For what doth it profit a man, that he gain the whole world…

…and still be Al Gore?

Al has grown rich peddling the modern-day equivalent of Dr. Pierce’s Extract of Smart Weed, and, even though the climate change hysteria gives some evidence of having abated, he has feathered his nest sufficiently to see him comfortably through an extended dotage. And yet I suspect that, in his heart of hearts, Al is disappointed. In spite of the lucre, the worshipful following of Cli-Fi groupies, the Nobel Peace Prize - in spite of all this, there is almost certainly the haunting fear that the mention of his name, far more often than not, triggers a response among the multitude that consists not of applause and hosannas, but of laughter and that form of vocal derision technically known as “the raspberry”. How frustrating it must be for him, to have trod the stage of world events, and even to have written and performed part of the script, only to have to live with the possibility that future generations – and perhaps this one, as well – will remember him mainly as a failed and bitter presidential aspirant, or for his strange, nocturnal “massagynistic” adventures in hotels far from home and the restraints of spousal scrutiny.

How odd, therefore, that Al, burdened as he must be by troubled thoughts of his shaky legacy, should do the one thing that can only make matters worse – to wit, open his mouth and say something. Ed Driscoll catches him opining on, of all things, the federal deficit and the debt ceiling negotiations. What Al says is eminently forgettable, save for the rich irony of the following (Ed quotes from The Hill):

Gore wrote there is an epidemic of “encouraging ideological extremists to construct their own alternative version of reality and defend it against fact-based reasoning.” Gore said that as an activist he has seen a similar response to climate change arguments.

I’m sorry, I really don’t mean to snicker so, but “ideological extremism” and the construction of an “alternative version of reality” constitute the very foundation of Al’s whole apocalyptic vision of climate change. And it seems foolhardy for Al to drag his hobby-horse with him into an argument on unrelated subjects – rather like wearing an old strait-jacket loosely around the shoulders in chilly weather, in lieu of a sweater, years after one has been released. Why...you know...remind people of all that? Particularly if what you’re saying on the matter at hand isn’t all that convincing in the first place.

In his post, Ed also helpfully cites an extremely odd line from Al’s book, Earth in the Balance. It is a sentence I remember having seen before, but, for some reason, it had a greater impact on me the second time around: “today the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin.”

Now, surely, even Al Gore must occasionally awaken in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, sit up abruptly in bed, and say to himself in a trembling voice, “My God! Did I actually write that?” It is practically a condensation of all his shortcomings, weaknesses and failures in one fatal phrase: intellectual mediocrity, insensitivity, hysteria, monomania, a narcissistic urge to be heard above the noise of the crowd even if one has to play Pop Goes the Weasel on the kazoo (all this, and Godwin’s Law, too!). Let us connect the spots floating in front of his eyes and derive a summary of his argument: Earth=Jewish shopkeepers; Humans=Nazis.

I like to imagine that that one sentence, if nothing else, gives Al pause to worry about his future reputation. Although, alas, it’s probably more likely that he goes to bed every night filled to the brim with the satisfaction of knowing that he has at least rid the world of the incandescent light-bulb – and then sleeps the sleep of the just.