As media in America fall all over themselves with glee at the thought of the Global Warmingist-in-Chief winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Wednesday's findings by a British judge that Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" contained nine material falsehoods has prompted a request to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to strip the movie's producers of the Oscars they received in February for "Best Documentary."
How delicious.
As reported by The West Australian Friday:
A conservative think-tank in New Zealand has written to the president of the America's Academy Awards asking that the Oscar awarded to the director of an Inconvenient Truth be taken back.
Former New Zealand MP Dr Muriel Newman, director of web-based think-tank the New Zealand Centre for Political Research, said she had taken the measure in response to a British High Court ruling Thursday.
This is her actual press release (emphasis added):
"With the release of the British High Court judgement overnight that found that ‘An Inconvenient Truth' was littered with nine inconvenient untruths, it is clear that Al Gore embellished the truth to create dramatic effect (more details).
"Given that the Oscar Award was presented in the documentary category and not the drama category, the only appropriate action now is for the Academy to rescind the Award as it was clearly inappropriately classed as a documentary.
"The truth, as inconvenient as it is to Al Gore, is that his so-called documentary contained critical distortions that are quite contrary to the principles of good documentary journalism. Good documentaries should be factually correct. Clearly this documentary is not.
"This situation is not unlike that confronting sports bodies, when their sports "stars" are found to be drug cheats. In such cases, the sportsmen and women are stripped of their medals and titles, with the next-place getter elevated. While this is an extremely unpleasant duty, it is necessary if the integrity of competitive sport is to be protected.
"Just this week Olympic gold medal winner Marion Jones has been stripped of her titles and medals.
"If the integrity of the Academy Awards is to remain intact, is wholly appropriate that Al Gore be stripped of his ‘Best Documentary' film Oscar.
"If the Academy wishes to acknowledge the work of people like Al Gore they should form a new category of film called ‘Political Drama'. That's how ‘An Inconvenient Truth' should be categorised", Dr Newman said.
Obviously, I couldn't agree more.
As a sidebar, since the British court announcement Wednesday, only Investor's Business Daily and the Washington Times reported the errors in Gore's film to American print readers.
Shockingly, the Associated Press published a piece on this judge's ruling at 4:07PM EST Thursday. It will be interesting to see how many newspapers cover it in their print editions Friday.
As for television news outlets, only Fox News found this judge's decision newsworthy. Not one word from CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, or NBC.
Color me unsurprised.
Update 10-12 14:28 | Matthew Sheffield. NewsBusters has forwarded this request to various people within the Academy of Motion Pictures. We're not exactly holding our breath, but we'll see.
—Noel Sheppard is an economist, business owner, and Associate Editor of NewsBusters.