Ridley Rips Gore: Save Son, Not Ice Caps

Photo of Mark Finkelstein.

John Ridley might be an NPR regular, someone who says he likes the "center-left" and even professes admiration for Al Gore's work. But that didn't stop the "Morning Joe" panel member from ripping Gore on the MSNBC show this morning at 7:20 a.m. EDT for his choice of continuing his Live Earth concert tour rather than being at the side of his troubled son.

A clip was aired of Gore telling MSNBC's Chris Jansing that despite his son's latest run-in, his plans hadn't changed to attend the series of Live Earth concerts around the world. In a mantra reminiscent of his "no controlling legal authority" line from years ago regarding questionable fund-raising, Gore informed Jansing and other media that he was treating his son's situation as "a private family matter." Ridley went off on an extended tirade. Excerpts:

MORNING JOE PANEL MEMBER JOHN RIDLEY: Why isn't he with his son? He's in New York yesterday doing all these media hits. His son is in California. If my son were in crisis, I would be home with my son.

View edited video clip here

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Mika Brzezski [who, as we are legally obligated to note, is daughter to Jimmy Carter's former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski] rode to Big Al's defense.

MSNBC'S MIKA BREZEZINSKI: [This] is different; your kids are stil little, his son's an adult. [N.B. Al Gore III is 24].

The amiable Willie Geist, often a panel member but guest-hosting for a vacationing Joe Scarborough, was also in a forgiving mood.

MSNBC'S Willie Geist: He got arrested with a little pot, a couple of pills. It's not like he was on a three-day meth bender.

RIDLEY: He's been in rehab before, he's had problems before. He was driving 100 MPH.

GEIST [facetiously]: In a Prius, though; he was responsible.

RIDLEY: Instead of going to your concert, instead of doing all your high-faluting, show-bizzy kind of thing, maybe you should go and be with your son. Instead of trying to throw a hug around the world, why not throw a hug around your kid?

BRZEZINKSI: That's a little harsh, that's a little harsh.

RIDLEY: If Al Gore was an indigent, inner-city dad, and his kid was having problems with illegal substances, and he went off to see a ball game, people would be up in arms about these poor folks who don't know how to raise their kids. Instead we get a guy who's a multi-millionaire, has access to private planes. If that were me, the first thing I'd do is hop on a jet, if I had that kind of money, and fly home and be with my kid. If saving the polar ice caps is more important than saving your family, so be it.

The far-left crowd -- I'm not talking the left-center crowd, I like those folks -- the far-left crowd they don't understand that, look, you can try to save the world, but if you don't save the things that are right in front of you, if you can't see the forest for the trees, what are you really doing, who are you really saving?

Mika continued to go to bat for Al.

BRZEZINSKI: I completely disagree with you. I don't think we can understand the nuances of their relationships. We don't know what's really going on. It's very hard to judge when it comes to family dynamics.

BONUS COVERAGE -- Panel Bops Bwana Joe Biden: Earlier, Ridley and Geist had some fun at poor Joe Biden's expense. The pair were discussing Biden's comments on AIDS at the recent Dem prez debate at historically black Howard University.

RIDLEY: The rich old white guy, talking about going to the black part of town, schooling the brothers because they can't figure out how to have safe sex on their own. That generally doesn't play very well.

GEIST: He said, "I went to tell the black men that it's OK to wear a condom." Thanks, Uncle Joe!

Contact Mark at mark@gunhill.net

—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.


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NBC Fluff Piece/Real Bias

NBC Today just did fluff piece.  Showed pity for Gore family, then showed 3 Repubs and their problems-Bush(twins); Reagan(dtr saying they were dysfunctional); & Guilani(never gave reason).  But then said Chelsea Clinton held her family together during the nightmare.  No mention of any other politicians when piece was supposedly about such.  They forget Carter, Kennedys, etc.  So another INCONVIENT TRUTH!!  

Pawpaw: I had DVD'ed "

Pawpaw: I had DVD'ed "Today" but hadn't viewed it. Your comment on the fluff piece prompted me to check it out and do an item. I've given you a hat tip there.

Thanks

Thanks, the arrogance of the MSM astounds me.  They think people are so dumb-guess there must be quite a few out there...

Gore junior is over 20. Th

Gore junior is over 20. This is not a child with a crisis, this is a young adult acting like an idiot.

What's the Goracle supposed to do? Hold his hand and 'counsel' the poor lamb until he repents? He's a bad father if he doesn't?

My old man wouldn't have bailed me out. Your's probably wouldn't either if you were that stupid at that age.

Besides. Speeding in a Prius? You HAVE to be on drugs if you imagine that POS is going to outrun/outmaneuver anything! Gorebaby isn't the brightest bulb on the string, is he?

Then again, Toyota will probably slip him some a pretty fat bonus for getting on record that their envirowagon will actually go 100!

I dunno...Rodney King manag

I dunno...Rodney King managed to get a Yugo up to 115 without driving it off a cliff, but this incident makes me wonder if the Prius has more horsepower than I'd suspected. Maybe NASCAR will be tempted to do a Prius-only race?
JMR

It was actually a Hyundai Exc

It was actually a Hyundai Excel, but nevertheless a POS by any other name is still a POS.

