AP Says It's Official: Muslim Network Devours ManBearPig

As a follow-up to our earlier post, proof that Muggeridge’s Law, which posits that real life will always trump satire, is alive and well: “Osama bin Laden embraces his inner Al Gore,” the Washington Post noted in October of 2010, spotting one wealthy radical totalitarian quoting the precepts of another, before OBL died of a serious case of lead poisoning a few months later. Tonight, AP is reporting, “Al-Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore.”

And even AP is taking shots at AlGore these days:

Al-Jazeera, the Pan-Arab news channel that struggled to win space on American cable television, has acquired Current TV, boosting its reach nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes. With a focus on U.S. news, it plans to rebrand the left-leaning news network that cofounder Al Gore couldn’t make relevant.

The former vice president confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling.”

The acquisition lifts Al-Jazeera’s reach beyond a few large U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington, where about 4.7 million homes can now watch Al-Jazeera English.

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a new channel called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists.

You just know that Keith’s already got his resume sent in. Or perhaps he dropped it off way back in September of 2008, when someone with a wicked sense of humor placed MSNBC and Al-Jazeera side by side in the back of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy Center arena  for the Republican National Convention, with Al-Jazeera to the GE-owned network’s right:

Or perhaps newly-independent conservative’s conservative Andrew Sullivan might hop on board. “Al Jazeera: America’s Best News Network?” Sully gushed a year ago. Hey, compared with CNN, he could be right.

(Headline inspired by the comments at Hot Air.)

Update: “Mr. Gore and his partners were eager to complete the deal by Dec. 31, lest it be subject to higher tax rates that took effect on Jan. 1.”

Robert Conquest, call your office.

More: “Glenn Beck has confirmed that he had approached Current TV about buying the cable channel but was turned down because he was not “aligned” with the network’s point of view. So is it any surprise that Al Jazeera was given the go-ahead?”