Wednesday, January 02, 2013

You can't make this stuff up

The punchlines pretty much write themselves:

Al Jazeera on Wednesday completed a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore and his business partners seven years ago.

Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.

Rather than simply use Current to distribute its English-language channel, called Al Jazeera English and based in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera will create a new channel, called Al Jazeera America, based in New York. Roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.

Global warming? Old and busted. Global jihad? Hotness. And the good news -- if Chuck Hagel bombs out on the SecDef thing, he'll have a gig for certain now.

7 comments:

Gino said...

Al Jezeera isnt much loved by arab regimes, either.

speaking truth to power.
it's what they 'mostly' do.

last i heard, their CEO was a palestinian... and that places them on the WRONG side of any any arab regime.

Chuckwagon Boy said...

I would agree with Gino as it has some pretty good news coverage. It won a lot of awards for its coverage of the Arab Spring amid charges from Arab nations that their coverage was inciting the uprisings.

Mr. D said...

I take your points, gentlemen. Having said that, the spectacle of Mr. Global Warming selling off to people with oil money is straight up hilarious. The only way it would have been better is if Gore had sold the network to the Koch brothers.

Brad Carlson said...

Our friend David Strom said Al Jazeera didn't feel their programming was Anti-American enough so they acquired Al Gore's TV network.

Mr. D said...

Brad, I saw that. Strommie called that one!

3john2 said...

Notice that Al "Drop the Towel" Gore and friends hustled to get this deal closed by Dec. 31 so they wouldn't have to pay higher taxes on their profits. Now they're free to stimulate their chakras - I mean, stimulate the economy - by buying more jet fuel and electricity to light their palaces.

Anonymous said...

THe funniest thing is that they actually paid big money for Gore's White Elephant. The bet here is that Cable systems wrongly or rightly will drop this network like a hot potato. Nice fleecing by Gore.

I'm still surprised that anyone sees it as a newsworthy item when the innately corrupt act in an innately corrupt manner. Gore is just being Gore. I'm actually surprised that he didn't renounce his citizenship and become a Singapore national prior to the sale. I guess he can skip that step because his cronies in Washington will find some type of a loophole for him.