News - Gore

I never would have believed I’d be writing this say 5 years ago, but I’ve really come to admire and respect Al Gore. Recently it seems that Al Gore has been showing up everywhere: the movie theatre, magazines ranging from Giant, to Wired, to Rolling Stone, and even a hilarious SNL skit earlier this year (which are few and far between anymore). And there seems to have been a change in him, which I actually take as sincere this time around.

My biggest problem with Al Gore was never so much a matter of politics (though I had and still have several issues, not least being his foreign policy stances) as it was a matter of character. I never felt I could trust him because it seemed that above all else he was obsessed by the need to be President, probably rooted in a desire to surpass his father, the famous Senator, and would pretty much do or say whatever it took (This is something that I found to be pretty well described a few years back in the book The Perfect Tie: The True Story of the 2000 Presidential Election with its chapter titled “The Four Faces of Al Gore”). Beyond that, as we all know, Gore was never what one would call a charismatic figure and hardly inspired.

But all that seems to have changed. He appears motivated, energized, and fervently devoted to championing a cause that had been in desperate need of a champion, global warming. At times it baffles me to see people doubt or simply disregard what is a very real and very serious issue, but Al Gore is on a mission to change that.

His greatest push in doing so is the documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which I went to see at the theater last night. The film really does a fantastic job of getting the message across and the reality that is shown both visually and statistically is overwhelming, . Of course, it may not be as entertaining as say Pirates of the Caribbean, which I saw last weekend "savy?", but the message is too important to miss, and even despite the seriousness of the subject Gore should manage to get you to laugh at least once or twice.