Living in denial is a national sport. Our president believes his "box score" will show but one teeny tiny negative as yet unspecified (adultery? perjury? obstruction? impeachment?). The IOC believes corruption in bids for the games was limited to a few bad apples and the bad apples believe they are scapegoats. The NCAA believes its athletic charges actually take courses and do papers. They rob paganism of its most endearing quality: Pagans don't make any bones about their paganism. There's nothing worse than a self-righteous pagan.
Which brings me to Al Gore. History has given us some pieces of work as vice presidents: Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Hillary Clinton and Alexander Haig (the last two by self-proclamation). But on a goofball scale of 1 to 10, with one being Jim Carrey and 10 being William Ginsburg, Al Gore rates a 9. Amazingly, the VP remains beneath the USA Today radar screen. Only the New Republic is a Gore regular, having endorsed him for president first in 1988 and over his boss in 1992 and 1996. Still, the public is on to Gore. Current polls, the new source of all constitutional law, show that even Elizabeth Dole's can of Aqua Net beats Al Gore in the 2000 quest for the presidency.However, the current stable of Republican candidates, some declared, some in the Christopher Columbus exploratory committee stage, does not recognize that the failure to make hay with Gore is an affront to voters and comedy.
"Earth in the Balance" is a good starting point. Inspired by the near loss of his 6-year-old son in a 1989 accident, Gore reached into the depths of his soul and penned a tome on those weighty matters that vex us in our moments of greatest humility and fear: fossil fuel and SUVs. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, so moved by this inspirational work, kept a copy in his little cabin in the woods and underlined passages in between constructing bombs to send to computer professors and other such tyrants.
Beyond the environmentalism is the Al Gore depth. On his magnificent 1993 inaugural bus ride to D.C., Gore toured Monticello and stumped the site's curator when he asked who the bust of Thomas Jefferson was. To him, E Pluribus Unum is foreign, and out there in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he had trouble identifying the presidents on Mount Rushmore.
Gore, by his own proclamation, is a true Renaissance Man. Last week, he disclosed that he invented the Internet. Last year, we learned that he and Tipper were the inspiration for Erich Segal's "Love Story," Segal's surprise aside.
But Gore's true forte is fund raising. Tipper Gore joined forces with Susan Baker to rail against rock music lyrics in 1986, but the Gore tune changed when Al and Tip were fund raising in Hollywood in 1988. A tape-recorded meeting with the Gores and Hollywood's heavy hitters finds an apologetic Tipper and Al assuring the keepers of star funds that such self-righteous censorship would never happen again. In fact, Al became an "Ellen" fan. He even allowed Disney to furnish $7,000 worth of "Beauty and the Beast" costumes for the annual Gore Halloween fest. Al was forced to pay Disney back, which perhaps explains why the Gores gave only $353 to charity in 1997.
Gore does skirt the fund-raising laws. His 1996 appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple in Los Angeles brought unprecedented cash from nuns for the Democratic National Committee. Gore assured the Justice Department that he went there only to commune with Buddhists, completely unaware of the money until a memo titled "You and fund raising in Buddhists Temples" emerged.
Gore escaped felony charges for using federal property for campaign purposes when he made 86 phone calls from the White House which netted $120,000 by keeping one toe out the window as a "controlling legal authority." Gore explained, "The reason I was proud to campaign as hard as I did was because a lot was at stake." Translation: Without me and my toe, Dole might have won.
Gore is a storyteller extraordinaire. At the 1996 Democratic convention, he paid tribute to his dead sister and railed on tobacco companies for her cigarette-induced lung cancer, not mentioning the family tobacco farm. Last week, while stumping among the Iowa farmers, Gore bonded by describing how he tilled the earth on his family farm. Yes, clothed in a preppie beanie, blazer and boat shoes, our veep grew Lucky Strikes.
His presidential campaign slogan is in full swing. He announced a $223 million federal program for prevention of violence against women on the same day the press reported the Juanita Broaddrick rape allegations against his boss. His theme is urban sprawl and preserving America for hiking, camping and inhaling. With Gore in charge, one can only imagine the federal regulations. Al and us together in pup tents in full camouflage, spinning yarns, inventing what we have invented, pointing out Clinton on Mount Rushmore -- no more urban sprawl but plenty of comic relief from a VP who gives new meaning to the term.
Marianne M. Jennings is a professor of legal and ethical studies at Arizona State University. Her e-mail address is mmjdiary@aol.com