PGDW#3: Let the Disinfotainment Begin!

So what exactly is National Review Online’s blog Planet Gore, and why is PG such a unique combination of disinformation and (unintentional) entertainment that I’ve started PGDW (Planet Gore Disinfotainment Watch)?

We can find the answer in PG’s very first post, “Welcome to Planet Gore, NRO’s Global Warming Blog,” by Peter Suderman on February 14 (how sweet) of this year. I’ll give the entire post since we, unlike the global warming Denyers, work very hard not to take words and phrases out of context:

From Al Gore and Laurie David to the UN’s IPCC report and Nancy Pelosi’s special global warming committee, global warming is one of the most talked-about and contentious public policy issues of the day. We are constantly told, as Rep. Henry Waxman recently claimed, that “it is one of the most important public policy issues facing our nation and the world.” But the hyped-up rhetoric doesn’t always accurately reflect the complexity of the issue. That’s where Planet Gore comes in. NRO has gathered a team of experts to report and comment on the myriad scientific and economic issues surrounding the global warming debate. So check back regularly for informed news and views about climate change, alternative energy, environmental activism, and of course, Al Gore’s carbon footprint [emphasis added for your entertainment].

Whoa. A whole “team of experts.” Perhaps this team of experts could actually include an example of “hyped-up rhetoric” in their inaugural post. The only quote they give is Waxman’s, which is hardly much rhetorical hype, unless PG’s expert would have us believe that global warming is very talked about and contentious, but not important. If so, why bring in a whole team of experts for a blog on an unimportant subject? This kind of illogic is standard fare on PG, as we’ll see.

Ironically, PG is itself a source of hyped-up rhetoric. In the first post I have already debunked–written just one (!) day after this post–PG uses the phrase “global warming Chicken Littles.” Is that phrase a genuine effort to “accurately reflect the complexity of the issue”? Or is it hypocritical hype?

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 6:08 pmand is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “PGDW#3: Let the Disinfotainment Begin!”

  1. Brian C.B. Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 11:21 am

    Waxman’s statement was echoed again today by the NRO’s BFF, and George W. Bush’s last non-Texan friend of any description, Tony Blair. Other than a compulsion to fellate rich fossil-fuel companies, which is just another part of their principled servicing of the rich, when did global-warming denial get to be a conservative value? Is it just another manifestation of conservatives consistent “Building a Bridge to the 17th Century” platform? Another way to laugh at and demean Democrats?

  2. Joe Says:
    May 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm

    Indeed. You might think that conservatives would be for conserving our environment and conserving our energy. But apparently not. So the question is what do conservatives actually believed in conserving?

    Waxman’s quote is one of the most innocuous statements you could possibly make about global warming. He didn’t say it was the most important public-policy issue, or that it was one of the most important issues. So this was a pretty lame example of “hyped-up rhetoric.”

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