It amazes me how the lefties will defend this guy to the bitter end.  Even though they're confronted with logic and reason, they blindly give him a pass on everything.  Imagine if this had been a conservative.

Wussy Prius

My favorite is when you see the POS Chevy full size VAN trying to elude the police..  dumb druggies

Responsible Drunk Driver?

'In a Prius, though, he was responsible'.  Did he really say this?  Driving 100 mph while drunk and possibly on drugs is OK if you use less gas in a hybrid? If this impaired speeder killed someone, would they be any less dead?  It's a sad day when news readers are so biased that they defend reckless driving based on politics.

'In a Prius, though, he was

'In a Prius, though, he was responsible'.

I didn't hear it, but I suspect he was being sarcastic. That's the way I took it when I read it.

You have to think that secret

You have to think that secretly Toyota is thrilled with the fact he was going over 100.  Wicked cool cah, dudes!  Give the tip to Patches Kennedy next time he drives under the influence and needs press sympathy.

Anyone who says they support the troops but not the mission is a liar. 

Kathleen

Err ah..  I wos ah Droyving the ah danca back to ah my err ah   her house and ah she wonted to see how fast the green machine could go!  I am in the process of ivestagating the ah Fohd motah compny for engineerin faults.  that cah shoulda fit perfectly on that side wahk.  *Buuuurp*

I, uh, struggle, uh, with my

I, uh, struggle, uh, with my addiction, uh, every day.... now where is the, uh, Chivas? 

"Gephardt for President" =bumper sticker on Patches Kennedy's car that he struck the median with at  3:00 a.m. after a night of drinking...oh, sorry= "ambien driving" 

An electric bottle opener wou

An electric bottle opener would help the struggling part.

As much as I dislike Algore

As much as I dislike Algore, I am willing to give him a pass on this one. Maybe he figures his son is 24, supposedly an adult, and it's time he started paying the price for his idiotic behavior, and taking responsibility for his own actions. If that's his thinking, I agree.  It's time his son learned to stand on his own two feet and take his lumps.

To me, this is totally different from the overinflated ego of John Edwards, who thinks he is so indispensable to the country that he must run for President, in spite of the fact that his wife has untreatable cancer and they have two young children who might need their father for more than 10 minutes of "quality time" before his next campaign stop. That, I find disgusting.

Agreed motherbelt.  And it b

Agreed motherbelt.  And it begs the question...

If a man could neglect and use his family the way that Edwards has done, what would he be capable of doing if he were president?  Seems like to him, there is nothing more important in the world than money and his reputation - not his family, and certainly not America.  Mrs. John Edwards has absolutely ZERO chance at being our next president.

Maybe Mrs. Edwards doesn't wa

Maybe Mrs. Edwards doesn't want him hanging around the house.  Why else would she run interference between the Breck Girl and mean little Anne Coulter?  If she secretly hoped he'd crash and burn (sooner than is inevitable), she'd let the insightfully observant like Rush and Ann (Prez and Vice Prez) have their say.

Maybe...

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war"  - Shakespeare

John Ridley is a model citize

John Ridley is a model citizen. I have to share this with the group here.

I know someone whose daughter was just arrested for getting oxycodone illegally, which she had been addicted to for over a year. This is a girl who is is a bit older than Al Gore’s son and a college grad in a career. But pain killers got the better of her.

Having been addicted to meth many, many years ago I know what adducts go through and what is needed.

But this father, who is a classic ‘60s liberal knows better and refuses to put his daughter in rehab because “this is different” and “you don’t understand what this is about.”

I asked him why he and his wife did not have a clue that his daughter was addicted and her boyfriend’s mother did many months before?

He treats his daughter like he treats his business clients – not like a daughter. So it is no wonder she never felt the ability to confide in him. Her mother is even more distant.

To Mika, the classic ‘60s liberal who lacks any sense of family values, it has nothing to do with being an adult and there are not any special nuances to a father/son relationship unless there is none. No matter how old, when your kid has a drug problem he needs the chance to be his family, be able to go back to being a kid, and have a caring mother and father to save him and help him regenerate.

John is right. Al Gore’s first responsibility is to save his son – not his pathetic career.

 

You know, although I agree wi

You know, although I agree with Mr. Ridley on this one point, that is it. He is the most racist man on tv I have seen in awile. He makes Imus look like a saint. He's always railing on "the white man". He's so negative and seems to always want to take it to the next level.  I wish Joe would jack his ass up one day.

I like Willie Geist though, he's not too biased. Mika on the other hand, she reads off the Soros talking points, daily. She makes me want to hurl.

As for Chelsea Clinton, she is part of the 20 year plan for both of her parents to become president. They are probably plotting the next 20 as we speak, soon it will be, Chelsea Clinton for president . They're like robots these people. It's like they're whole life is some big plot and plan. Who lives like that? That's exactly why I don't trust any of the Clintons. I really believe Hillary would do just about anything to get elected and that scares the hell out of me.

