Until today the official line was: “Photography, recording, webcasting and any other reproduction of Vice President Al Gore’s speaking appearance is strictly prohibited. VP Gore’s keynote address is closed to the press.”
That is now null and void with word today from CTIA that “due to a high degree of interest,” Gore has graciously opened his keynote to the press.
The keynote is apparently as hotly anticipated as Sermon on the Mount II. How much of that interest was generated by dumping on the press?
This blogger is a huge fan of Gore but asks what was he thinking when he put the kibosh on the media? Wasn't Al a journalist grunt in Vietnam, covering that action? Is the now tragically hip driving force behind Current TV, the cable blending of TV and Internet that nobody watches, trying to head off coverage in dinosaur media such as the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle?
How could Gore, who is up to his eyeballs in media via his role as Google advisor and Apple director, even fathom a press ban? Are the “old media” too fogy for West Coast Al? The once self-proclaimed inventor of the Internet knows the anointed ones lucky enough to hear his spiel are going to be “twittering away” during the talk. His speech is going to be publicized anyway, with or without reporters filling their notebooks with Big Al's pearls of wisdom.
Gore’s haughtiness turns off yours truly and is a cause for celebration among his many detractors who accuse the former VP of fear-mongering on the global warming front. An inconvenient truth for Gore is that he really needs a PR guru to advise him on dropping his snobbish behavior.
Al is way too full of himself for his own good and the good of the rest of us. We need Al's leadership on the environmental front now more than ever before. Gore has to come back down to earth.
(Pic via ibabuzz.com)