I don't think he is an unreasonable man. It just sounds like he is a pompous jerk. Shame on him.

Ralph Nader is extraordinarily old. I'm sure he's fairly up on new technologies, but how odd would it be for someone to be pissed that Paul Mccartney doesn't read Pitchfork? Although he might. Jus' sayin.

I was a former employee of the man when he was granted a low power television lisence in Buffalo. He has so many projects he is never directly inviolved in any of them. He relies too much on a middle layer of managers. During my time under him we went without health insurance (the organization 'forgot' to pay for it), we blew a 2 year budget in 2 months and couldn't broadcast a signal beyond our ow parking lot. Then the manager was replaced with someone new (we pushed for and supported this change, hoping things would imnprove), but she turned around and replaced the entire staff with her boyfreind & family. 'Ralph' was deaf, dumb & blind to it all. And this was all well before the Bush/Gore/Nader debacle.

forced to buy his book to get an autograph (how's that for consumerism?)

Good point! Also sucks about all that... I wonder if he's always been bitter or if it's just the result of the Presidential bid defeats and so on.

Lets not forget all of the great things Nader has done for this country, and for the consumer movement. The EPA, OSHA, seatbelts, no smoking on planes, and the list goes on and on. Just because someone had a bad experience with an old man doesn't mean we should collectively rag on the guy. I think his legacy speaks for itself.

Also, I am pretty sure that if we had free open presidential debates that were not controlled by big corporations and the two headed monster the Republicrats, Nader would've destroyed Bush and Gore in those debates.

The only thing Nader's "destroyed" is the country.

@suburbancowboy:

AGreee you can't judge Nader on this anecdote.

But Nader would have "destroyed" Bush and Gore in a debate?

I think you need some perspective. Unless you hold extreme left wing views (which most people don't), Nader's not very compelling.

@matt1978:

How has Nader "destroyed" the country?

@timmus:

It's standard practice to have to buy the book at a book signing. Everybody usually knows that going in. I'm pretty sure they had a sign stating that. My guess is the author of this piece wasn't paying attention.

I doubt if Nader ever really thought he had a chance to be President. My guess is, he thought it was a good podium to get some of his programs some publicity.

I for one am not jumping on the Ralph Nader bandwagon, because for every good thing he has done, he's shamefully neglected even more. This just goes to prove what I've been saying about him for years -- he's out of touch. He's been spending so much time in his role as public crusader, that life has passed him by. He's a bureaucrat of a different stripe. Seat belts: great idea. Air bags: waste of money required because some idiots won't wear their seat belts and other idiots can't be bothered to drive with common courtesy. His automobile safety mantra was taken up by the auto companies to sell SUVs to frightened suburban housewives.

He's not evil, just obtuse. And his campaign for President have been laughable at best, making him even more fringe and drowning out any message he may actually have. He needs to retire, and let someone else take the lead. I think the Consumerist is the place where this starts, because here, customers are fighting back against those who would simply take for granted that we will buy their cheap merchandise and lousy service and not make a fuss. Who among the ranks of the Consumerist faithful will rise to meet the challenge?!?

Nader is an interesting, if not politically confused, man who seems to me to be well intentioned, if not sometimes over zealous.
I respect him, but disagree with him politically.
I don't think he's 'destroyed' the country, but back when I voted democrat he was directly responsible for swinging the vote to republicans by luring voters to blow their votes on a candidate with no chance of winning.
I'll probably never forgive him for that, even though I won't vote democrat again...

someone, please explain what is the point of Emily's rant against Nader?

-he didn't sign her bad (who cares)
-he doesn't read the consumerist (uh...ok)
-she gets back at him by buying a starbucks (wtf?)

and now these random hateful comments about how he's somehow still upset about not winning the freaking election?

no offense to consumerist, but nader/public citizen is in a completely different league:

nader: seat belt laws :: consumerist : jo-ann fabric shit capades

Emily said,
Anyway, my point is after being sort of forced to buy his book to get an autograph (how's that for consumerism?) I now find out that he has never heard of Consumerist, so in essence he sucks all around.
Emily is wrong.
The fact that Ralph Nader hasn't heard of a blog isn't the reason he sucks. He sucks because his pro-consumerist values have been replaced by an anti-establishment point of view.

