Currently irrelevant

In answer to the question the headline to this piece on Al Gore’s new cable channel, Current TV, asks, No, no one is watching. The article is a pretty basic bit of ho-hum reporting: Al Gore and company (literally) are having trouble getting people to pay attention to their fledgling TV network, and, as such, they’re revving up their hybrid engines and taking initiative. Sort of.

In a typical manner for the fashionably liberal, Gore is blaming cable corporations for not subjecting the cable-watching U.S. public to his idea of What’s Good For America. From the article:

In speeches around the country, Gore has lit into cable executives for not putting on programs "that are in the best interest of the American people." In what industry insiders refer to as "guerrilla lobbying," Gore, who is said to spend about a week a month in San Francisco as the channel's marquee executive, delivered a speech last October at an outdoor rally (and Current-sponsored rock concert) in Philadelphia that was literally within earshot of Comcast's corporate headquarters. The Gore offensive "tells me that frustration has set in" that Current hasn't been warmly received by cable companies, says John Higgins, deputy editor of Broadcasting & Cable magazine.

Gimme a break. Since when are cable companies responsible for providing anything other than whatever will attract the most eyeballs (and, subsequently, the most advertising dollars)? If Gore and Mr. Diane Fienstein want to blow $70 million on their blowhard liberal network, screaming and shrieking truth to power or whatever it is they think they’re doing, that’s great. But then blaming everyone else when no one wants to watch his underproduced collection of volunteer-made home videos is the political journalism equivalent of horn-rimmed record geeks blaming corporate radio for the fact that the new Flying Luttenbachers album isn’t getting popular attention, only orders of magnitude more smug (if you believe that's possible).

This is the same problem that undercut so much of Good Night, and Good Luck—a pretty interesting, immaculately filmed movie that just couldn’t resist rallying the progressive troops in favor of, er, more didactic liberal journalism. Which, you know, there is clearly a dearth of in this country. Really, it's true: all us poor, stupid everyfolks wouldn’t know what’s good for us without George Clooney and Al Gore to fill us in.

Gore wants broadcasters to focus on programming that is in “the best interest of the American people.” Nevermind the laughably elitist, arrogant, naïve idea that the best interests of the American people might be easily determined—when it comes to television, as countless sophomoric sitcoms prove, the American people just aren't interested in their best interests.

PS: What he really needs, clearly, is to give his network some depth—literally. As James Cameron gleefully reminds us, "Everything's better in 3D!"