Has Former Vice President Al Gore now taken a page from President George Bush’s bad p.r. book? Those of us who decried the tight control of crowds and press coverage of the Bush campaign and administration cannot condone this:
Reporters and TV news cameras will be banned from almost all of former Vice President Al Gore’s appearance Jan. 23 in Sioux Falls.Gore is the Boe Forum speaker at Augustana College and plans a talk called “Thinking Green: Economic Strategy for the 21st Century.”
What’s so vital that Gore can’t allow the press to cover a talk that has been seen in movie theaters and see on DVD? FYI, this site reviewed his movie An Inconvenient Truth and gave it a highly-positive review. SEE OUR REVIEW HERE. MORE:
Kalee Kreider, a Gore staffer in Nashville, confirmed by e-mail that news media will be asked to leave his talk after the introduction and that Gore will not hold a press conference.Gore has agreed to meet with college and high school students before the speech, said Arthur Huseboe, executive director of Augustana’s Center for Western Studies, which sponsors the forum.
Still, the rule does not quite jibe with the image of Gore the tireless crusader from the movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” spreading urgent warnings about global warming.
Most assuredly not: it’s the same image that George W. Bush and his entourage have been transmitting for years now…of a leader and group around him who are trying to clamp down on coverage of what he says to partisans when no one is around to either question it or report it. AND:
The only other Boe Forum speaker to decline a news conference was Queen Noor of Jordan, Huseboe said. Past speakers have included former President George H.W. Bush, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev and former British Prime Minister John Major.
Perhaps none of them understand the workings of public relations as well as Mr. Gore and his associates.
Actually, this p.r. operation has a sense of deja vu — of the same kind of stumbling that cost Gore the White House in 2000. PLUS:
Kreider said copyright issues necessitate closing Gore’s slide show to the press. She did not give a reason for declining to hold a news conference.”Do I find it odd? I guess if I were a speaker, and I had to do this kind of stuff all of the time, I might have.”
So Gore’s slide show that is in the movies and available so that you and I can watch it on DVD can’t be witnessed by the press. And he can’t take any questions of the press.
Perhaps Gore isn’t thinking of running for President after all. And, if he is, perhaps he shouldn’t…
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey has some thoughts, too...
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.