Coy Gore for President
There's a YouTube clip of Al Gore being interviewed by Diane Sawyer in which she asks him three times whether or not he's going to run for President. He answers her by referring to his book - yes, his book - about democracy or somesuch - and how the media in America hypes the news news instead of reporting the real news.
Oh. Gee. Why goodness me. Thank Gawd for Al Gore or I guess we wouldn't know that about the MSM. Oops. Buzzword. Al Gore objects to buzzwords - which is what MSM is - a buzzword. Why goodness me all over myself. Thank Gawd for Al Gore all over again or we wouldn't know that the mainstream media is awash in partisan politics and cannot be trusted to report what its advertisers and the current U.S. administration don't want reported.
Anyway, if I were Diane Sawyer, I would have asked him a fourth, fifth and sixth time if he was planning to run for President. As many times as it took for him to either admit that he is, or break down and cry.
Then I would have phoned Barbara Walters and crowed, "I made Al Gore cry!" Because something tells me he's not going to admit to anything - political - while he's in this state of golden boy grace promoting his movie to save the planet through carbon trading emissions credits/hedge funds and his book to save democracy from the likes of the Republican party and second-rate also-rans like George W. Bush who keep getting elected by dumbassed American voters.
He kept talking about involving Americans in a conversation, but... I dunno... even Diane Sawyer wasn't so much interested in having one as she was in getting the network scoop on his candidacy. I was kind of with her on that one, myself. And yet - I normally love yakking it up with former Vice Presidents.
But seriously, what the hell? He's "touring" the country promoting his movie on Climate Change for which he won an Academy Award - trying to get as many people as is human(e)ly possible to see it - AND now he's doing the Prime Time News/Talk Show circuit to talk about his new book "The Assault on Reason". Here's the gist, if you aren't a Gore-a-phile and haven't already bought it and committed it to memory with a view to re-gifting it to your favourite not-really-left-but-certainly-not-right politico next Christmas/Diwali/Ramadan/ChineseNewYear:
"In his new book, Al Gore explores why reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions and what we can do to change that."
Hey - maybe Ralph Nader should read it! That guy could use a kickass political re-start to his campaign to start a fresh political dialogue (oops - buzzword alert!) between Americans such that would result in a renewed and invigorated democracy for all of America.
Choice - I believe is what Ralph Nader was aiming at. Maybe Al Gore covers it in his book about how politics and the media are so ridiculously dumbed down and offputting that only stupid idiot morons from political family dynasties can win presidential elections nowadays.
Or... maybe not...
Anyway, I'm sick of Al Gore, but I was sick of him when he thought he was too good, too much of a shoo-in, too "to the manor born" to allow the disgraced, yet beloved and infinitely electable, Bill Clinton campaign for him in Tennessee so that he might actually win it and subsequently the election - instead of losing to a stupid idiot moron no one thought in a million years would win a Presidential election against someone like Al Gore in the wake of such a successful Presidency - for Americans - as that of Bill Clinton.
And then do it all over again against someone like John Kerry, ferchrissakes.
In any case, the important thing is that Al Gore is treated like a bonafide documentary film-maker and political science author by the mainstream media when he is out promoting his movie and book and not dismissed as a political opportunist who is probably going to declare a run at the Presidency in the fall.
Or not. I don't know. I don't support the mainstream media. I don't watch its news and I don't read its newspapers. I get my news from alternative news sources - pay for it, too. Believe me - it's worth it. You really do get what you pay for in this country. And since the mainstream media doesn't spend much of its budget on gathering the actual news - it doesn't get much actual news.
But there's coy and then there's, "OH SHUT UP ALREADY!!!!" Because if Al Gore is not campaigning for a run at the Presidency, then I'm not sure what he's campaigning for - although I'm reasonably sure he's campaigning for SOMETHING.
Look, Al Gore. There's a catch phrase (I know, I know - you don't like buzzwords and catch phrases) and that catch phrase is: "Democratic Deficit". I don't know who coined it, but it's been around for a while. Much like the evidence that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are, well, not good. Whether or not they are heating up the planet, well, again - acid rain, smog, soil depletion, pesticide contamination, coffee and chocolate expansion leading to desertification (as opposed to dessertification - which leads to size Al Gore...), stripmining of oceans, clearcutting of forests, urban sprawl - these things, heating up the planet or not, are not good, either. And we can go way back to when before you were even a Senator to know it. I knew it when I was in grade school, as a matter of fact. As far as I know, too, my family - the whole extended clan - never made a dime from exploiting natural resources, either.
Although, they tried to farm off a barren rock in Northern Ontario... But that's a whole 'nother entry... Or maybe a book: "Yay! We Found a New Cold Damp Rock!" - Why One Clan Left Scotland Forever to Take Up a New Life in Canada"
Not that more books about how democracy isn't exactly working out for Americans these days aren't welcome to those of us who think the state of American politics is kind of, like, bad. It's just that I'm pretty sure there are less, shall we say, self-interested parties to write them - authors who would no doubt welcome a shot at an interview, one on one, with Diane Sawyer, too.
And she wouldn't even have to waste the interview asking them three times if they intended to run for the Presidency of the United States. She could ask them instead of their book.
I mean - again - DISINGENUOUS MUCH?! OF COURSE SHE'S GOING TO ASK YOU OVER AND OVER ABOUT YOUR ELECTORAL INTENTIONS! Jesus! What else is she going to ask you about? Your book - "An Assault on Reason"? I mean, she pointed out your main gist - which would seem to be that you believe you should have won the election that time and that if you had, America wouldn't be in the mess that it is today. I thought she was more than fair. And you're probably right. Although, it's hard for someone like me who didn't ever, at any point, support the War on Terror to see why that would be. It's not as if Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder against the prevailing winds to stand firm against the insanity that resulted in the War in Iraq on Iraqis as a direct result of the President of the United States encountering no real opposition to his whole War on Terror declaration.
But yeah - it probably wouldn't be in this particular mess. And maybe there'd be some real action on the environment. And probably the first course of action of an Al Gore administration would not have been to cancel funding for Planned Parenthood overseas.
Who knows?
Anyway, Diane Sawyer didn't get the answer she was hoping for, but here's my prediction: American democracy is such that Al Gore will pull the rug out from Hillary Clinton and that guy who smokes, both of whom will appear to graciously step aside, and declare his candidacy for President and then he will win - because there's nothing more Americans like than a celebrity candidate for political office.
Or not. But if he doesn't declare and he really is just out taking up airtime for his movie and book, then I think Hillary Clinton and that guy who smokes should team up to kick his ass.
Then maybe he could do a one-man show on Broadway about a guy who gets his ass kicked - literally - for talking too much and not really doing anything.
