Newest wingnut conspiracy: Al Gore supports eugenics! (really was talking about empowering women)

[alp227]

Brian Merchant writes in Slate.com "How To Spark a Right-Wing Frenzy" on June 25: (via drudge RETORT)

Last Monday, I watched Al Gore deliver the keynote address at a low-profile conference. He gave a pleasant, even boring, speech about how video games can inspire social change. Afterward, there was a brief discussion that touched on global warming, education, and women's empowerment. I recorded a couple snippets with my Flip camera and popped them onto YouTube.

By Wednesday, I was receiving scores of messages from far-right commenters. Many heralded me as a hero of their cause; others simply sought an outlet for more Gore-bashing. I'll explain.

Among the videos I uploaded was a shaky, minute-long clip in which Gore mentions that empowering women stabilizes communities and economies, and has the added benefit of reducing pollution in the long run. He advocates for lifting child survival rates, educating girls, and providing access to birth control.

Although I had only posted the clip to a blog I help run called the Utopianist, the far-right media soon discovered it and went ballistic. Longtime Gore critic Chris Horner sent it to the climate-denial website Watts Up With That, and it ricocheted to noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars site, then to Examiner.com, the Blaze and over to the Fox Nation blog. Before long, my video was the subject of the most popular story on the Daily Caller.
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The headlines were sensational: "Al Gore branches out into population control theory" (Watts Up With That), "Have Less Kids! Gore Pushes Population Control" (Fox), "Gore promoting fewer children to curb pollution" (Daily Caller).

All this from a quote plucked, free of context, from a grainy 60-second YouTube video. Which, I should mention, not a single reporter contacted me about, despite my eponymous profile handle. To my knowledge, the text of Gore's speech isn't yet available, and I haven't been able to find any other public footage of it. Not even the mainstream media outlets sought the full context of the quote. Only a lone Media Matters researcher seeking to debunk the anti-Gore froth bothered to ask me about the background of the meme-generating clip.

Here's my transcription of the segment of Gore's speech that conspiracy theorists found so controversial:

You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children. You have to lift child-survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families. And most important, you have to educate girls and empower women. And that's the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.

I had posted the clip without thinking twice. The "have to"s don't help, but Gore is clearly saying that better education, better medical care, and better access to birth control make for healthier societies. How nefarious.

Family planning is a contentious topic, especially coming from a figure as polarizing as Gore. But to rile readers over a quote this dry, the headlines shouted about "population control," which clearly implies a bureaucratic agenda to crack down on reproductive rights. (Family planning, on the other hand, broadens reproductive rights by providing women with access to birth control, education, and other resources.)

[jwirr]

1. Eugenics is a whole different ball of wax than birth control. My family

was the victim of eugenics - the practice of forced sterilization or institutionalization of persons who are targeted because they are disabled, poor or other characteristics that make them costly to society.

Birth control gives a woman control over her own body - no one is forcing her to use it. As usual the rw is totally ignorant about another issue. The people who are bitching are forcing their religious views on others.

I am sure Al knows what he is talking about and that he will be attacked for it.