Reply #23: The main reason phonies like Milbank call Al Gore "pedantic" [View All]

is because they are hoping to dissuade readers from ever buying or reading his books. They are trying to substitute their own snarky misleading propaganda for the author's actual words.

Anyone who has actually read The Assault on Reason knows it's the complete opposite of pedantic! I thought the writing was unusually crisp and clean and direct, probably the result of careful editing as well as the author's desire to communicate an important truth about American culture to as wide an audience as possible.

I read Earth in the Balance immediately after The Assault on Reason. I know it's his earlier book but I had never read it before. The sentences are a little longer as a rule, but hardly convoluted or "pedantic."

I don't know who Milbank's mythical "Iowa hog farmer" or average American is, but it obviously isn't me because his column is an insult to my intelligence and reading comprehension. And if Al Gore is annoyingly pedantic and talks down to the American people, then so were the founding fathers and ESPECIALLY that annoying pedantic elitist Thomas Jefferson!

One thing that comes through loud and clear in An Incomvenient Truth is that the American system of representative democracy was SUPPOSED to be comprehensible to the average literate American citizen, and not only comprehensible but ultimately controlled by those citizens in their totality.