Gore Takes the Prize, Media Take the Cake

President Theodore Roosevelt. Mother Teresa. Lech Walesa. Martin Luther King. Al Gore? The list reads like an easy SAT question, but all five are now the correct answer to: Who won the Nobel Peace Prize? The others earned the prize through hard work, self sacrifice and deeds. Al Gore won it through outlandish media support that portrayed him in almost messianic terms as "evangelist," a "preacher," or a "prophet."

I'd love to spare you the Gore-y details about his plans for higher taxes, new global regulations billions of dollars in new spending or the devastation of the American economy, but that's what he's got in store for us all.

However, the award Gore shared with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), claimed it was "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."

The media's nearly two-year celebration of Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" led us here. You couldn't escape Gore if you tried - "Larry King," the morning news shows, the nightly news programs and even "Saturday Night Live" and the Sci-Fi Channel. In just three months of summer of 2006, Gore and his movie had spent more than five hours and 38 minutes on national television. In 2007, eight networks under the umbrella of NBC set aside an incredible 93 hours to his "Live Earth" concert, including three hours in primetime on NBC.

The tidal wave of attention included many working journalists. In one of the most memorable appearances, then "Today" host Katie Couric gushed over the former vice president more like a fan than a newswoman. "I think in this movie at different turns you're funny, vulnerable, disarming, self-effacing and someone said after watching it quote, ‘if only he was like this before, maybe things would have turned out differently in 2000," she said to Gore on the May 24, 2006 "Today."

In March of this year, Gore went to Capitol Hill to argue for increased global warming regulation, government control of light bulbs and billions of dollars in taxes and eco-spending. CBS reporter Gloria Borger praised him for the appearance. "Actually, he now has a pulpit. Gore is the nation's foremost environmental evangelist, and Preacher Al was here," she told viewers.

The night before the Nobel Prize was announced, NBC was almost giddy at the prospect of a Gore victory leading to his potential presidential candidacy. "Reporter David Gregory trumpeted how Gore has supposedly ‘become both a global force tackling climate change and a celebrated figure now in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize,'" according to a report from the Media Research Center's Brent Baker.