Al Gore

Funny

Al Gore was on The Daily Show on Thursday. I thought he did quite well — and the crowd was nuts for him. Here’s part one: And here’s part two:

A South American take on Gore’s film

Jessica Weisberg is an American journalist currently based in South America. The following is her take on the peculiar cultural dominance of An Inconvenient Truth. —– I liked Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Really, I did. But when I count off my reasons — the special effects, the wet-your-pants astonishment, the drama — I find […]

I’ve been Gored in my own neighborhood

"A politics of reason faces a strong headwind." These were Al Gore's words last night, at New York's 92nd Street Y, where I had the unique pleasure of seeing him interviewed by Charlie Rose. The main topic of discussion was Gore's new book, The Assault On Reason, which not surprisingly is #1 on Amazon's bestseller list ("It's not about K-Fed," Gore was quick to chime in). Apart from offering a scathing critique of the Bush administration, the book lambastes the shallowness of today's media -- the amount of time spent on Pamela Anderson versus, say, the still ravaged landscape of New Orleans. And Rose, it was refreshing to see, did not fall into the trap, as did Diane Sawyer, of lobbing the precise sort of vacuous soundbites that Gore goes after in his book.

It was also pretty stunning to hear a man as versed in the details of the Federalist Papers as he is in the melting rates of the Antarctic ice shelf. In response to the Rose question, "When did the decline of reason begin?", he skipped seamlessly through a history of the Enlightenment, the emigration of those ideas to a fledgling nation across the pond, and the firm establishment of reason in the founding fathers' design of the U.S. government. He talked about the dawn of television -- a box with flickering lights that Americans sit motionless in front of for about 3.5 hours a day -- and the accompanying decline in substantive media. I won't go into all the details here, or try to regurgitate the conversation, but suffice to say I was duly impressed.

The media continues to prove his new book right

As I mentioned the other day, there’s a certain irony to the fact that Al Gore is out touring behind a book about the decline of reasoned public dialogue, since his emergence on the public scene inevitably elicits paroxysms of the shallowest, bitchiest, most vacuous commentary of which our punditariat is capable — and that’s […]

A conference call about his new book

Yesterday I was on a conference call with Al Gore, who was chatting with some blogger types about his new book, The Assault on Reason. It was convivial, if not particularly revelatory. Taylor Marsh wrote all about it, and if you want to listen to an hour-long phone call, you can get it here. It […]

Interesting tales in a recent profile

The profile of Al Gore in NYT Magazine contains, amidst other good stuff, some interesting backstory about Gore’s experiences with the Alliance for Climate Protection, as well as his experiences in the Clinton administration. Forthwith, a couple of longish excerpts. First, on the Alliance: In mid-2005, he began talking to members of “the green group,” […]

His new book, about stupid media, is treated stupidly by the media

Al Gore has a new book coming out called The Assault on Reason. It’s about the sickness of our democratic dialogue, the systemic features of our culture and media that lead us to ignore evidence, focus on trivialities, and accept deception after deception. Gore’s going to be out promoting the book, and there’s a certain […]

A great profile

Time magazine has a long, insightful, and sympathetic profile of Al Gore in the latest issue. The theme is "the last temptation of Gore," i.e., the temptation of running for president. But as the article makes clear, it’s not that tempting, for all the reasons we’ve discussed here before. Anyway, read it — it’s extraordinarily […]

Live Aid guy disses Gore’s Live Earth concerts

Here’s what Live Aid and Live 8 organizer Bob Geldoff had to say about Gore’s Live Earth concerts: “I hope they’re a success,” De Volkskrant newspaper quoted Geldof as saying in an interview. “But why is (Gore) actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody’s known about that problem for years. […]