Former US Vice President and still fully devoted global environmentalist Al Gore last week took a lot of heat and ridicule for dumping his viewer-starved Current TV cable network for $500 million. He sold it to Al Jazeera, owned by the oil-rich Islamic monarchy and global environment-polluter Qatar.
Gore’s money-first hypocrisy in this matter is so self-evident that it’s hardly worth further ink. For $500 million he chose to fasten a “Kick Me” sign to both his back and front. At least he didn’t go for cheap, ya know?
But there has been an important element to this sale that has been overlooked:
As a private citizen, Gore should have not been able to make such a transaction unless he was registered as a certified foreign agent. Al Jazeera after all, is not owned by a corporation or even an international syndicate. It’s owned by a country.
And, by US standards, not a particularly pleasant country.
Qatar has been ruled by the Emirs of the Al Thani family since 1850. It’s known to provide funds and vocal, visual support to Islamic radicals. Qatari women are treated in the standard regional, religionist-approved manner: They do as ordered by men.
And, according to workers’ and human rights organizations — groups Gore and liberal Current TV voices relied on for facts and outrage — the most backbreaking jobs in Qatar’s oil fields are held by laborers shipped from Africa and Asia who are paid bare-subsistence wages.
That this is the country with which Gore chose to do big, handshake business is one ugly thing, but that as a private citizen he’s allowed to sell a US cable network to a country — especially an Islamic monarchy — should first be a matter for the State Department, not Al Gore.
Al Jazeera’s sports division, beIN Sport, has been purchasing big-time international soccer rights in Europe and South America, then clearing the network on to US cable and satellite systems because oil-rich Qatar can outbid any TV network for rights, then essentially give the programming away in exchange for both clearance and presence.
International sports networks, including Fox and ESPN, have complained that they can’t fairly compete with beIN, which is a front for a 162-year-old Islamic monarchy.
Most interesting is that beIN’s US public relations firm, in its news releases, makes no mention of who owns the network. Generally, such releases are eager to let you know who’s at the top.
But one more thing about Gore. I used to love the guy. In the late 1980s, when he was a senator from Tennessee, he was among the few politicians who recognized the abuses that the cable TV monopoly was perpetrating upon the US public.
Heck, he even referred to the largest systems as “The cable Cosa Nostra.” Wow! Man of the people!
But after he was selected as Bill Clinton’s running mate, we never heard another discouraging word about cable from Gore. Perhaps that had something to do with campaign donations from the National Cable TV Association as well as other cable concerns.
And now he has sold his cable TV network to Al Jazeera, owned by the oil-soaked global pollutant and rights-intolerant, theocratic kingdom of Qatar. What a guy!
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Seems every few years the FCC or legislators enact a measure to ensure that TV commercials are heard no louder than the programs during which they appear. Yep, every few years. That’s how effective they are.
The latest was ordered to begin Dec. 13th. How’s it doing?
Well, last Sunday night three men sat watching “The Simpsons” on Fox while three women chatted in the next room. On three occasions the men heard shouts of “Lower that!”
All three times those shouts were heard right after commercials began.