Big Al's back

The Nation does a cover story on Al Gore and his efforts to launch a progressive news network, which has somehow morphed into a youth cable channel "Currents".

What began as an effort to challenge Rupert Murdoch and the right-wing domination of the corporate media has transformed into a business proposition to lure a youth audience with lofty rhetoric, new technology and pop-culture content. Gore and Hyatt didn't have TV experience, so they ceded creative control to industry people who did. Along the way, "democratizing" the media--their buzzword from the get-go, which they described as giving space to ordinary young people--became more important than politics or elevating television's dismal content. What emerges on August 1, Current's launch date, could re-semble an interactive grad-school version of MTV.

Al also recently gave a speech to an Moveon.org audience covered on C-Span where he expounded on a range of issues including the current controversy over Republican efforts to change senate rules to effectively alter traditional checks and balances and fill the courts with radical right wingers, otherwise known as the "nuclear option."