Is this a story?

First, any time I have ever went to one of these things for ANYONE, politician or not, they are there to sell something (in this case a book). I have yet to see anyone appearing that was just signing any random thing you give them... you either buy what theyre selling, or they have photos of themself for sale that you can purchase and have autographed.

Second, regardless of what you think of Nader, he is from the "series of tubes" generation... he probaly still calls the internet " the America Online."

and Third... is this a story?

Yeah, and the Corvair was a cool car too. I don't give a shit what anybody says!

Nader didn't destroy America, he just made it possible for Bush to do it.

@Jesse in Japan: Amen

@Chicago7: That's probably true, but it seems kind of ironic when candidates do that. The mass media is too collectively stupid to discuss issues, so all they do is judge the viability of candidates - and non-viable candidates are ignored.

I definitely agree Nader screwed this country, he was too self-centered to realize what he did in 2000 was wrong. He claims Gore and Bush would have been the same, that just shows how big an idiot he is.

Why is this post tagged "activism?"

This is one of the reasons that political fame doesn't appeal to me. You can work your entire life on good and useful activities, and kids who have no idea who you are outside what they saw on CNN will hate you because you don't sign their bag.

I don't care what in the hell he does as long as he doesn't ever campaign for political office again.

My brain won't even retain the good things he's done in the past anymore. Whenever I hear about him, I just think about what an egocentric, toxic jerk he is.

He should take up a hobby like knitting or parcheesi.

money - that's his and most others sole concern

@whereismyrobot: What? Buying coffee at Starbucks isn't activism enough for ya? ^_^

I definitely agree Nader screwed this country, he was too self-centered to realize what he did in 2000 was wrong. He claims Gore and Bush would have been the same, that just shows how big an idiot he is.

Not idiot. Liar. The word you're looking for is Liar.

Nader is a idiot. Its well documented many of his attacks on capitalism are in response to not being able to go after what he really wants to (like the Covair, which his original target was the VW Beetle, and had been fixed by the time Nader decided to set his sights on it)

He's only a public crusader for as much as it makes him money, and gives him a good job. Thats IT. Anyone who believes otherwise is sorely deluded to his intentions. If you honestly believed he wants to protect the consumer in the US, I have a set of ceramic steak knives to sell you for 20 bucks.

@fejjnagaf: "luring voters to blow their votes on a candidate with no chance of winning."

What?

Since when is voting for the candidate who best reflects a voter's view a waste?

Perhaps all the people who became disenchanted with the Clintonized Democratic Party decided to use what little political power they possessed in order to send a message to an organization which they felt abandoned its ideals?

True: Nader had no realistic chance to win.

False: Nader allowed W to win.

This seems to be the argument used by whichever party loses an election during a three-party race. (Anderson allowed Regan to win; Perot allowed Clinton to win; and now Nader allowed Bush to win.) Interestingly enough, all three of these Presidents won re-election with a larger margin than in their original three-party races.

Nader's voters in 2000 did, in essence, what the Consumerist seeks to accomplish: Offer an avenue for a small but motivated group of ordinary citizens to tell entrenched interests that their lack of attention to delivering on what they supposedly promise will come at a price.

Still, Nader did seem like a bit of a pompous ass in how he dealt with the OP. A celebrity should still be polite, even if he has been working all day signing books.

My take on Nader is that he's a little less involved in the rest of the world than the rest of us. I think he serves an important role in the political life of the country--sort of the Greek chorus, if you will.

He's what my Mom would call an odd duck. I'm not going to judge him for not signing bags or not knowing what the Consumerist is. I didn't know about the Consumerist until I knew about the Consumerist, after all.

Why are seatbelt laws a good thing?

I'm not a big fan of a nanny state. How do you thin the herd if you legislate common-sense?

@GiselleBeardchen:

Not only was it cool, it was quite safe by the standards of the day. "Unsafe at any speed" was just hot air.

What? Vader's alive?

Seriously though I thought this guy was dead. He's old enough to be dead.

@Coldnorth

Naders a GOP puppet and a snake oil salesmen. Everyone knew it at the time except the the naive idiots hoodwinked into voting for him.

he indeed cost Gore the election, as the vote wouldnt have been as close to allow bush's SCOTUS boys to halt the recount.

