Al Gore has led a troubled political life despite achieving great success. He has served in many capacities reaching the highest office (so far) of Vice President. It takes a distinct degree of popularity, money and power to pull that off.
Al Gore has achieved levels of popularity since the 2000 election that are slowly transforming him into a cult of personality, possibly more than he has a right to hold. Many people see Gore as the person that actually won the popular election in 2000. Many more people including Christian Conservatives see him as the person that is calling a foul when it comes to global warming, a failing energy policy and a destruction of the Earth (and that goes double for those that view it as God's Green Earth).
Gore's award winning documentary is fueling that fire even more. His background as a journalist in Vietnam is serving him well as a reborn media mogul. He is moving from the book writer turned movie producer and he is now expanding into Rock promoter.
For me this is where irony starts to turn hypocritical. I grew up in an era where Al Gore was not cool. He was the anti-thesis of cool. he was a Southern Senator attempting with his wife to represent the moral majority. They attempted to have rock lyrics labeled and censored. His wife Tipper became famous for coming close to Slandering Dee Snider of Twisted Sister only to be followed up with a very uncool assault by the 'liberal' Senator Gore in 1985 while Dee Snider a thirty year old rock star at the time showed admirable sophistication, intelligence and cool in response.
That assault has been followed up by more than two decades of return salvo by the rock industry from artists including Prince, Megadeth, The Ramones, Ministry, Anthrax, Eminem, Frank Zappa, KMFDM, Suicidal Tendencies, Cinderella and Ice-T. Al Gore and Tipper Gores politics made for some very strange bed fellows and that lost them the cool vote in 2000. Al Gore may have been right about Global Warming, but he was wrong on many other counts.
Perspective
I grew up in the seventies and eighties and went on to serve in the Army during the first Gulf War. I served under the Clinton administration that brought the ludicrous notion of the Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy to the military. I say ludicrous because it is an insane example of the absolute wrong type of compromise. It punishes the people that think that homosexuals should not be allowed to serve and it punishes people like myself that feel that they should be allowed to serve in the military.
As the 2000 election came around I was torn between a vote of two evils. An ignorant Ivy leaguer pretending to be a southerner serving as a Texas Governor that had a terrible track record in business and had presented no real ideas or plans attempting to assume the throne of President from his father, and a backwards Southern Senator that had presented no real ideas or plans pretending attempting to assume the throne of President in a line of Democratic succession. They were two of the worst candidates that the United States has seen in many years.
Changing Tide
With that perspective Gore's new move into rock star promoter come across to me as extremely hypocritical. I do believe that people can change with the times and improve. I think and suspect that Gore has had to do this out of necessity. I do feel that he happens to be right about global warming. He chose to fight ignorant battles in the past and now when a serious battle is before the world he has little credibility, just like George Bush who chose to fight battles for the wrong reason and now has little credibility.
Al Gore is continuing a massive image make over and just might be the under dog of the 2008 Presidential campaign. For him to succeed he needs to win an Oscar. He needs to court new voters. He needs to show the world that he has changed and corrected some of his past character flaws. He and Tipper also need to invite Dee Snider to dinner and apologize.
That would be cool.
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