I knew our Al would win the Nobel Prize. Just think — he’s won an Oscar, an Emmy, an a Nobel Prize in the same year. How cool is that?
Of course, as the Talking Dog says,
Notwithstanding that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences liked him enough to award him an Oscar, and now, the Norwegian committee charged with the prize has awarded former Vice-President Al Gore the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in publicizing the dangers of climate change, the American press corps will still tell us that Gore is stiff, wooden and boring, sighs too much, and of course (wait for it…) he’s fat. Let’s face it… notwithstanding that he is a happily married man (and a decent man) who would never dream of such a thing, with an Oscar and a Nobel Peace Prize in his pocket… is there any doubt that this man could get laid anywhere he wants, anywhere in the world? Well, almost anywhere, I suppose, as the Washington press corps would still tell us of his made-up inadequacies (inadequacies they made up, of course, because (1) they don’t like him, (2) their corporate masters don’t like him and (3) Mr. Scaife doesn’t like him.)
And while he could be getting laid anywhere, is there anyone (who isn’t mentally defective, such as a huge portion of the American electorate) who wouldn’t rather have a beer with this guy than, say, the current idiot who infests our White House (who purportedly doesn’t even drink!!! Hah, press corps? You’d “rather have a beer with” a MAN WHO DOESN’T DRINK? WTF kind of fun is THAT??? Hah, press corps?)
Today all the rightie bloggers are flopping around in high derision mode. Bleep ’em.
I will say that the Right has done a good job planting disinformation in the press about climate change. As Mark Lynas writes,
Where does science end and politics begin? On climate change this is a particularly thorny question. For over a decade now we have seen a heated and increasingly bitter debate between environmentalists and sceptics about to what extent the globe is warming, who is responsible, and what (if anything) we ought to do about it.
Seemingly presented with two sets of “experts” and with no idea which side is telling the truth, the lay public is left confused, as opinion polls show. The real truth – that all the major scientific questions about global warming have long been settled, and largely support the long-standing environmentalist position – remains obscured by continuing political trench warfare and media debate. This failure to reflect the political debate on global warming, despite its largely accurate portrayal of climate science, is why Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth, was dismissed as “one-sided” by the high court.
That is not to say that Gore got everything 100% right. … All of these points, however, are trivial details in the context of the main argument of the film, which is unambiguously correct in its portrayal of mainstream scientific understanding of climate change.
And there is speculation whether the Nobel Prize will inspire Al to get into the presidential race. I don’t think he will, for the same reasons Eric Pooley gives at Time —
He put himself in position to win the Nobel by committing to an issue bigger than himself — the fight to save the planet. If he runs for president now, he’ll be hauling himself back up onto that dusty old pedestal, signaling that he is, after all, the most important thing in his world. Sure, he’d say he was doing it because he feels a moral obligation to intervene in a time of unparalleled crisis. But running for president is by definition an act of hubris, and Gore has spent the past couple of years defying his ego and sublimating himself to a larger goal. Running for president would mean returning to a role he’d already transcended. He’d turn into — again — just another politician, when a lot of people thought he might be something better than that.
But oh, I wish he would run. If he declared I think he’d be the front-runner overnight. I’d endorse him, anyway.
But oh, I wish he would run.
Please, please, please, please, please, please, please…
Al Gore, congratulations on having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Now it is time to announce your wish to become America’s president, take your seat in the White House, and be the leader we have all been waiting for to move beyond the corrupt system of Empire and towards Earth community. Kudos to the Nobel Committee for realizing that sustainability is peace.
Run, Al, run!
The nation turns its lonely eyes to you…
PS: All of the award’s were well deserved. Congratulations, Mr. Gore!
Congrats AL on the Nobel Prize. Like Jimmy Carter, Gore has found a new life after leaving office. He will do more good where he is than if he returned to the political area. I just wish he hadn’t worked so hard to distance himself from Bill Clinton in 1999. We wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.
Look: barring some reason for Hillary Clinton to immediately withdraw from the race (some heretofore unvetted scandal, or God forbid, some health reason), then Al Gore coming in to “save us” is not going to happen; Hillary has caught on, and is racing to victory. Frankly, let’s be practical: I’m really hard pressed to think of how the Hillary Clinton Administration will be too much different in an overall policy sense (environment, war/peace, judicial appointments, fiscal responsibility, etc., etc.) than would an Al Gore Administration (acknowledging that as far as I am concerned, Hillary is a flawed real-world politician, and Al Gore walks on water and transcends this world… indeed, he is probably up there with Mandela as a legitimately larger than life figure.) And let’s examine why it is we really don’t think we like HIllary: might it be, at least in part, because we see her through the jaundiced lens that our press presents to us?
So… with a healthy and not-scandal-plagued Hillary dominating the race right now, all candidate Gore would do is divide us. I really would like to see Al and Hillary kiss and make-up– that he not kill off Edwards or Obama by endorsing them, but that he hang back, and see what the actual voters do, and then, if in fact, Hillary does as well as we all think she will, then reconcile, and maybe join the team… my own suggestion is that Al serve as Secretary of State– I cannot think of a better way to heal rifts– both between Al and the Clintons, and between the United States and the rest of humanity– than with this larger than life sainted figure serving as our nation’s chief foreign policy official (imagine the standing of this world with Al Gore in such a role and Bill Clinton as our ambassador extraordinaire!) coupled with Gore having a specific mandate to bring India, China and others on board with a global solution to global warming problems.
