A Sodden Trotskyite Dissents Over Gore

Jura Watchmaker at Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for War thinks Gore's win is bollocks but he's more troubled by the following:

In yesterday’s Guardian, David Adam reported on a court case brought by political activist and Kent school governor Stewart Dimmock, who objects to the government’s plan to show Gore’s film in secondary schools. The judge, Mr Justice Barton, refused to block the move, but criticised the film, and demanded that when it is presented in schools, the Department of Children, Schools and Families should make it clear that the film is not an impartial analysis of climate science.

My own view is that An Inconvenient Truth is based largely on scientific fact, but this is embellished and distorted in the service of a personal political agenda. In the past I’ve objected to taxpayers’ money being spent on feeding this propaganda to British school students. I now accept that this battle is lost, and advocate that the film be accompanied by teacher-produced discussion notes that put Al Gore’s contribution to the climate change debate into political context.

The judge, I think, was right. But what text or film peddled by tax-funded schools to whatever nation's children is not equally dubious? Try reading a high school U.S. civics book sometime and see if you don't come away feeling that milk-and-cookies propaganda is not what it amounts to. P.J. O'Rourke, in his funny years, actually flipped through one: "What U.S. president overcame a handicap to bravely lead our nation through one of its darkest hours?" P.J.: "Surprisingly, the answer wasn't Ronald Reagan, his handicap being Nancy."

Also, what Nobel laureate hasn't overdone things a bit in light of a "personal political agenda"? A campaign undertaken with enough monomaniacal passion to qualify as a "crusade" — which is what Oslo typically honors — is surely driven by a personal political agenda. The 1997 Peace Prize recipient was a woman named Jody Williams. She won it for her relentless efforts to get land mines banned internationally. Question: Is a woman who devotes her life singularly to seeing a devastating and outmoded weapon enter the dustbin of history not putting top priority on something that is arguably not the most urgent crisis facing humanity? (AIDS kills more people per annum than land mines do.) Of course she is. Do I think global warming is a greater threat than the collected forces of theocratic fascism? No, I don't.

But nor do I think that anyone who agrees with me in waging as merciless a war against Al Qaeda and company gives a good damn about a public relations bauble tied to "awareness" and "consciousness-raising." Gore did what Nobel clearly prefers, so why not let him have his prize? Given the committee's track record, can't you think of other possible winners who would have made once again a complete farce of the whole proceeding?