Next time you go to have your book signed, maybe ask Nader how he feels about his role in the killing of 100s of thousands in the middle east, our new legacy as a torture state, and the loss of the Bill of Rights.

me bitter? damn right.

Nader can go rot.

Nader and Ted Stevens should get together and figure out these tubes.

@WNW: oh please. the idiots that don't want to wear seatbelts (for whatever reason) will be slowly thinned out, as it should be. just because there is ample evidence that seatbelts save lives, result in less trauma in auto accidents, and wearing them means cops won't write you a ticket for not wearing them is just not enough reason for some people. er, some idiots.

@jgkelley: Old he may be, but a good part of his portfolio (something like $10Mil) comes from Cisco Systems (thanks to his wiki page reporting his presidential run disclosure.) He knows technology when he sees it.

That said, if he's still depending solely on books to get his message across, he's sadly behind the times.

And, Jebus, if he's gonna whore like that, he could've signed the girl's bag. Next thing you know he'll be shaving his head, donning a black wig and showing his vajayjay as he gets out of cars.

@choinski: I feel for you...I worked for him once, too. :-P

@forever_knight:

And their kids, too? Is that OK by you?

ralph new he wasn't going to make it as president, he just wanted to split the vote.

He's old enough to be dead.

@dualityshift: Everybody's old enough to be dead.

Ralph Nader Doesn't Read The Consumerist
Do many politicians read The Consumerist? The OP said he hadn't heard of it, not that he thought it was bad or boring. No sense in getting all huffy just because someone hasn't heard of something.

One would assume part of running for President is having the wisdom to look around and make reasoned judgements about the political landscape and think through the consequences of your decisions. Granted, third tier candidates with 2% of the vote know they are not going to win, and use their time in the spotlight to call attemtion to whatever it is they need to say. Nader was oblivious to the damage he was doing in 2000. He was in denial when he contemplated to run in 2004. And even today he will never, ever admit to his role in getting Doofus Dubya elected.

Ralph Nader has made many valuable contributions for consumer rights in our country but, let's face it, his good days are over. Now he's more celebrity (or pariah, depending on how you look at it) than he is advocate. He needs to retire or at least give up the God-complex he appears to have developed over the years.

@forever_knight: you are spot on with that argument! thin out the blight that is the non-wearers of seat belts! wipe their scourge from the planet!

this is a slow & painful process though. there are millions of people riding in cars AT THIS VERY MOMENT without their seat belts on & they're arriving at their destinations WITHOUT HARM! *GASP* THE HORROR! we absolutely cannot have this.

i propose a new initiative to cure the infestation of non-seat-belt-wearers. instead of "click it or ticket", it shall now be "buckle it or bullet".

& as before, we shall bypass the traditional method of legislating this measure by including a mandatory provision for release of funds (generated on the state level in the form of an excise tax which is constitutionally mandated to be redistributed equitably) in the next highway bill. if cops don't start shooting violators on site, then no fed bucks for the d.o.t. trucks!

is doing the wrong thing for the right purpose still righteous?

The ageism on this site is disturbing. The idea that someone is old (which appears to mean over 40) and therefore out of touch (as defined by not having heard of one of the bazillion Web sites in the world) is laughable.

I'm well over 50 and I can guarantee you I know more about current technology than 90 percent of the people posting here.

(And Emily, you go to what is essentially a book signing and are outraged that the author wants to sign only copies of his book? Just goes to show you both the young and the old can be equally clueless.)

@WNW: The problem is that it doesn't thin the herd, it just raises your emergency room costs and insurance premiums by covering non-seatbelt wearers.

Now if they changed the law to require cash-only payment upfront to treat non-seatbelt wearers and non-helmet-wearing motorcyclists, I would support that completely.

I just can't believe that people can actually blame a third party candidate for "spoiling" an election. It is the absolute paragon of self-delusion and shirking off responsibility.

When only around around 1/3 of the eligible voters actually get out and vote, and when Republicans typically skew higher on percentage of likely voters who bother to show up and vote, WHY for the LOVE OF GOD did the Democrats just wring their hands and watch Nader "steal away" that "essential" sliver of Democratic voters?

