Gore Bars Press From Speech In San Francisco

For a man who gets better press than virtually any person walking the planet, one has to wonder why Nobel Laureate Al Gore would ever want to bar media representatives from one of his speeches.

After all, it's not like anyone is going to ask him a tough question, or write something that might expose him as the charlatan most folks not drinking the Kool -- er, I mean Global Warming-Aid understand him to be.

However, that's exactly what happened Friday afternoon when the Global Warmingest-in-Chief spoke at the RSA Conference with specific instructions for no press members to be allowed through the doors of the Moscone Convention Center.

As reported by C/Net News.com (emphasis added, h/t NBer Gary Hall):

When Al Gore agreed to talk at the end of the RSA 2008 conference, the 2007 Nobel Laureate stipulated in his contract with RSA that no members of the press would be allowed inside the keynote address.

Apparently, this is a common practice now for Gore, at least according to the folks at Wired (emphasis added):

Press protestations are becoming a habit of Gore's.

When he gave his now-famous global warming slide presentation at the TED conference in 2006 (Technology, Entertainment and Design) I tried to approach him after the presentation to ask a question and was thwarted by his aggressive spokesman who planted himself between me and the former v.p. and griped that I'd been allowed to attend the presentation. He said the talk was supposed to have been off-limits to press (although the conference organizers never mentioned this to me, and no one tried to prevent me from entering the auditorium, although my badge clearly indicated I was press). Gore's spokesman took down my name and affiliation and warned that I wasn't to write anything about the event.

Gore, whose speaker fee is reportedly $100,000, spoke again at TED this year, which I wrote about for Wired's Epicenter blog. There were no restrictions on press covering that talk other than regarding photos. The conference wanted press to use only official photos provided by TED.

Last year the Smoking Gun published a copy of Gore's speaker's contract, which stipulates that all press are to be barred from his appearances and that the conditions of the contract cannot be disclosed to anyone.

Is it possible Gore doesn't want press members present as he recommends people invest in companies that he already has a stake in? This is exactly what he did about a month ago in Monterey, California, as NewBusters reported Friday.

In fact, according to C/Net News.com, this was virtually the same "You Should Be Investing in What I'm Investing In" speech he gave in Monterey:

The talk, which ran 45 minutes and closed the conference here, updated the presentation used in his Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Friday's talk was similar to one Gore delivered in February at the annual TED conference, but without the slides.

Makes sense to me why he wouldn't want media around to watch him behave like a stockbroker or hedge fund manager hawking his wares. Someone might actually get a clue that the former vice president is behaving signficantly more like Professor Harold Hill than Moses, not that any of these sycophantics would be likely to report it if such an obvious conclusion struck them on the head!

Speaking of which, here's another item these dolts in the press surely will ignore (from second referenced C/Net piece, emphasis added):

During the speech here, the 2007 Nobel Laureate was interrupted by hecklers three times; each was removed by security.

It seems a metaphysical certitude that we're just as likely to hear/read about the Man Who's Trying to Save the Planet's financial motivations as we are someone having the poor taste to actually heckle The Green King!

As such, move along...nothing to see here.