Isn't Al Gore rich though? I'm bothered when the elite speak of others as if they're not part of that 1%.
> “I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making”
In any case, it's clear that he's not talking about all the rich.
>“I mean that those with access to large amounts of money and raw power,” says Gore, “have been able to subvert all reason and fact in collective decision making. The Koch brothers are the largest funders of climate change denial. And ExxonMobil claims it has stopped, but it really hasn’t. It has given a quarter of a billion dollars in donations to climate denial groups. It’s clear they are trying to cripple our ability to respond to this existential threat.”
It's a common technique to split a quote like this to identify the speaker and while it's good to be skeptical you should be skeptical of all information, this particular form of quoting is no less and no more infallible to manipulation than the rest of English.
The parent's concern doesn't appear to be whether there was more quoted in the article, but whether the article elided part of the quote as it was originally given. You appear to recognize this in the second half of your comment, so I'm not sure why you conclude that the parent hasn't read the article.
Even if you've so concluded,
> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
As I read the comment in question, the concern was not whether the (article -> comment) reproduction was faithful, but about the original (speech -> article) reproduction. That's not an unreasonable question to carry some skepticism about in the general case, and it's not something that checking the article can answer.
I agree that the cited reason for increased skepticism in this case - the insertion of ", said ..., " - isn't actually cause for increased skepticism.
The truth is that we're all part of the problem, and all part of the solution. Rich people have a greater influence on the direction of the world than the poor, but only because we let them control the debate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV
And it isn't like Congress is poorly compensated. Currently Senators are paid $174,000 a year.
Of course, the power and fame is seductive, so paying below market rate makes a lot of sense.
[0] https://ballotpedia.org/Net_worth_of_United_States_Senators_...
I don't see how this makes him a fraud in the slightest.
Surprisingly, these are often the same people.