Like Al himself always does– let’s think of the country’s interest on this one. Al’s young enough to run in 2016… this could all be win-win-win for everyone, if we see it the right way.
Just saying.
I have to say that, given the state of the planet, I’d prefer him to NOT run for President.
Presidents have to pay attention to all sorts of things, and the next will have to especially focus on getting us out of Iraq and clearing the Bushista apparatchiks out of the bureaucracy.
I’d rather have Al on the climate full-time. Someone competent has got to be, if our civilization is going to make it. It’s really the Most Important Thing to be worrying about, long-term.
I have to assume that Al would have the ear of any Democrat in the office, particularly if he DIDN’T run this time. But he won’t have to get bogged down fighting Congress over the appropriation for the Labor Department.
Tch, Al Gore for President of Earth.
I have to agree with those who think Gore would do more good continuing the extra-Constitutional, enforced-retirement path that the SCOTUS put him on. Oh, absolutely, a Gore presidency 2001-2009 would’ve left the political world a billion times more liveable than it is; but as president, Gore couldn’t have focused obsessively and passionately on climate change. He would have had to make compromises from the Oval Office, every single day, that would have broken his heart.
But yes, yes, yes! We loves us some Al Gore!
Is there any truth to the gossip that Bill and Hillary were detrimental to Gore’s 2000 campaign, and if so, in what form or fashion.
And how does Obama attack Bill and Hillary as mentioned (I was told) by Chris Matthews in his recent assessment?
And while I hear paltry verbiage given to the sad issue of Bush – Clinton dynasty in the American Executive branch, how come nobody mentions that if Hillary wins next thing one knows, little Jebbie Bush is gonna think he deserves his time in the White House? Now that would be some heartbreak hotel!
Just askin’?
I have often wondered about those rumors in regards to Gore and the Clinton dynasty. And yes (cringe) I worry that little Jebb feels his place is really Penn. Ave.. For all of our pre-tense and hyperbole over being the best democracy in the world, this place is ruled by a very small percentage of the population and its quite unlikely any of this will ever change.
Is there any truth to the gossip that Bill and Hillary were detrimental to Gore’s 2000 campaign, and if so, in what form or fashion.
For what it’s worth — this came up during the infamous blogger-Clinton lunch last year. Bill’s version is that he gave the Gore campaign good advice that the Gores ignored.
Just say no to dynasty!
Agree with those here who don’t think Al will run, both because he thinks he can do more for his cause outside of the presidency, and because whichever Dem wins in 2008, they’ll do about as well as Al could in dealiing with the mess the country is in.
Also: I love listening to an intelligent person give a discourse, and this is Al’s normal manner of speaking, but you know as well as I that the flying monkey brigade would be all over him, ridiculing him for his professorial manner, his tendency to give an elaborate answer when a simple, colloquial one would do. Better they attack someone who really wants the job and who, if they fall in the right’s traps, is adept at fighting back.
It feels so good that Al is getting all these accolades, as well as to rub the deniers’ faces in it. I feel that the presidency was stolen from him, but he went on and earned something much finer.
See The Resurrection of Al Gore in the May 2006 issue of Wired, for what he’s been up to, and why he’s not that interested in running.
IMHO, if the money we have squandered on the Iraq war had been devoted to developing a practical electric car, and research on clean coal-burning technology, and the holy grail, fusion power, the strategic importance of the mid-east oil coul be nill.
If a president made energy the TOP priority (and was willing to spit in the eye of big oil and the auto industry) then the cabinet post of Energy Secretary could be the most important job on the planet, if the president was willing and able to keep the dogs off the back of the Secretary.
There’s a job for Gore, find answers that make sense, and let the politicians block for him. Gore has the credentials to attract a dream team from science and engineering..A TD could save the planet.
Re the Clintons and Gores and the 2000 election, the conventional take is that Gore “distanced” himself from the Clintons, in particular wouldn’t let the president campaign for him, which created a chill. There’s also a story, perhaps apocryphal, that Gore was stuck somewhere in the Northeast when planes were grounded on 9/11, so he rented a car, and ended up staying with the Clintons in New York. They’re supposed to have patched things up during that visit.
Certainly a Clinton dynasty could not be considered in the same realm as the Kennedys and Bushes and Rockefellers. I vaguely remember reading a stat that the Clintons entered the White House the poorest couple to enter the office in the 20th Century. When they left office, they weren’t all that rich either because of the legal bills they had from the rightwing campaign to destroy them. I also believe that they–unlike Bush–have worked very hard all their lives to get where they are. That just isn’t the same kind of dynasty that has been in the past. Also, while one never knows for sure; but, I don’t think Chelsea will run for President. But, I will be long dead by that time any way.
I have had the pleasure of having a one on one conversation with Al Gore, and he is not stiff, wooden or pedantic at all. It doesn’t bother me at all that the Republicans call him these things. It bothers me a lot that the Press mindlessly repeats it.
One more point about the dynasty. Since Hillary is a the wife, it doesn’t count as a “true” dynasty. It’s also a dynasty with no heirs.
Bush father, Bush Son, Bush Brother etc. that’s a dynasty.
Chelsea would have to win for me to consider it a Dynasty and she hasn’t shown much interest in that side of politics from what I can tell.