The real Al Gore is here

John Podhoretz, on Al Gore: "I found myself feeling a strange sort of admiration for Al Gore. Doesn't it seem as though his 2000 loss, devastating though it must have been for Gore, was a huge liberation? As a politician, Gore never seemed comfortable in his own skin. The warmth and amused intelligence people insist he displays in private were never evident in public.
Instead, for the most part, he seemed calculating and false, going through personae the way Joan Crawford went through her wardrobe — the conservative Democrat, the national-security expert, the suffering solon trying to get the Gulf War right, the shameless utilizer of family tragedy, the killer NAFTA debater, Ozone Man, the Guy Who Kissed His Wife on Television, the fiery populist decrying the powerful, the sighing debater, the extraordinarily gracious conceder. Since that concession, Gore has let himself loose in all kinds of ways. He no longer has to pretend, as all politicians most. He is clearly happiest and freest as an autodidact preaching populist pseudoscientist. And everything has gone his way. He's gotten rich off Oracle stock. He's started a cable-television network. He's written a bestselling jeremiad. He has starred in a hagiographic documentary. He promoted a worldwide rock concert. He offers unrestrained Hyde Park rants about those he disagrees with using rhetoric (brown shirts, etc.) he could never have deployed as president. Whatever else you can say about Gore, he has clearly been having the time of his life."

True. And even though I don't agree with much of what Gore says, hey--good for him that finally he's free at last, free at last, lord God Almighty, free at last. Which is why it's well-nigh impossible to see him going back to being a politician.

The NY Times eyes Mr. Gore's prize

So Al Gore won a Nobel peace prize. The NY Times of course is delighted.
Of course, the Times says nothing about the fact that Mr. Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth", is full of errors. And what about the fact that some argue that this award, by the Nobel committee, really amounts to a political statement? Why, the Times' editors simply...admit it:

"There will also be those who complain that this prize — like the committee’s earlier awards to Jimmy Carter and the chief United Nations nuclear inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei — is an intentional slap at President Bush. It should be. We only wish that it would finally wake up the president."

So liberals choose to give an award to a liberal, and we're to be impressed? Wow.

I agree, let him be

By now you're probably all aware of Al Gore III's recent arrest for speeding, DUI, etc etc. Obviously a lot of us in the blogosphere are having fun with this, and after all those on the other side of the aisle can't complain too loudly--look at all the attention they've paid over the years to Jenna and Barbara Bush. But I agree with Ed Morrissey here--we should leave Al Gore's son alone. Having a famous father shouldn't make you a special target.