Were they lazy? Were they naive? Were they arrogant? Were they negligent? Were they bought off? Were they incompetent?

The blame game can be fun and certainly helps in sulking, but it really isn't much good for actually figuring out what happened.

Isn't it more likely that of the 5% of the vote that went to Nader, probably two-thirds of that group were NOT likely to vote for the Democrats absent their Green / third party candidate? What does that leave? About 1 to 1.5 percent of the voters who might have voted for Gore NOT voting for Gore... But again, these DEMOCRATS were mad at their own party. THEY voted AGAINST Gore.

Be bitter about the result all you like. I think we still have that right here in the USA. But don't ignore the fact that it was the apathy of millions of likely Democratic voters who never showed up at the poll that day plus the anger and disillusionment of one or two million more who tipped the election into so precarious a situation as to allow the ramshackle voting system in Florida, the teams of lawyers on both sides of the aisle and finally the Supreme Court to give W an Electoral College victory.

In the USA, now as ever, we get the government we deserve.

@choinski: I voted for Nader in 2000. I voted in California, a state which Gore won by over 1.5 million votes. Had I voted for either Gore or Bush, my vote truly would not have mattered. Had the Green Party managed to get the 3% (or was it 5?) of the popular vote, we'd have 3 parties getting federal funding at election time instead of just the two. Sucks that they didn't. Nader didn't win the election for Bush. If Gore had been more compelling, he would have won (even though he really did...ugh...).

If the media would portray presidential candidates as individuals with varying opinions, as opposed to just which team they play for, maybe Gore would have won. This isn't sports, where supporting your team for arbitray and irrational reasons are part of the fun. Voting "Republican" because you're a "Republican" is just plain stupid. If your "team" won the 2000 Presidential election, you're partially responsible for the deaths of our soldiers in Iraq.

@rjhiggins (& other similar comments): "(And Emily, you go to what is essentially a book signing and are outraged that the author wants to sign only copies of his book? Just goes to show you both the young and the old can be equally clueless.)"

when i was younger, i went to a signing event to get a baseball signed by mike schmidt. i wanted him to sign my baseball b/c it was a ball i caught at a phillies game that had other teammates' signatures.

do you know, he would only sign a ball purchased there for like $20? even when my dad offered to buy the ball if he would just sign the other one i had, his "agent" (or whatever) refused.

it was right around then that i stopped caring about baseball...

@Brian Gee:
Ah yes, because only republicans supported action in Iraq.
I forgot.
I also forgot how well the democrat party has done in bringing troops home and showing them support.
Perhaps you haven't heard about the democrat proposal to label the deaths in turkey a genocide, but allow me to fill you in on what the left is really doing.
See, our military relies on turkey right now as a supply line directly to our troops. Silly things like fuel and water come through turkey.
And now, the left wants to destroy our political relationship with them so our troops can't get fuel or drinking water, effectively ending the war by putting our troops directly in harms way.
Spare me the political brow-beating.
There are still those of us who support our efforts in Iraq and haven't been poisoned by the rhetoric from the left.
We all want the troops home. Some of us want to bring them home when we've stabilized Iraq and given the people there a chance to self-govern. The left wants to hurt the world view of our country and take drinking water out of the hands of soldiers on the ground.
That sure is something to be proud of!
Why LEGISLATE an end to the war and be upfront about it when you can simply label something a genocide, destroy our credibility with a partner nation, and end the war over something that happened almost 100 years ago and no one but the democrats is interested in right now?
After all, that's the 'ethical' congress folks like you voted in. Honest, upfront people who claimed to want to end pork projects, then shut down the agency that tracks them and refuses, with alarming regularity, to disclose pork funding.
Ethical?
Yeah. Riiiight.
Nader's effect on the election did hurt gore's chances, like it or not. While he wasn't DIRECTLY responsible for Bush winning, he played his part.
Someone asked how voting for the 'best man' is a waste?
Because those votes would likely have resulted in Gore winning certain districts that he lost.
Hence, a vote for nader was a de facto vote for Bush.

The man is a moron and an unwiting (selfish) tool of the Republican party. Now I learn he's a jerk too? He handed the country to the Republicans in 2000. Good job Nader!!! Lets remember the Republican party even funded his efforts to get on the ballots of several states.