Gore-Aid

Friend David in Washington DC has supplied continuing updates on the political machinations behind Live Earth, the enviro-benefit concert Al Gore is hoping to hold near the U.S. Capitol on July 7. Talking politics is the DC version of discussing the weather, though, so I frankly hadn't paid super-close attention, until now.

Here's the scoop: Organizers, including Gore, are planning a string of concerts around the world in the manner of Live 8, only this time the cause is the environment. Performers announced so far include Pharrell, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters, Snoop Dogg, Lenny Kravitz, Bon Jovi, Sheryl Crow, Melissa Etheridge, John Mayer, Damien Rice, Corinne Bailey Rae, Duran Duran, Snow Patrol, John Legend, Black-Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Fall Out Boy, Maná, Keane and Kelly Clarkson.

The U.S. location they want is the west front of the Capitol (the Mall is booked that day), and, predictably, Congressional Republicans are objecting. But it's just getting silly.

"There has never been a partisan political event at the Capitol, and this is a partisan political event," Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said Tuesday, vowing to use parliamentary maneuvers to block the resolution giving Gore permission to stage the concert there.

Democrats fired back Wednesday.

"Not since former Interior Secretary James Watt tried to ban the Beach Boys from appearing on the  National Mall has such a misguided effort at political censorship been undertaken by a Republican official," Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) said in a press release. "It's dangerous enough to deny science; it's sheer lunacy to deny song."

You know, these people could probably serve some useful function to society if we didn't keep sending them back to Congress.

Comments

[Josh]

From the Almanac of American Politics:

As a junior member of the Senate [Inhoff] spoke his mind in pungent terms. He compared Clinton EPA administrator Carol Browner to Tokyo Rose and said her agency used "Gestapo tactics."

In a 2003 speech he said that the theory that man-made emissions have caused global warming was "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Citing scientists' conclusions and climate statistics, he repeated the same claim, despite protesters' posters attacking him, in an international meeting in Milan in January 2004.

During the Armed Services Committee's hearings on the prison abuses in Abu Ghraib in May 2004--abuses he, like other committee members, condemned--he added, "I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged about the outrage than we are by the treatment" of Iraqi prisoners. He was outraged that "so many humanitarian do-gooders" were "crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying."

[Mike]

Inhofe said that "there has never been a partisan political event at the Capitol."

WTF does Congress do all day, then?

[Josh]

First, an issue-based concert is not a political event.

Second, the U.S. Capitol is home to the inauguration of the President, which some might call a political event. And it is the home to many rallys -- I've attended a gay rights rally and a rally for Israel there. If those weren't partisan, neither is this.

James Inhofe is incapable of serving a useful function to society. He is an embarrassment, not only to Oklahoma, but to any nation that would elect people like him.

[Friend David]

Sadly, Night Ranger (of "Sister Christian" fame) will not be playing at the Live Earth show.

Eric replies: Maybe that's why Sen. Inhofe is so opposed to this whole thing ...

[Flannery]

Instead of referring to people as "Friend David," I think you should give them the titles of Brother and Sister, like "Brother David" or "Sister Christian."