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."
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to