As for Al Gore, he knows what the Earth needs but not his own son. What a loser, I'm super-serial! Seriously though, if his son is on all these pills, that is very dangerous. If he's taking Somas, painpills, tranquilizers and amphetamines, someone needs to help him or he will not make it. I know 2 people that died from taking Soma's only!

Hypocrite."...his plan

Hypocrite.

"...his plans hadn't changed to attend the series of Live Earth concerts around the world."

WHAT??? He plans to attend "the series" of concerts? How much carbon will he be pumping into the ever-so-vulnerable stratosphere with that little jaunt?

Just where is he getting all of the carbon credits to offset that?

You have been given the choice between war and dishonor. You have chosen dishonor, and you will have both.

--Winston Churchill to Neville Chamberlain

Who is Ridley?

MSNBC is still on the air?   Is Ridley relevent?  Anything vocalized there is meaningless.  That network can fit all it's viewers in a large phonebooth.

Ridley had a slight right-of-center brain fart.

He'll be back on the liberal track after a talk with management over the weekend.

Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has not heart; and any
man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains.

-Unknown

I have a nephew who has a dru

I have a nephew who has a drug problem ( he has been sober for over a year), my brother and sister-in-law have spent a fortune in drug rehab for him. They have two other children who have turned out to be model citizens. They were all three raised the same, in a Christian household, a stay at home mom...the whole nine yards. At some point parents lose control and outside forces take over. I would never be arrogant enough to say that one of my girls would never be drug addicts, because that can come back and bite you in the back side. That is my humble opinion.

Why Al Gore jr. is a Problem Adult

If you read the diaries of Ronald Reagan, you can see that caring parents have little chance of overcoming liberal or progressive influences without character and God's moral foundations. This is why junior Reagan is doing dog shows and Patty is pretending she is a writer after nudie posing at Playboy.

Politics is the worst of the worlds for a child as when you have a Jimmy Carter pulpit preaching hate at Reagan or Bush while the kids have nothing but lunatic leftists brainwashing them as daddy Jimmy is discussing selling his soul to terrorists to fund his Carter Center. The kiddos get a bit confused.

For the record, the Bush kids have behaved themselves wonderfully considering the hate aimed at them by the liberals. That is one of the most telling positives of what the Bush family is about in they are real in public and the same in private.

Chelsea Clinton went into a meltdown too with her drunken sidewalk collapses outside London bars after getting free of the insane assylum which was the Hillary and Bill show.

All of that leads to the Kennedy's to Al Gore jr. as an example of the problem adult. When a child's parent is in public preaching a progressive secular religion void of God they only dust off for disasters, the child starts medicating with money and drugs to make up for the lying in seeing daddy Teddy boinking the teenage waitress.

Al Gore is the same soul selling animal. Before he decided he wanted to rule the world he was quite Tennessee normal. Such things as morality in being pro life got tossed out the window. All of that fakery in a child seeing daddy defending wretches like Bill and Hillary Clinton and taking money in bribes from Chinese communists to setting down with the wacko feminists all short circuits a kid and you end up with Al Gore jr. arrested again, looking like a Mexican drug mule and at speeds either trying to commit suicide or publically TELLING THE WORLD PLEASE SAVE ME AS THIS IS WHAT DADDY GORE CREATED AND IF HE CAN'T SAVE ME HE SURE IS SCREWED UP ABOUT THE WORLD.

It is all sad, but for the media making a big deal in dirtying up Republicans they need to look at their own screwed up children who are not making the news.

They all need Christian prayers. God bless them in His Name. Amen

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

Oh, good gawd!!!  "Wow!

Oh, good gawd!!!  "Wow! That's rather harsh! ... I don't think we can understand the nuances ..."    ???????????????  THAT'S the argument Mika Brzezski came up with to counter John Ridley's testament to personal responsibility and family values???   Lame ... VERY lame.

Unacceptable

I'm a 24 year old man, and I can honestly say that Al Gore III's actions seem way out of line, even the craziest of my friends (I have plenty of colorful friends) do not act that way. 

There is no doubt in my mind that if I got arrested and was having drug problems, that my parents would be here for me in a heart beat.  Al's just a selfish, greedy, fairly stupid guy with messed up priorities, I'm glad at least someone had that point of view.

Who knows, if Al Gore was my father, I might have to do a LOT of drugs just to get by as well!

I heard this segment this mor

I heard this segment this morning....

I personally cannot stand the leftist Ridley most times...but at least he has a brain when it comes to AGW and how absolutely phony the whole shebang is....especially Algore.

Btw....I hope Gore's kid gets himself straightened out because he wants to and can before it is too late....

Just wondering

Just wondering if Al Gore was as pompous and overbearing a father as he is a politician. I know kids will do what they are going to do. However parents who communicate and nurture their children have a far better chance of rehabilitating a drug abusing child than those who ignore the child. I would assume that with all the resources the elder Gores have available to them their son would have every rehabilitation means available. As it is now, he only gets arrested once in a while and Dad goes off around the world scaring people with global warming nonsense.