This bizarre tragedy has exposed the shockingly extreme views of some of the anti-science ideologues, as I discussed yesterday.
Media Matters has a must-read post on the latest example of Gore Derangement Syndrome. Right-wingers from Fox News to Drudge to WattsUpWithThat have tried to pin this crazy guy’s actions on the Nobel Prize-winning former vice president.
Typical is Chris Horner of the Big-Oil-funded Competitive Enterprise Institute, who makes that absurd argument … where else but on the website of Andrew Breitbart (who famously mashed up a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her appear racist, when she was in fact explaining how she was “getting beyond the issue of race”). His post’s self-defaming headline is “An Inconvenient Truth: Enviros’ Doomsday Rhetoric Breeds Eco-Terror.”
Now you know those conservatives are pushing an uber-extreme position when the voice of reason on their side comes from Michelle Malkin (!) and Glenn Beck (!!), but MM ends their post with those two explaining why the argument utterly fails:
Some right-wing media figures denounced drawing links between Lee and Gore
Malkin: “Al Gore is not responsible for this.” Later on the September 2 edition of Fox & Friends, guest Michelle Malkin said:
MALKIN: I’m going to do something that my enemies and opponents on the other side rarely do, and that is to make clear that Al Gore is not responsible for this. An Inconvenient Truth certainly is an incitement to stupidity and an incitement to massive, costly government intervention, but it is not, and it was never intended be, an incitement to violence.
Malkin also wrote on her website:
The gunman was reportedly motivated by Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth eco-propaganda. Guess what? I’m not playing that opportunistic blame game here. It’s not Al Gore’s fault when an enviro-nut goes off unhinged (and I’ve said that before). The blame in this case lies with the crazy man who terrorized the Discovery Channel employees. Period.
Beck: “You know what caused this guy to do these things? He was sick and twisted and crazy. Period.” On the September 2 edition of Premiere Radio Networks’ The Glenn Beck Program, Glenn Beck attempted to use the bomber to revive attacks on White House official John Holdren but noted, “You know what caused this guy to do these things? He was sick and twisted and crazy. Period.” Beck further noted that “these people do exist, and they exist on the left and the right.”
Beck: Gore and Holdren are “not responsible in any way for the Discovery nutjob guy.” On the September 2 edition of his radio show, Beck said: “So let me just be very clear here. Al Gore and John Holdren have a ton of really bad ideas. But they’re not responsible in any way for the Discovery nutjob guy.”
Duh.
That was of course exactly my point in my post. The fact is, like lots of crazy people, Lee defies category or logic. Think Progress notes he was angered over immigration pollution and anchor babies, and he wrote “Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that.” See also Wonk Room’s “Alleged Gunman’s Manifesto Echoes Anti-immigrant Groups’ Malthusian Screed.”
I don’t think you can tell much about this guy from his actions and writing other than the fact that he was crazy every which way.
But Horner and Breitbart can’t resist running this photo:
They aren’t alone, as Media Matters details in the first part of their piece:
The term still fits: Gore Derangement Syndrome.