few know that [Michael] Moore was the editor of the liberal Mother Jones in 1986 — for four short months. He was fired from the publication for refusing to print an article critizing the human rights record of the Sandista government in Nicaragua. Moore didn’t balk because of any solidarity with the communist regime, but because he had a keen tactical sense. He’d reasoned that if his magazine ran that story, his ideological nemesis, Ronald Reagan, “could easily hold it up, saying, “see, even Mother Jones agrees with me.” [Markos Moulitas Zuniga, Taking on the System, p 176]
At the beginning of the year, Huffington Post ran a rambling and (being generous) disingenuous piece by Harold Ambler entitled Mr. Gore: Apology Accepted. For the first time, that ‘bastion’ of the liberal blogosphere published a full-throated, unapologetic, and utterly misleading diatribe on global warming from some suffering from anti-science syndrome.
So what? It was an error from an intern over the holiday without Arianna’s engagement (“a mistake”). So what? It is only a blog. So what? …
Well, Ronald Reagan isn’t alive but Moore’s thoughts hold true. Senator James Inhofe (R-Exxon) has used this to prove that the “left” is increasingly skeptical of Global Warming, both in testimony and in another of his infamous and recklessly disingenuous press releases.
Of course, the right-wing sound machine doesn’t stop with such a press release, which actually provides talking points and “facts” to feed others prepared to push true information that is not truthful and falsehoods into public discourse.
Thus, last Friday Scripps News Service distributed Even left now laughing at global warming. Written by Deroy Murdock, a “media fellow at the Hoover Institute for War and Peace (a hotbed for right-wing ‘intellects’, if you weren’t aware). It begins
So-called “global warming” has shrunk from problem to punch line. And now, Leftists are laughing, too. It’s hard not to chuckle at the idea of Earth boiling in a carbon cauldron when the news won’t cooperate:
Murdock then provides material about snow and ice around the world to “prove” that, evidently, weather is climate.
It truly is a shame when media outlets enable deception on fundamental issues and contribute so directly to promotion of anti-science syndrome.
As Earth faces global cooling, both troglodyte right-wingers and lachrymose left-wingers find Albert Gore’s simmering-planet hypothesis increasingly hilarious:
And, from that tearful left:
Commentator Harold Ambler declared Jan. 3 on HuffingtonPost.com that he voted for Barack Obama “for a thousand times a thousand reasons.” He added that Gore “owes the world an apology for his actions regarding global warming.” He called Gore’s assertion that “the science is in” on this issue “the biggest whopper ever sold to the public in the history of mankind.”
I don’t know. That tax cuts will boost the economy. That there were nuclear weapons in Iraq. That George W Bush was, somehow, bipartisan and compassionate. That deregulation was fine because banks and financial institutions would manage themselves. The list of whoopers is pretty large, Mr Ambler, and, by the way, judging by places like the world’s National Academy of Sciences and the leading scientific societies, Mr Gore is on target. But …
In any event, the point of this post is not to rehash Ambler’s errors and deceptions nor to analyze Inhofe’s flagrant propaganda nor to dissect Murdock’s in-your-face demonstration of ASS.
Let is be clear: Huffington Post chose to publish something that was disingenuous (dishonest) about science, for the first time ever publishing a global warming denier screed. Twenty years earlier, Michael Moore made an ideological choice as to whether something was appropriate for publication in the magazine.
The writer of the piece that Moore withheld, Paul Berman [said] that Moore was a “very ideological guy and not a very well-educated guy.” He also complained about being “censored.”
No one was censoring Berman, of course; he could have had the article published anywhere else. Moore was simply conscious of hte raminfications of publishing a story in a liberal magazine that would have brought aid and comfort to the Reaganites. Berman, with his master’s degree from Columbia University, turned his nose up at the “not very well-educated Moore, but Moore was the savvier one by far. Specifically, whether Moore agreed with Berman’s article or not was irrelevant. Moore simply didn’t want to hand Reagan a cheap propaganda victory, and if that required taking a step (rejecting an article) that offended Berman’s ethical sensibilities, so be it. There was a real-world difference between that article running in Mother Jones, the Weekly Standard, or that repository of hawkish liberals, the New Republic (where, fittingly, Berman eventually became a contributing editor). [Markos Moulitas Zuniga, Taking on the System, p 176]
Moore made a fully ideological choice, one to deny “a cheap propaganda victory” to the Reagan Administration. Huffington Post made (inadvertently or otherwise) a choice to hand Jim Inhofe and the ASS-promoters “a cheap propaganda victory”, one that we are likely to hear about for years to come.
Again, this is not about ‘taking on’ the deniers but simply to note that, yet again, Huffington Post‘s ‘credibility’ is being used in support of promoting ASS when it comes to global warming. Hopefully, editors will take a lesson from this: Huffington Post (and others) would be well-advised to pay a little more attention to Michael Moore.
