Al Gore's Assault Pile

Al reminds me of a man I've known for many years. Good-looking, intelligent, educated, manipulative, somewhat emotionless, artificial. Gore and my friend have similar mannerisms. Specifically, a look of consternation (or constipation), with a condescending tilt of the head and change in vocal pitch that silently says 'here, let me explain it to you stupid.'

My guy even sighs the way Gore continuously sighed through that one presidential debate, although I could understand Al's exasperated sigh having to deal with someone as stupid as GW, I could never understand why someone as camera savvy as Gore publicly performed that incessant loud sigh. I mean, didn't Gore remember anything from the historical Great Debate - when televised JFK looked like a winner and Nixon came off like a shifty-eyed front porch dog.

In 2000 not only did I hold my nose and vote Gore I had to close my ears.

In this excerpt from Assault On Reason, Gore's latest addition to the hobby club of has-beens who write, Al seems to think a change in political/social discourse only began recently.

GORE: "At first I thought the exhaustive, nonstop coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial was just an unfortunate excess—an unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media. Now we know that it was merely an early example of a new pattern of serial obsessions that periodically take over the airwaves for weeks at a time: the Michael Jackson trial and the Robert Blake trial, the Laci Peterson tragedy and the Chandra Levy tragedy, Britney and KFed, Lindsay and Paris and Nicole."

"…. unwelcome departure from the normal good sense and judgment of our television news media." Oh my, hahahahaha. For those who think Gore is stale and dry – you see - he can be funny outside of SNL.

As Peg Bundy would say – Oh Al. Americans have always obsessed on whatever the media feeds them. From Jackie O. to the Manson family to Patty Hearst to the murder of Kitty Genovese to who shot JR. From Madonna wearing her underwear as outerwear and little drunk doper Drew Barrymore, Beevis and Butthead. From Jeffrey Dahmer to Clinton's blowjob.

This would be the same good sense media that for weeks controlled the airwaves in November 1963 and fed the public the lone nut gunman interspersed with scenes of horse and caisson and John-John's salute. The same news media that remake criminals and creeps like Nixon, Kissinger, Reagan, Bush Sr. into authors, statesmen, and good guys. That good sense and judgment media?

But Al "Occidental" Gore writes not for me. He writes for what I used to be. He writes for those folks who relate to each paragraph with a "Yes, right, yes, that's the way I think, see, believe." I remember when I used to do that with certain political writers. Many still write today, writing basically what they wrote years ago with nothing changed other than the title and current political badguy. What a waste of trees.

But I realize these authors are writing for the younger crowd, the political larvae and pupae. Not writing for grayer heads who can smell an unctuous political pile of it and step over.