After snippets of his Today show appearance had the chance to rattle around the news cycle all day, Gore tried to promote his book again in an interview with the Associated Press that hit the web after the end of the business day. The AP seems like they went a little easier on the former politician. It's unclear whether they asked him about Al Jazeera's funding coming from the bottom of an oil well, but the word "oil" did not make it into the final article. "Fossil fuels" did, but only because Gore said the phrase in a familiar diatribe about how we need to shift our energy consumption away from them. He didn't miss the chance to defend his selling Current TV to Al Jazeera, though, nor did he miss the opportunity to take a potshot at the MSM.

Gore apparently hadn't forgotten about his rough interview that morning, because the same defense about Al Jazeera's climate change coverage came out. "They're commercial-free, they're hard-hitting," he said of Al Jazeera. "They're very respected and capable, and their climate coverage has been outstanding, in-depth, extensive, far more so than any network currently on the air in the U.S." Of the media landscape, he said, "We won every major award in television journalism, and we were profitable each year, but it's difficult for an independent network to compete in an age of conglomerate." Gore added, "Corporations are not people. Might doesn't make right. Money is not speech."

In conclusion, Al Gore thinks Al Jazeera is awesome, regardless of whether or not it's bankrolled by greenhouse gases-to-be. Current TV is superior to any mainstream network, regardless of the fact that virtually nobody watched it. And money is dumb, regardless of the fact that Al Gore seems to be collecting buckets of it in a giant tank so that he can swim in a pool of gold coins a la Scrooge McDuck.

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.