and skateboarding filler, Al Gore's own Current TV.

I also recommend, partiuclarly if you still get your "news" from the "mainstream media" (aka Bush propoganda machine), checking out Media Matters which fact checks the media and exposes their lies, distortions and propoganda.

Finally, as promised, here are ways you can reduce your carbon footprint:

If you are a coffee drinker, you can buy a fair trade, organic coffee (grown in Peru) that plants trees in Peru to, they claim, 100% offset the carbon load it takes to produce this coffee from planting to drinking. It is the most guilt free coffee you can drink and it is pretty damned good to boot. Joy and I are big coffee drinkers, so we buy it in 5 lb. bags to get the bulk savings.

You can switch your energy supplier to green energy sources (or, really, you create the demand to build more green energy projects). Joy and I do this through Con Ed. Generally it costs you only slightly more per month and some people have told me that they actually saw their bills go down slightly when they shifted to green energy sources. To find out more, go here.

You can offset your carbon load by helping to build wind farms on Native American lands through Native Energy. You are helping wean our nation off oil, helping to create jobs in America, and helping Native Americans, a generally neglected community.

Or you can offset your carbon load through a variety of methods, including energy efficiency, renewable energy, and reforestation, through Carbon Fund.

Other projects you can more informally participate in to offset your carbon load, include treeplanting, forest preservation and the like. You can donate to plant trees through Trees for the Future. You can help preserve critical forest ecosystems, which also helps mitigate global warming, through the various international projects of the Wildlife Conservation Society (the same organization that runs the zoos in New York City). I have donated to preserve forests in Uganda, Mountain Gorilla Habitats, and South American forests.

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