We learned last week that former Vice President and serial climate change alarmist Al Gore sold his small TV network, Current TV, to Al Jazeera for a half-billion dollars. 

Nice deal Al. 

There has been a fair bit of reaction to the Arab news network, who many see as sympathetic to terrorists and certainly anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-semitic, operating in the US.  My $ 0.02 is that I have no fear of the marketplace of ideas, so bring it on.  BUT, both sides have to be free to bring their arguments to the table.  Political correctness being what it is, a lot of the critics of the Arab and Muslim worlds have been silenced, and a pro-Islamist message could go unanswered.

That got me to thinking about what would make me less queasy about this network going on the air here?  The perfect solution would be if the governments of Iran and Saudi Arabia allowed Rupert Murdock and Roger Ailes to start an Arabic/Farsi translated news network in their countries.  The new channel could do some fun things like:

- Have a talk show every day hosted by Charles Krauthammer, Michael Ledeen and Andrew McCarthy.

- Replay any episodes of Food Network programs that feature recipes with pork fat (would pretty much include all the back catalogue of "Emeril Live!")

- Have a midnight showing every week, like a Rocky Horror Picture Show sort of thing, of Zero Dark Thirty or Raid on Entebbe. 

You see? The possibilities are endless. 

 

But all kidding aside, we must keep in mind that the money generated by the English language Al Jazeera would support it's much more vehemently anti-West Arabic version.  If you want more on that, check out the website for MEMRI, the Middle East Media Information Institute.  They are the good folks who translate a lot of Middle East news reporting into English, so we can see what they're saying about us. 

 

A lot of it is very scary stuff.