Wednesday digest II

- Although I don't agree with him all the time, I think that Tarek Fatah is a pretty courageous guy. Here's a must-read from today's Toronto Star.

- Ann Coulter is not a serious person and anyone who takes her seriously doesn't deserve to be taken seriously themselves.

- Looks like the Dixie Chicks aren't as popular as they thought they were. Although Toronto has added a second date, (and is anyone surprised given high-and-mighty anti-Americanism is the state religion in Canada's largest city?), Memphis has been outright cancelled and shows in Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Houston (America's 4th largest city and also the largest in the Chicks' home state) are also in jeopardy.

Can't say I didn't see this coming.

I would also be willing to bet my house that if you asked the people who bought Chicks' tickets in Toronto to name 5 tunes by the band, approximately 2 out 3 of their so-called fans would offer "Goodbye Earl", "that Mudslide song, is that what it's called?" and be unable to name even a single other.

Dixie Chicks, you have become the latest liberal fad. Like I've said before, see you on a co-headlining tour of 2,000 seaters with the Indigo Girls sometime in 2010 and at the Air America radio network re-launch in 2011. Even Hillary won't be seen with you on the '08 campaign.

- Speaking of Democrat party icons, George Stroumboulopoulos, Humber College radio broadcasting grad and thirty-something imitator of squeegee kid fashion sense, landed himself an interview with former VP Al Gore who is out promoting his film titled "An Inconvenient Truth". Unfortunately, no, it's not about the inconvenient truth that Al did not in fact invent the Internet, but rather, about what Al told George could lead to "potentially the end of human civilization". (Isn't that what another environmentalist zealot, 60s-era overpopulation "expert" Paul Ehrlich, said would happen by 1985? I still remember hearing about Tipper trying to ban Cyndi Lauper tunes well into '86, so I guess that didn't really pan out, but I digress.)

Anyways, Al is warning us about global warming. As he said to George, "Let's say you were walking on a beach, and a bottle washed up with a message inside. You open it, and it says, 'This is a matter of life or death. You absolutely have to deliver this message'. You'd do whatever you could to deliver that message, right?"

(I can't speak for Stroumboulopoulos, who seemed to agree with Al, but if that happened to me, I'd probably just throw the bottle back in the water. Then again, perhaps I'm just an unsophisticated bumpkin like the guy that Al couldn't beat in '00.)

Then George asked him if he thought that there was enough being done about the environment during the Clinton years, and Al said "no, I went to Kyoto and participated in the talks that led to the treaty but what really disappointed me is that I couldn't even get one single Senator to vote for it".

I'd say that speaks to how much of a non-player you were during the 90s more than anything else, Al.

Seems there's more than just one inconvenient truth where Al Gore is concerned.