Letters to the Editor
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No Meth in the 60's
Cintra:
My guess is you were born in the 1970's or 80's, cuz "meth" was NOT part of the 60's counterculture. Potheads, acid freaks, opium hookah pipes, yes. Methedrine, no!
Peace, Love.
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Thanks!
You have written the story on the event I agree with.
It's a match on agreement footprint-wise...
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The putdown line of the year
In this age of endless web-surfing, I can never remember where I saw something. However the subtle (and not-so-subtle) putdowns were out in force. This is Al Gore, you know, the INSANE MAN who SAYS HE INVENTED THE INTERNET.
However, the putdown was this: clever camerawork took our mind away from the fact that the Meadowlands wasn't sold out! Where were the "hidden" empty seats? Behind the stage! To the left and right of the stage!
Psst. Would anybody in their right minds pay for a seat behind that huge video screen stage, with lighting towers and the like? No. They never sell those seats. If Jesus came back and show off his new, free car that runs on smiles and sanctifying grace, they wouldn't see those seats, because you can't see anything from there, and it's likely the sound would suck too. But this is Al Gore, so HE MUST BE EXAGGERATING. You know how he lies about everything, don't you?
It was a great show.
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Hey Jim
Gimmie a primary source wherein Al Gore actually claimed to have 'invented the internet'. I want an exact quotation, place, and date. Go fetch.
You'll find that he never made such a claim. Idiot.
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This was a nice concert, a great idea and I love Al Gore's leadership of it, BUT
At the end of the day on Saturday, a certain truth was self-evident: we can do the right things for the right reasons, and the right answer can benefit everyone. Al Gore demonstrated nicely that the truth, however inconvenient, will eventually set you free.
But does he still believe in a Drug Free America?
Seriously, the man is no saint. He's stood up for some ideas that are really just fantasies and have nothing to do with truth -- not even the truth making itself evident within his own family.
As a politician, he was part of an administration that stood for the noble lie. They confined their noble lying to drug policy, for sure, but you can't look back at his time in office and claim that administration stood for accepting inconvenient truths.
I'm grateful for Gore's leadership in the global warming issue, but fight against global warming should not become a cult of personality wrapped around Al Gore.
This article kinda makes me queasy, frankly, because it seems to do just that.
And about Cintra's use of the slogan "Flower Power" -- the Clinton-Gore administration specifically attacked the hippie legacy when they went after cannabis users with a vengeance, tripling the national arrest rate from 250,000 under Bush I to 750,000 when they left office, roughly where it stands today.
Putting the name "Al Gore" together with the concept of "Flower Power" feels like a kind of sick joke at the expense of all the aging hippies whose lives the Clinton-Gore anti-cannabis pogrom managed to destroy.
So let's think for a moment before we start anointing Al Gore as the new Flower Power Messiah.
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wait
okay, that was knee jerk on my part. I now sense the underlying tone of sarcasm in your letter. My bad.
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I'm for the message but found it annoying to watch on the web
I will say up front, I did not watch much of this, only about 10 mins or so. The reason is that during that time I heard one song and the rest was all propaganda...little videos about recycling, etc. I totally agree with the message of Live Earth and Al Gore but I found the web coverage to be tedious in the extreme and not very user-friendly. I did hear Al's DC remarks, and I agree with them, and I am sure people who were at the concerts enjoyed the music but rather than sit through all the lecturing I am hoping for a compilation CD or DVD.
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Agree with Geoman
I read the article up to this line:
"Like the sixties, only without so much meth."
.. and continued reading but with a certain amount of distrust in the author. Refering to the 60's like that is kind of like when post 60's youngsters write the peace symbol as an upside down "Y" without the bottom vertical line. It just irks me.
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"inventing the Internet"
It's amazing (and ironic) that the internet, along with cable news, has made it possible for candidates to brought down by a single comment. Will anyone who lived during the 2000 Presidential campaign ever forget this famous claim by Gore?
My first encounter with this claim being thoroughly debunked was in the book "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them" by Al Franken. Alas, that is no longer on my bookshelf, so I had to resort to searching...the Internet to debunk this claim.
A quick google search of the top links seem to boil it down to a Wolf Blitzer interview on March 9, 1999 during CNN's "Late Edition" show, where Gore claimed "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." This claim was amongst a handful of items that Gore used to tell Blitzer how he was different from the Bill Bradley. This claim is not altogether outrageous, since several of the main players in the development of early Internet technology credit Gore as the first politician lending both a legislative and financial hand to that development.
Of course, it was a somewhat clumsy depiction of the truth, and it was easily and quickly spun into Gore saying he "invented the Internet".
Looking all of this up would have been a lot harder, of course, if Al hadn't helped create the Internet. So thanks, Al! I like the Internet.
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Step Away From the Punchbowl...
Put your glass of Kool-Aid down, Cintra. Live Earth was an amazing display of logistics, not a feel good love fest that marks 'the death of the Hummer and the rebirth of Flower Power'. What was the impact of the thousands of people driving their cars to and from the event? How many people were there because it was a climate issue, and not just because it was a day-long festival concert with big names?
Call me cynical if you want, but Live Earth won't change anything. Concert events never really have. Farm Aid? Live Aid? Concert for Katrina? Have any of these even put a dent into the true scope of the problems they addressed? Raising awareness isn't enough - it's action and follow through that's required. Sure, it feels good to say you were there, but all you really did was show up and listen to live music for a few hours.
Oh, and Flower Power? It's gotten a great whitewash by the people who were part of it and are now corporate enough to control the 'official' version, but it wasn't that great and didn't accomplish much besides improve music collections and establish a widespread market for drugs and STDs. If Live Earth means a return to the mastubatory and self-celebratory excesses of Flower Power, I fear for us all.