Beck versus Gore: Frame Off Smack Down I

Al Gore, Glenn Beck, what more could you want in a media frame-off?  How about an extra layer of interpretation by Media Matters?

Successful media framing is using organizing themes (frames) to effectively connect the various elements of a news story (headlines, quotes, visuals, and narratives) into a packaged interpretation of the facts that gets the viewer (me and you) to understand the facts in whatever way the media packager (individual, network, website) intends (see Cox, p. 163.)  Whew!  "Easier said than done," you say?  "That must take all day," you say?  Well check out this video I found on the Media Matters website.  In just a 2 minute 11 second clip I count 3 layers of framing.  Much of it is simply name-calling and mockery, but I guess that passes for framing too these days.

I'm counting at least three layers of framing at work here:

1. Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States, Nobel Prize Winner, and producer of "An Inconvenient Truth," compares people who do not believe in global warming to folks who don't believe that the Earth is round.  He also compares non-global warming types to those who think that the space program (at least the part where we landed on the moon) is a fake.
2. Glenn Beck, Fox News Anchor (and not much else) gesticulates, mocks, and abuses science in the name of discrediting Gore and climate change science.
3. Media Matters, the online site dedicated to rooting out media bias (mostly in right-wing media, apparently) in turn mocks Beck, as a "climate change scientist."
4. John Zavodny, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Unity College, teacher of this here course, professional smart-ass, and amateur media analyst, mocks them all.

Did I say 3-layers? 

I guess that's 4. 

I don't teach math for a reason.