JONATHAN CHAIT JUNE 16, 2010
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Update: Geraghty says he was joking. Mea culpa.
National Review's Jim Geraghty has an item entitled, "Al Gore Doesn't Toe the Obama Line, Pays the Price":
As liberal blogs used to say, “I question the timing.”
Al Gore, on his personal site, June 14, 2010 : 1:08 PM:
“When the operators of Southern Seaplane in Belle Chasse, La., called the local Coast Guard-Federal Aviation Administration command center for permission to fly over restricted airspace in Gulf of Mexico, they made what they thought was a simple and routine request.”
“A pilot wanted to take a photographer from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans to snap photographs of the oil slicks blackening the water. The response from a BP contractor who answered the phone late last month at the command center was swift and absolute: Permission denied.”
This behavior is completely unacceptable. Access by reporters should be as unfettered as possible. This de facto form of censorship needs to stop.
The web site of the tabloid Star magazine, twenty-five hours and twenty-seven minutes later:
Al Gore‘s split from wife Tipper after 40 years of marriage was a shock to everyone who thought theirs was the ideal marriage. Now Star can exclusively reveal that the former Vice President was having an affair with Larry David‘s ex-wife — for the past two years!
Remarkable coincidence, having this rumor turn up roughly one day after Gore accuses authorities of “de facto censorship.”
Yes, I'm sure that is Obama's plan. Al Gore criticizes BP, and Obama won't countenance any criticism of BP, unless of course it's coming from him or his own administration. So he decided to smear Gore, in order to discredit him as an environmental spokesman. That certainly seems like the most plausible way to account for the fact that a tabloid published a rumor of a politician having an affair with a celebrity.
12 comments
To paraphrase the great politico Mayor Quimby: Are conservatives getting dumber or just louder?
- DC Spence
June 16, 2010 at 10:49am
I was skeptical too, initially, but then I realized that in leaking to "The Star" the White House is essentially "claiming responsibility" for the leak, as "the star" is clearly a reference to "the star and the crescent" and thus to Obama. This would be a lot clearer if I laid it out on a chalk board.
- NR851651
June 16, 2010 at 10:53am
Jim Geraghty always amuses me.
- liberal reformer
June 16, 2010 at 11:19am
It seems farfetched until you look at the interval: 24 hours, 27 minutes is 1467 minutes. And 1467 is the year that Montezuma I, who consolidated the Aztec empire on the very shores of the Gulf, died. Gore, a student of history and a numbers wonk, will not fail to note the significance and to draw the appropriate lesson. Which is either "the duty of a dead king is to remain silent," or, "don't drink Mexican tap water."
- rhubarbs
June 16, 2010 at 11:23am
Larry David's ex-wife? Curb is going to be great this year! I hope Al plays himself. Things to thank God for? Not being Jim Geraghty. Can you imagine anything more awful than being the sort of person who even thinks up stuff like this, much less the sort who's willing to publish his crazy fantasies to the world?
- Geoff G
June 16, 2010 at 11:23am
Good eye, rhubarbs. 1467 is also the date, according to the Wikipedia entry for the year, that Prince Dracula / Vlad the Impaler died. This is, of course, not the correct date, and so this factual error is almost certainly another message to Al Gore to stay dormant in his "crypt." (Note also that "Al" has two of the letters in "Vlad" or "Dracula," impaling is *gory*, and the sunlight that kills vampires is also the same sunlight involved in global warming.)
- frippo
June 16, 2010 at 1:20pm
Obama did not smear Gore. This has Rahm Emanuel's fingerprints all over it.
- Attrill
June 16, 2010 at 2:07pm
All nine of them?
- Geoff G
June 16, 2010 at 2:53pm
Rahm had his fingerprints alkalized when he got into Mossad.
- NR851651
June 16, 2010 at 4:08pm
True fact: Rahm Emanual had his own fingerprints replaced with biosculpted reproductions of the fingerprints of nine different Irishmen. His left middle fingerprint is actually the same as Joe Biden's.
- rhubarbs
June 16, 2010 at 4:45pm
It's a sad commentary on the conservative movement when you can no longer tell if they are joking or not.
- zardoz67
June 16, 2010 at 5:04pm
Geraghty believes his post was freighted with "irony, sarcasm and a tongue in cheek (sic)." Problem 1: It wasn't funny in any way. Problem 2: More charitably, it was a joke disguised so completely that it passed as just another borderline-insane NRO blog post. Nordlinger, Levin, McCarthy and crew daily post views and "insights" that are just as, if not more, conspiratorial-minded and crazed. Jon, please retract that mea culpa.
- jmaharry
June 17, 2010 at 12:38pm