Former US vice president Al Gore has had plenty of time to develop a self-deprecating sense of humor over the past six years, and it shows.
"My name is Al Gore, and I used to be the next president of the United States," the broad-shouldered 58-year-old tells audiences wherever he goes.
The line has replaced an earlier joke -- "You win some, you lose some, and then there's that little-known third category" -- but the message in both cases is the same: laugh along with me, please, because otherwise, imagining how different things could have been, we might have to cry.
It is a wry kind of wit, of a sort that might have helped the former vice-president in the 2000 election campaign, when he was widely lambasted as wooden and robotic. And it is tinged with an anger that might have come in handy during the supreme court battle with US President George W. Bush, when many of Gore's own supporters felt he acted spinelessly. But the Gore of 2006 is a different person and, it appears, Americans have begun to take notice.
The reason for Gore's heightened profile is a documentary about his most passionately held concern -- the "planetary emergency" of global warming -- that he has been shopping to politicians and opinion-formers over the last few weeks.
The movie, An Inconvenient Truth, is released in the US next Friday, a week after The Da Vinci Code, and its trailer seems to be straining every nerve to compete.
"It will shock you to your core," the captions read. "By far the most terrifying film you will ever see."
The film follows Gore as he travels the US giving a slideshow presentation about climate change -- a performance he has given more than a thousand times in the past 30 years, and more frequently since losing the election.
This may sound less than electrifying, but there could be no better sign of the film's potential impact than the fact that its enemies have launched a counter-offensive: the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a rightwing think tank funded by oil companies, has unveiled a series of TV ads aimed at restoring the reputation of greenhouse gases.
"The fuels that produce carbon dioxide have freed us from a world of backbreaking labor, allowing us to create and move the things we need and the people we love," a syrupy voice intones, over footage of children playing. "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it ... life."
As the early rumblings of the next presidential election campaign grow louder, it should come as no surprise that Gore's activities have led to speculation that he might run again. He denies it, saying that he has "found other ways to serve," but that has not stopped the rise of a vigorous draft campaign to try to persuade him to change his mind.
The drafters' pulses were quickened by a recent Gore speech when he joked that he was "a recovering politician ... but you always have to worry about a relapse," while an appearance on the comedy show Saturday Night Live, where he addressed the audience as if he had been president for a term and a half, only added to their excitement.
The crucial change in Gore's outlook arises from the bitter fights he had in 2000 with his own consultants. Obsessed by polls, they persuaded him to water down his proposals on climate change so much that the man who had helped negotiate the Kyoto protocol ended up doing little more than railing against the high price of petrol.
"He held a meeting about a year and a half after his campaign was over, with his closest supporters, and he said, `If I ever do this again, it's going to be without consultants -- I'm going to say what's on my mind,'" said the veteran political columnist Joe Klein, "and he's been pretty much that way ever since."
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS