NPR Begs for Donations By Pushing Al Gore 'Wonky' Audio Clips

February 11th, 2014 4:10 PM

On the D.C. NPR station WAMU this morning, they were promoting Al Gore in their winter membership drive. It was from a year-old interview with Diane Rehm. She said “And one of the words that has been applied to you for years and years has been the word, wonky.” Gore said “Well, I was afraid you were going to say, creepy...No, I plead guilty to being a wonky, wannabe geek.”

They literally pushed people to donate on the sheer appeal of more hours of Al Gore interviews. Amazingly, on this January 31, 2013 interview, an adoring caller suggested we could have prevented the mass murder of 9-11 if the government had implemented Al Gore’s suggested FAA reforms:

DENNIS:  I'll do this quickly because I know you have other people waiting. I remember the commission that Al did for the FAA. And I guess what it boils down to for me is it was basically shot down and ignored. And then, of course, many years later we had 9/11.

And I think in terms of the shooting of the messenger on almost every issue I think it would be helpful if he would, every chance he gets -- you know, I know it's not easy, but remind people that there were things that could have stopped what happened and we ignored it. And I would also like him to talk about Dick Armey and some of the things that he has done to hurt Al Gore's image in, you know, and has he ever actually confronted Dick Armey with some of the things that he said about you over the years.

GORE: Well, first of all, thank you for your kind words on the Airline Safety Commission. There was a terrible explosion affecting a commercial airliner over Long Island Sound when I was Vice President. President Clinton asked me to -- people worried it might have been a terrorist incident and we had to get to the bottom of it. And we looked at the entire field of airline safety. And not many people know what your caller has just said. But it is actually the case that if the recommendations of that commission had been implemented it would have almost certainly prevented the ability of those hijackers

REHM: Give me one of those recommendations.

GORE: Very tight coordination and data flow between the FAA security team and the intelligence agencies including the FBI and a system for automatically catching people who were on the watch list before they could board planes. Now there are lots of commissions and recommendations and it's always difficult to get recommendations implemented. But that one was particularly painful. We should have done that.

Now I haven't really kept up with what Dick Armey has said about me. But maybe I'll ask Dr. Google to give me a summary.

Rehm did throw this awkward pitch at Gore, implying that Team Bush’s 2000 ruthlessness about the recount ruined gore’s marriage:


REHM: And now a personal question. Had you won that election, do you believe you and your wife, Tipper Gore, would have stayed together?

GORE: Oh, well, I -- I don't want to go into -- into that except to say this, Diane. We -- Tipper and I made a mutual decision -- genuinely mutual decision after 40 years of marriage to separate. We are on wonderful terms.

Rehm also asked about Gore selling Current TV to al-Jazeera, and Gore announced that it was just the most excellent bunch of journalists you could imagine:

GORE: Yes. And I quite understand the motivation behind the questions. I had them myself until I did deep diligence on what al-Jazeera is all about. And they have long since established themselves as a fantastic, high-quality news gathering network, winning awards in countries around the world. And by the way, one thing that was influential with me, is that I looked at how they cover the climate crisis. They have the highest quality and most extensive coverage of any network in the world. I liked that. And in every country where they have operated, particularly al-Jazeera English, they have distinguished themselves.

They're going to launch a 24/7 commercial-free news network that prides itself on integrity and high quality. So I felt that's a good result. It's a win-win result for our shareholders. They want to keep as many of our employees as they possibly can, and they've made offers to most of them, and they want to bring a very high quality news network to the U.S. So I feel great about it.

This response drew another leftist caller, who agreed: “I would like to, before I ask the question, just to make one comment. And that is, al-Jazeera in English is outstanding and that's a terrible understatement on my part.”