On Sunday I sat inside the small theatre at Coffee Underground in Downtown Greenville beside my husband and a group of twenty or so friends and friendly strangers and for the second time watched Al Gore’s Academy Award winning documentary about global warming “An Inconvenient Truth.” The screening was part of Open Forum a group that meets regularly to screen films, host discussions and get informed about topical issues. Along about the middle of the film a wave of sadness swept over me and tears stung my eyes. I was filled with a sense of grief and sadness for my country when I thought about all the tragedy that might have been averted if only this man had been allowed to lead our nation. I realized that I along with the rest of the country had been misled and manipulated by the mass media and Karl Rove and all the consultants and masters of spin into believing that this fine, good hearted and intelligent man was thick, and selfish, too wooden and too judgmental and just didn’t have the “right” stuff to be our president. Until I saw this film I had been angry at Gore over the 2000 presidential election and somehow blamed him for his own defeat. I finally understood that the man the media portrayed in their election coverage was some sort of made up caricature and had no relationship to the man that Gore really was all along.

If it’s true that adversity brings out the best in a man then that’s proven true in the case of Al Gore. After the election fiasco of 2000, Gore could have chosen to sit on any high powered corporate board of his choosing, given speeches to high powered groups for huge fees (like Rudy Guiliani and others have chosen to do) or just sat on his butt and licked his big open wounds. But instead Al Gore decided to follow his passion for the environment and his interest in global warning and refine his self-proclaimed educational slide show the show on the road to audiences around the world and across the nation. That slide show became the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth and created interest and enthusiasm for an issue that had been considered dead on arrival. The documentary isn’t fancy it’s factual and even a bit wonky in parts but it’s also moving in telling the story of Al Gore’s passion for this cause and best of all it shows a good solid man doing something good for others because he cares. He articulates the cause in a warm, understandable and refreshing style that I enjoyed and anytime I can comprehend complicated science I consider that a victory.

I don’t believe that Al Gore will run for president again. I think the main stream media and the political machine has chewed him up for the last time. I just read an interview in the NY Times Magazine with the ex-vice president’s second daughter Kristin Gore in which she said, “He calls himself a recovering politician. He says he’s on Step No. 9 and he doesn’t want to risk a relapse.” Fortunatly for us Gore is still speaking out about matters of importance. In his new book Gore discusses the destructive nature of television in politics and the dumbing down of the American public. I think Gore has had enough, he’s liberated himself from the yolk of politics and now he’s speaking his mind and leading from his heart.

How sad that we picked our last president because we thought he was a regular guy and he had the best and most frequently viewed television commercials. Anyone that voted for George W. Bush thinking that he was a regular guy, a good Christian man from Texas bought a huge load of horse shit. You voted for a man from one of the richest most influential and elite families in the United States. You voted for a man born in Connecticut, who attended the most elite schools the United States has to offer, Yale and Harvard. He’s lived in Texas and acquired a thick and what I consider very fake accent but he’s originally from the east coast and he’s definitely a Yankee and by any measure was born with a silver spoon squarely in his mouth.

Al Gore was also born into an influential and wealthy political family but he’s up front about his roots and has never bull shitted about his birthplace or where he grew up, a hotel in Washington, D.C. and a farm in Tennessee. Al Gore actually served in Vietnam and while he may have been working as a journalist he served, he didn’t leap over others to take a place in the National Guard like George W. Bush did or muscle his way into taking five deferments like Dick Cheney did. In short, Gore stacks up great in comparison to the intellectual light weight that occupies the White House today. I can’t say that I would be thrilled by the thought of Joe Liberman as the Vice President but anything is an improvement over Dick Darth Vadar Cheney.

What’s done is done but we must give Al Gore his props and our respect from rising from the ashes of a bitter political defeat to take up a very worthy cause and go forth with a great deal of honor.