The U.S. press corps has been quite exercised of late over a few right-wing activists allegedly taunting and spitting on members of Congress. Under pressure from a blizzard of coverage, defensive conservative leaders have been quick to distance themselves from the acts. But when a major government scientist applauds eco-vandalism by left-wing activists, our media watchdogs curiously stop barking.
The scientific figure, of course, is NASA’s James Hansen, one of the world’s most celebrated global-warm-mongering scientists and a close adviser to Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore. Peace icon Gore’s reaction to Hansen’s support of Greenpeace defacing an English coal plant causing $50,000 in property damage? Silence.
His media allies were silent, as well.
Hansen’s extraordinary 2008 testimony — and an English court’s subsequent not guilty verdict — provoked zero coverage in America’s major media. Only one story, written months after the fact, even mentions the event — a morally torn New York Times Magazine article wondering “what acts might the law permit in the name of fighting a threat of global, even catastrophic, proportions?”
Property damage like bricks thrown through a congressman’s window is only news when it furthers the media’s favored agenda.