Note: For those vocabulary-challenge, lachrymose: Weeping or inclined to weep; tearful; Causing or tending to cause tears.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Posts about Huffington Post as of February 3, 2009 » The Daily Parr // Feb 3, 2009 at 11:35 am
[…] Watch SEARCH The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation is a non-partisan research Huffington Post should pay attention to Michael Moore – getenergysmartnow.com 02/03/2009 few know that [Michael] Moore was the editor of the liberal […]
2 Mark Bergseid // Feb 3, 2009 at 3:32 pm
a) lachrymose is pretty commonly understood
2) why don’t we just quit fighting with global warming deniers? The science_is_ in and we ought to let them go like holocaust deniers; they’re so wrong, you validate them by arguing with them
3 A Siegel // Feb 3, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Mark
A: Thus, when I need to look a word up, I become concerned that others might as well.
B: There is a real dilemma and real problem here. If we “fight”, we risk legitimizing them and eat up our own resources to do so. If we “quit fighting”, we give them solo voice that can resonate with far too many people.
The science is quite strong, the questions are not “whether” global warming is occurring and “whether” humanity has a role, but how fast it is occurring/will occur and how/whether humanity can mitigate the process.
Sadly, far too many in the United States remain confused about these basic truths (far more in the Republican Party, but even in the Democratic Party). The ‘denial’ industry has sway and their arguments have sway (in part because of editors not demanding that OPEDs (and even articles) actually be truthful rather than truthiness).
4 Sean S. // Feb 3, 2009 at 5:05 pm
The two situations can’t be less comparable; one is about an article detailing the Sandinista’s might not have been saint’s, or even most of what was claimed about them, with proof to back it up. The other is a fanciful denial of rigirous scientific research.
This post is essentially endorsing the tired Leninist claptrap of everyone being quiet and attempting to hold a untied front, lest our duplicitous rivals use our disunity to foil us. Nonsense. Honesty, self-reflection, and open transparent dealings is what creates substantial social change not mere “tactical” choices. This sort of double dealing from the bottom of the deck makes me worry for people who label themselves progressives.
5 AMERICAN NONSENSE » Midday open thread // Feb 3, 2009 at 5:41 pm
[…] this is why progressive media outlets can’t give conservatives a […]
6 Mike the Mad Biologist // Feb 3, 2009 at 7:52 pm
This isn’t the first time HufPo has published anti-science screeds. They regularly give space to anti-vaccinationists. And then there’s Deepak Chopra, who is a one man anti-science wrecking crew.
7 Lihtox // Feb 3, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Was Berman’s Sandanista article factual? I think there’s a difference between “an inconvenient truth” and lying propaganda. When people refuse to consider any facts which might give “aid and comfort” to their political adversaries, then they end up in a bubble like W. did and like many on the Right still are. We need to be willing to talk about and confront the flaws in the policies we support.
That includes acknowledging that science is not 100%, and that yes, it is possible that we are wrong about global warming to one degree or another. But since when does the government require certainty to act? Dick Cheney had his 1% Doctrine regarding terrorism: “Even if there’s just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty.” That’s over the top, but how about a 90% Doctrine for global warming? We should stop trying to convince people that we are certain (because there’s no such thing as certain) and instead say “the odds are good enough that we need to do something”.
8 A Siegel // Feb 3, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Sean
There is a grand difference between an honest skeptic, in the serious and valued history of science, questioning and probing, seeking to find truth and those claiming the mantle of “skeptic” who show no interest in actually coming to any form of truth and are unwilling to acknowledge error or change their views in the face of evidence.
Lihtox: I am quite prepared to work on a “no regrets + insurance strategy”. What would be a “no regrets” set of steps that are valuable for economic, national security, non-Global Warming environmental (acidification of oceans, particulate pollution, mercury, etc) reasons? And, after making the moves for those steps, what would the “insurance” cost be in terms of additional steps to be taking serious steps for mitigation against Global Warming. In my thinking, once we take “no regrets” steps, the “insurance” ends up to be a relatively marginal additional cost. I am prepared (and do) deal with honest skeptics, who are unsure about what is going on in the planet but who are ready to act understanding that they might be wrong. Ambler, Murdock, and Inhofe are not “honest” in their denialism.
9 Lihtox // Feb 3, 2009 at 10:53 pm
I agree that the out-front global warming deniers are not honest skeptics, or at the very least are terribly closed-minded. I was actually more concerned about the Michael Moore story: if the Sandanista article was correct (and I know nothing about it, so I’ll say *if*), then Moore chose politics over facts, which gives me pause. One might argue that the ethical choice is omission: don’t deny the flaws in your argument, but leave it to your adversaries to actually point them out. That’s what the other party in a two-party system is for. I think that sounds right, but it’s not a no-brainer for me that Moore made the right decision.
My comment about global warming was more about marketing than process: we should do what we have to do, but we should stop wasting time trying to convince people that it is the necessary thing to do, if it’s much easier to convince them that it is the prudent thing to do.