Published: October 24, 2007 01:14 pm            

LUCINSKI: When truth becomes inconvienient

I once had a soft spot in my heart for Al Gore. That’s a bold statement because I have little use for politicians who twist the truth to suit their partisan purposes.

We met just once and the circumstances surrounding that meeting were the reasons for my former admiration of the former vice-president, senator and congressman.

It was during the Love Canal crisis in Niagara Falls, probably 1979. A television reporter at the time, I was looking for any stories having to do with the toxic waste crisis that I could find.

The state’s administrator in charge of the Love Canal cleanup project told me that a congressman from Tennessee was in the area to investigate the site because there was a similar chemical waste problem in his district and he wanted to see how we were handling ours.

What was unique about that was that there was no press release put out about his visit, no attempt to grab headlines, no entourage of flunkies accompanying him. It seemed as if the congressman was genuinely interested in fact-finding without trying to take credit or garner publicity for it.

In fact, to track him down for an interview, my photographer and I practically had to cut him off while driving down 97th Street to get him to stop. Once he did, he was gracious and explained to us and to our viewers why he was in Niagara Falls and how it pertained to his district in Tennessee.

The congressman, of course, was Al Gore. From that time until the early ‘90s, I would cite that incident as an example of a politician who was more interested in the facts than in politics.

What brings that to mind is the comments of a television meteorologist named Karl Spring. In a radio conversation about global warming, the Duluth, Minn. weatherman characterized Gore as a “left-wing nut.” That inflammatory comment overshadowed the rest of the conversation and Spring’s opinion that Gore plays fast and loose with the scientific facts when promoting his apocalyptic climate change theories.

Spring later apologized for calling Gore names but still questioned the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s assumptions in his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

I agree with Spring’s apology. Gore is not a “left-wing nut.” He is now something much worse.

Gore is the epitome of the 21st century media monster who takes some basic information, blows it out of proportion, then rides in on his white horse to save the day, or so he wants you to think. Science be damned. Who needs science when we can show you submerged seacoasts and cute polar bears caught on ice floes and blame it all on the big, bad business people, industrialists and on you, with your wasteful, consumer-driven attitudes? He fooled the Nobel prize committee, so who are we mere mortals to protest?

Nuts are easy to deal with as long as they’re not firing weapons. You basically ignore them. But former presidents and vice-presidents and Nobel prize winners are harder to ignore. Look at probably the most inept president in the history of the republic, Jimmy Carter. Unbelievably, people still listen to him.

It could be that Gore’s mind has been poisoned by a decade of association with the Liar King, Bill Clinton. There’s a man who couldn’t recognize the truth if introduced itself. To the Clintons, the truth is simply something to massage, mold and manipulate for their own political ends.

Another weatherman taking part in that Duluth radio conversation, meteorologist Kyle Underwood, might have put it best saying, “This (global warming) debate is being driven a lot by politicians,” not by scientists.

From this reporter/editor’s perspective, Gore’s decline from a fact-seeking public servant to what he’s become is a sad commentary on what it takes to advance in politics in these United States. He once looked for the truth to guide his political ambitions. Now he and others like him do just the opposite.

Dick Lucinski is the managing editor of the Niagara Gazette.

        

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