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07/05/2007: "Thanks For Your Support, Son ..."

Imagine how it must be right now to be Al Gore Sr.

You were Vice President for 8 years, a heartbeat away from leadership of the strongest country in the world. You are elected President by the popular vote, only to have a pesky Supreme Court decision give to the other guy. You spend years rehabbing your image, hoping people will forget the whole "I invented the Internet" thing. You reinvent yourself as an environmentalist and leading expert on global warming. You get an Oscar for your work in a documentary film on the subject. You help arrange a worldwide series of concerts to occur this Saturday that will provide additional focus on the plight of the environment. You go on a press junket to support the concerts, starting with Larry King Live tonight.

And all anyone wants to talk about is how your son was arrested yesterday.

In what is apparently a repeat offense, Al Gore Jr. was stopped early on the morning of the 4th for barreling down the 405 at 100 miles an hour. In the car with him was a "personal use amount" of marijuana and several unlabeled containers of prescription narcotics. Needless to say, young Al got a free ride to jail.

Al Sr will survive this embarassment, and hopefully his concerts will achieve their goal. I'm less certain of Al Jr, particularly when I hear he's "gone into treatement" - celeb code for "is hiding from the press at an undisclosed location only until the story cools off". Frankly, if I was someone who had truly used rehab to solve an addiction problem I'd be as irritated at folks like Gore and Lohan and Spears as a true college graduate should be at someone who got their degree over the internet.

On the bright side, when arrested for speeding Gore was at least driving a hybrid Prius ...

Replies: 5 Comments

On Friday, July 6th, 3of4 said:

Will he receive carbon offsets for communal incarceration?

On Sunday, July 8th, Skunk said:

Are you sure you have the right picture? Isn't that Chip Foose?

On Monday, July 9th, bookie_pays_out said:

news item:
apparently Paddy Power bookies had taken a number of bets that "Al Gore will be arrested" and they did not say which Al Gore (they also offered odds on GWB being arrested, Hilary R Clinton, Dick Cheney and so on).

When customers rang in, theydecided to honor those bets even though "everyone" knew this wasn't the Al Gore they had offered the odds on.

On Monday, July 9th, 3of4 said:

Lead story tonight...
This just in, The Al Gore that is currently not in jail, has just had a top level meeting with key congressional members of his new Masonic Green Party to pass a bill that rations electricity over the next month in order to offset the carbon units expended.  Or howabout some rolling blackouts. The really important thing is the concerts rocked!  S.U.V.s are doing more damage than we ever imagined. We have just learned Saturn and a moon of Jupiter is allso experiencing global warming! Smart wealthy people need to ban together and teach America how they should live their lives. We might light the world's largest bonfire next to raise awareness.  Or maybe set off a couple nukes laced with aluminun, zinc and copper dust for the largest roman candle ever.  Something big that grabs attention.  We'll offset the carbon later.  The message is what's important."

On Tuesday, July 10th, 0of0 (probably) said:

even as we wonder, I bet someone, somewhere is working out the total Carbon Dioxide emissions for those concerts, including people travelling to them and some bands flying their own private jets to the location they were playing.

Is it true the New Jersey parking lot had more SUVs in it than on an average home game ? LOL !