So long Current TV and thanks for all the fish! Or perhaps salam alikom might be more appropriate considering the low rated, hard-left station has just been purchased by Al Jazeera, a Middle East news giant owned by the government of Qatar.
For those who have never heard of Current TV (the vast majority of you no doubt), this was the television channel originally founded by Al Gore, who appeared often on various broadcasts to spout liberal nonsense to all 23 of its regular viewers. The MediaDecoder Blog of this NY Times had this to say of the now-defunct station:
Current was conceived in 2005 after Mr. Gore and another co-founder, Joel Hyatt, bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International. After several years in obscurity showing viewer-submitted videos and documentaries, Current tacked to the left in 2011 with the hiring of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. A year later, Mr. Olbermann was fired, but a channel made in his image remained, with Mr. Spitzer, Jennifer Granholm and other liberal pundits as hosts. But on a typical night last year, just 42,000 people watched their shows, according to Nielsen.
First, I think it would be pertinent to point to the fact that Gore rushed to close the sale to Al Jazeera before year-end. The goal of course was to avoid paying higher taxes. While Gore, along with the vast majority of other Democratic leaders, has many times decried those “tax cuts for the rich,” it certainly has not hindered him, as it has other wealthy liberal politicians, from enjoying the benefits of Bush-era rates. Of course, most of the tax cuts went to the middle class, as even President Obama has admitted, which is why those rates are about to be made permanent for 99% of the country. But I digress.
The real question is, what’s next for Al Gore after this epic fail? Rumor has it (from at least one unknown source) that Gore will take that $100 million (gained, no doubt, through the sale of Qatari oil) and start his own jam company, “Current Currants.” Okay, perhaps not, but you have to admit, it’s a great idea.
Read the rest of this entry »