Mr. Gore likes to say ‘our democracy has been hacked by big money,’ but he has done some hacking himself in his many rent-seeking activities. His Current TV payday, partly at the expense of the Qataris, partly at the expense of U.S. cable subscribers and shareholders, must be especially piquant to Americans exhausted by Mr. Gore’s incessant moralizing. What would be nice to know, and what a full airing of the legal record might show, and is at what point Current stopped being a sincere experiment in liberal news and entertainment. At what point did it morph into a scheme to shake down TV distributors and flip the carriage rights for what BusinessWeek estimates was $450 million in profit to Mr. Gore and partners.
The more people talk about equality, the more they’re involved in a system that promotes special deals for insiders. The more people talk about money in politics, the more they’re involved in crooked insider deals.