Al Gore Speaks of a Nation in Danger

AL GORE SPEAKS OF A NATION IN DANGER
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Michiko Kakutani]
In “The Assault on Reason” former Vice President Al Gore diagnoses the ailing condition of America as a participatory democracy -- low voter turnout, rampant voter cynicism, an often ill-informed electorate, political campaigns dominated by 30-second television ads, and an increasingly conglomerate-controlled media landscape -- and it does so not with the calculated, sound-bite-conscious tone of many political-platform-type books, but with the sort of wonky ardor that made both the book and movie versions of “An Inconvenient Truth” so bluntly effective. Mr. Gore’s central argument is that “reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions” and that the country’s public discourse has become “less focused and clear, less reasoned.” His argument that radio was essential to the rise and reign of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini (“without the introduction of radio, it is doubtful that these totalitarian regimes would have commanded the obedience of the people in the manner they did”) is highly reductive, just as his argument that television has enabled politicians to manipulate mass opinion while preventing individuals from taking part in the national dialogue seems overly simplistic. As for his conviction that the Internet can help re-establish “an open communications environment in which the conversation of democracy can flourish,” it plays down the more troubling aspects of the Web, like its promotion of rumor and misinformation alongside real information, and its tendency to fuel polarizing, partisan warfare.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/books/22kaku.html
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* Free To Be Al Gore
[Commentary] Al Gore's revenge is to have been right: right about the Internet and global warming, and right about Iraq.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR200705...