Al Gore is here in Utah, or at least was briefly. I think I saw him shambling around Park City mumbling to himself and glaring at people occasionly. Al is here to the screening of a movie about him doing a slide show called "An Inconvenient Truth."
Now for some inconvient truths.
The Washington Post reports that the film got a standing 'O'
Has ever a little indie film faced a greater hurdle? Imagine this sales pitch: Babe, it's a movie about global warming. Starring Al Gore. Doing a slide show.With charts.
About "soil evaporation."
Improbable? Perhaps. So it's all the more amazing that "An Inconvenient Truth" had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Tuesday night before an enthusiastic audience that gave the former vice president and his movie a big standing O.
But wait, Entertainment Weekly sheds a little more light on this standing 'O' business.
...and bringing former Vice President Al Gore to Sundance to warn about global warming drew standing-room-only crowds to "An Inconvenient Truth."
You mean people were already standing? Well yes, there is no Graumann's Chinese theater in Park City. Fifty to a hundred people will pack into the Egyptian or one of the other micro-venues to watch a film. Its the parties that are huge and the backroom deals happening all over the city.
It turns out that Al's standing 'O' was nothing more than polite applause by an extremely friendly audience who were already standing up!
While the media would love to have you believe that conservative Utahns saw the movie and a bright light, such wasn't the case.
As if to underscore how much credence his film deserves, Al managed to stick his Mukluk in his mouth in the few seconds he had microphones stuck in his face.
"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah."And the financial interests behind the tar sands project poured a lot of money and support behind an ultra-conservative leader in order to win the election . . . and to protect their interests.".
Its always such a wonderful gift when a Crat big-wig says something idiotic about a foreign country. Al Gore appears to be Pat Robertson with a difference religion.
Darcie Park, spokeswoman for oilsands giant Suncor Energy, said she's taken aback by Gore's remarks and hopes they don't resonate with Canadians."Our company just doesn't do business that way. We're really puzzled about where these comments came from," she said.
"Canadians understand how elections work in Canada and understand there are these very tight restrictions around what individuals and companies can contribute to individual parties or campaigns."
The federal Elections Act limits how much money individuals, corporations and unions can donate to political parties. Individuals are allowed to give as much as $5,000 a year, while companies and unions are capped at $1,000 a year.
In their election platform, the Conservatives promised to further limit individual donations to a maximum of $1,000 and ban all donations from corporations, unions and organizations.
Parties and candidates are required to make public any contributions exceeding $200.
While John Bennett, senior policy adviser for Sierra Club of Canada, isn't certain of how much oil companies and their executives donate to the Conservatives, he's noticed their language on Kyoto is similar.
Having spend an enormous amount of time in Canada, I never encountered any of the reflexive Crat hostility towards energy companies that we see here so relentlessly, in fact the Liberals were the ones who engineered generous exceptions for the Tar Sands projects when they signed onto Kyoto. There was simply no motivation by Suncor, Syncrude and other companies up there to work for a change in government since they were getting everything they needed from the Liberals.
And why not? The tar sands have been a huge boost for the Canadian economy, increasing trade, improving the standing of the previously anemic Canadian dollar and generating that all important tax revenue for all those social programs Canadians love so much.
He should also consider that Canadian elections last a few weeks, not several years. There is simply no time nor venues to spend multi-millions in campaigning. By comparison, there is no campaigning during Canadian elections--by the time you call the election, the result is in the bag. The polls moved very little from beginning to end and this is par for the course in the Great White North.
OK, Al is a jackass, but he's a jackass with a plan. I am pretty sure he didn't expect any Canadians to be listening since all he could see was far-left maniacs like Eric Alterman, Hollywood morons and their hangers-on. The film, the comments and Al's presence was a pitch for political and financial support. This was his marketing plan--how he was going to convince the protelariat to support him and the Democrats.
So my friends in Calgary--do what we do--ignore Al Gore.
Holycoast: The answer is "up your, eh?"
Weapons of Mass Destruction: Asshat Alert
Posted by Mick Stockinger on January 27, 2006 12:00 PM
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