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<snip>> "I like Frank Rich. I think he's perceptive and often keeps his eye on the big pictures when other opinion writers don't. But I thought his column this morning on Al Gore got catty at times. He writes: "If this were the whole picture, Mr. Gore would seem the perfect antidote to the Democrats' ills. But it's not. The less flattering aspect of Mr. Gore has not gone away: the cautious and contrived presidential candidate who, like Mrs. Clinton now, was so in thrall to consultants that he ran away from his own administration's record and muted his views, even about pet subjects like science. (He waffled on the teaching of creationism in August 1999, after the Kansas Board of Education struck down the teaching of evolution.) That Gore is actually accentuated, not obscured, by "An Inconvenient Truth." The more hard-hitting his onscree slide show about global warming, the more he reminds you of how much less he focused on the issue in 2000. Gore the uninhibited private citizen is not the same as Gore the timid candidate."
He goes on to argue that "there are considerable chunks of 'An Inconvenient Truth' that are more about hawking Mr. Gore's image than his cause."
I find the use of the words "cautious and contrived" near the beginning of the long initial excerpt interesting. Rich says these less flattering aspects of Gore "have not gone away."
When I think of what Al Gore has been doing on global warming over the past five + years, on Iraq for four of those years (oh, and we might as well throw in his powerful speeches, the best anyone has given by far, on the threat to liberty posed by various Bush Administration actions), those words do not come to mind."
<more>
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/2006/05/frank-rich-on-al-gore.php
<snip>>
"Over the weekend, Frank Rich, the Resident GeniusTM on the New York Times Op-Ed Page (I don't mean to offend the nearly equally BrilliantTM Maureen Dowd) published one of his trademark columns (I'm not including a link to the column - you can find it pretty easily). The most effective way to understand the GeniusTM of Frank Rich is to showcase how he covered former Vice President Al Gore. You will continue to see the exact same shades in his coverage of Hillary Clinton: deep-seated and irrational hatred for Clinton (/Gore) packaged in a combustible mix of half-facts, fabrications, distortions and lies. Let's trudge through just a few snippets of history here, thanks to The Daily Howler, so you can appreciate the real Frank Rich."
http://theleftcoaster.com/archives/011940.php
BurtWorm (1000+ posts) Sun May-28-06 07:54 PM
Original message
Frank Rich seriously doesn't get Al Gore
In today's column, he displays a mind stuck in a 2000 lock box.
http://select.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/opinion/28rich.htm...
<snip>
"If this were the whole picture, Mr. Gore would seem the perfect antidote to the Democrats' ills. But it's not. The less flattering aspect of Mr. Gore has not gone away: the cautious and contrived presidential candidate who, like Mrs. Clinton now, was so in thrall to consultants that he ran away from his own administration's record and muted his views, even about pet subjects like science. (He waffled on the teaching of creationism in August 1999, after the Kansas Board of Education struck down the teaching of evolution.) That Gore is actually accentuated, not obscured, by "An Inconvenient Truth." The more hard-hitting his onscreen slide show about global warming, the more he reminds you of how much less he focused on the issue in 2000. Gore the uninhibited private citizen is not the same as Gore the timid candidate."
<more>
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x1304606
<snip>
"A more insulting endorsement would be hard to imagine.
I know that Frank Rich has become something of a hero to many of us who populate the left-of-center blogisphere, but let me be clear; the hero referenced in the tag "Heroes and Heroines" is Al Gore, not Frank Rich.
If you think that Frank Rich is on the side of any configuration of political beliefs that could be called liberal or progressive, if you think that Frank Rich is one wit different from any of the dim bulbs who make up the firmament of American punditry, you just haven't been paying attention.
*************************************************
First the caveats to my critique. Yes, I admire Rich as a writer; his memoir of growing up in Washington D.C. is a delight. He was by far the best theater critic ever to grace the pages of the New York Times, (though no Stark Young, who I'll identify for you in another post some day), and yes, Rich has written many incisive columns about the multiple failures of the Bush administration, but even reading Rich at his best, I am always left with the question, on behalf of what values does he make his critique? The answer, to my mind, is decidedly unattractive, and just as decidedly typical of all of our celebrity pundits.
Here's how Rich begins his Sunday column:"
<more>
http://www.correntewire.com/so_like_frank_rich_is_down_with_al_gore_yeah_now_he_is
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