- No, it wouldn't do anything for the Environment.
-
- But two Hollywood Conservatives (Yes, there are some)have
called upon the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to rescind
the prestigious, profitable gold Oscar statuette that it gave ex-Vice President
Al Gore all most two years ago for the environmental movie "An
Inconvenient Truth."
-
- Roger L. Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, both Academy members,
are among a small, meandering pack of known political conservatives still
believed to be on the loose in the liberal bastion of movie-making.
-
- In 2007, Hollywood's Academy sanctified Gore's cinematic
message of global warming with its famous statue, enriched
his earnings by $100,000 per 85-minute appearance and helped elevate the
Tennesseean's profile to win the Nobel Peace Prize despite losing the election
battle of 2000 to a Texan and living in a large house with lots of energy-driven
appliances.
-
- Chetwynd and Simon were prompted to make their hopeless
demand this week by the leak two weeks ago of a blizzard of British
academic e-mails purporting to show that scientists at the University of
East Anglia Climatic Research Unit systematically falsified data to document
the appearance of global warming in recent years.
-
- The university is reportedly investigating the claims,
which added dry fuel to the never-ending political debate over whether
the Earth really is warming as a result of human activity or if it's just
normal natural cycles and the debate is what's heated. The demand to withdraw
Gore's award provides yet another opportunity to argue.
-
- The startling leak comes at an inconvenient time just
before next week's United Nations' climate change meeting that will cause
an immense carbon footprint with thousands of people flying up or over
to Denmark to talk about saving the environment.
-
- These airplanes will include Air Force One with its primary
passenger President Obama, who's returning to the Copenhagen scene where
hedidn't Help win the 2016 Summer Olympics for Chicago, which could do
with a little global warming at this time of year.
-
- Simon, a screenwriter who is also chief executive officer
of Pajamas Media, a network of conservative online blogs, conceded he knew
of no precedent for the Academy withdrawing a previously-awarded Oscar,
despite decades of Hollywood hijinks and worse. But, he added, "I
think they should rescind this one." The controversial leaked documents
have been assembled here by Pajamas Media and the Competitive Enterprise
Institute. The joint demand by Simon and filmmaker Chetwynd is available
on video here.
-
- The television news-watching world in America has not
learned much about the so-called Climategate scandal because it has not
really been mentioned on the air except for a notorious cable news channel
named for a three-lettered, wily, wild animal that often seems to revel
in debunking liberal shibbeloths.
-
- Network news programs have been far more concerned with
the obviously more important White House party-crasher story involving
a couple of formally-dressed phonies.
-
- The falsified documents do not come up in Gore interview
excerpts published late last night here by Politico's John F. Harris and
Mike Allen.
-
- This week White House Press Secy. Robert Gibbs claimed
that global warming was no longer in dispute by most people. But a subsequent
Rasmussen Reports poll of Americans finds only one in four adults believe
most scientists agree on the topic.
-
- And while only 20% claim to have followed the leaked
e-mail story Very Closely, nearly 60% believe it is at least somewhat likely
that scientists have falsified environmental data to support their own
global warming beliefs and theories.
-
- -- Andrew Malcolm
- Speaking of saving the environment, <http://twitter.com/LATimestot>click
here to receive Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or follow us <http://twitter.com/LATimestot>@latimestot.
And we're <http://www.facebook.com/amalcolm>also over here on Facebook.
- Photos: Associated Press
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