Ted Turner, Mouth of the Leftist South
Seventy-two year old Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III, the Mouth of the South, Captain Outrageous, isn't exactly a star in the Hollywoodian sense but has utilized his status as a media mogul in the same way fellow celebrities such as Sean Penn have used theirs, to gain a false air of credibility on subjects they know little or nothing about.
I call it the PCS, the Pompous Celeb Syndrome, characteristic of people who firmly believe that fame and fortune confer insight and wisdom.
Former VP Al Gore is another notable terminally afflicted with PCS. In fact, he and Turner are virtual philosophical clones on the issue of global warming: Both feel we are all doomed unless we listen to them. The chief distinction between the two is that Gore makes money on his baloney and Turner gives away his money to convince gullible Americans to buy into his baloney.
Gore and Turner enjoyed similar upbringings, elite southern schools with all the attendant trappings, compliments of being a scion of a Tennessee Democrat political family in Gore's case, compliments of a being the progeny of nouveau riches billboard magnate in Turner's. Later, Al muddled along in pot-hazed mediocrity at Yale, Ted sailed through Brown then was expelled and went into billboards after his father's suicide.
Gore managed to fool Tipper for 30 years until he was caught trying to massage a masseuse and Turner ran through three wives including a decade with Hanoi Jane Fonda.
Another major Gore-Turner difference is that Al is just dumb and greedy and Ted is a self-obsessed, certifiable lunatic.
Turner's reference to practicing Catholics as "Jesus freaks" and his characterization of pro-lifers as "bozos" are relatively dismissable as mere ravings of a bigoted, intolerant oaf. So. too, can his advocacy for banning males from public office for a century because they've screwed up the planet.
However, Ted Turner's apocalyptic warnings that mankind will go extinct and/or cannibalistic within 3 or 4 decades is too reminiscent of another PCS sufferer, another Ted, Ted Danson, to be easily dismissed.
Oceanographic "expert" Danson predicted the death of our oceans and their primary inhabitants twenty-three years ago. I'm still eating and enjoying fish.
Turner must feel neglected since he told a UN group that we're all gonna die!
Well, he didn't phrase his words in exactly that terminology. He simply said, based on zero facts, that "climate change," formerly "global warming," formerly "global cooling," in view of some mysterious and unsubstantiated overwhelming "evidence," proves climate change is "probably the most serious-and, in all fairness, the most complex-problem that humanity has ever faced."
It's good to know Turner was being fair. Less good was his typically-liberal debasement and condescion toward the intelligence of Americans when he added, "It is really easy to understand how some people don't get it, because it's so complex and complicated." (http://bit.ly/kBwLHO)
Ted Turner and Al Gore and Ted Danson and the rest of the PCS crew completely "get it," can grasp "complex and complicated" matters because, well, because they're liberal members of the Pompous Celeb Syndrome crew. We non-members, the great unwashed mass of Americans, are simply too doltish to understand.
I call it the PCS, the Pompous Celeb Syndrome, characteristic of people who firmly believe that fame and fortune confer insight and wisdom.
Former VP Al Gore is another notable terminally afflicted with PCS. In fact, he and Turner are virtual philosophical clones on the issue of global warming: Both feel we are all doomed unless we listen to them. The chief distinction between the two is that Gore makes money on his baloney and Turner gives away his money to convince gullible Americans to buy into his baloney.
Gore and Turner enjoyed similar upbringings, elite southern schools with all the attendant trappings, compliments of being a scion of a Tennessee Democrat political family in Gore's case, compliments of a being the progeny of nouveau riches billboard magnate in Turner's. Later, Al muddled along in pot-hazed mediocrity at Yale, Ted sailed through Brown then was expelled and went into billboards after his father's suicide.
Gore managed to fool Tipper for 30 years until he was caught trying to massage a masseuse and Turner ran through three wives including a decade with Hanoi Jane Fonda.
Another major Gore-Turner difference is that Al is just dumb and greedy and Ted is a self-obsessed, certifiable lunatic.
Turner's reference to practicing Catholics as "Jesus freaks" and his characterization of pro-lifers as "bozos" are relatively dismissable as mere ravings of a bigoted, intolerant oaf. So. too, can his advocacy for banning males from public office for a century because they've screwed up the planet.
However, Ted Turner's apocalyptic warnings that mankind will go extinct and/or cannibalistic within 3 or 4 decades is too reminiscent of another PCS sufferer, another Ted, Ted Danson, to be easily dismissed.
Oceanographic "expert" Danson predicted the death of our oceans and their primary inhabitants twenty-three years ago. I'm still eating and enjoying fish.
Turner must feel neglected since he told a UN group that we're all gonna die!
Well, he didn't phrase his words in exactly that terminology. He simply said, based on zero facts, that "climate change," formerly "global warming," formerly "global cooling," in view of some mysterious and unsubstantiated overwhelming "evidence," proves climate change is "probably the most serious-and, in all fairness, the most complex-problem that humanity has ever faced."
It's good to know Turner was being fair. Less good was his typically-liberal debasement and condescion toward the intelligence of Americans when he added, "It is really easy to understand how some people don't get it, because it's so complex and complicated." (http://bit.ly/kBwLHO)
Ted Turner and Al Gore and Ted Danson and the rest of the PCS crew completely "get it," can grasp "complex and complicated" matters because, well, because they're liberal members of the Pompous Celeb Syndrome crew. We non-members, the great unwashed mass of Americans, are simply too doltish to understand.
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