The obviously harder-hearted Other Charlotte took me to task yesterday for my lachrymose post about Al Gore.
Showing a soft side I try to hide from the world, I admitted that, in the wake of Gore’s unfortunate public meltdown (also known as his speech demanding that just about the entire Bush administration be sacked), I felt sorry for him. Poor old Al just seemed so nutzoid.
I may or may not have used the word poignant.
“Al Gore’s Crackup: It Cracked Me Up,” hard-hearted Charlotte chortled, adding a plea to be forgiven for “not shedding a tear of sorrow as you do at Al Gore’s Yeagh! moment yesterday when he screamed and yelled and called for the resignation of about 100 different Bush administration officials in a speech” that was sponsored by Moveon.org, the folks who, when they compare Bush to Hitler, intend no hyperbole.
Charlotte is right: Any former official who makes the kind of speech Gore made deserves jeers, not tears.
Charlotte wasn’t the only hard-hearted Hannah who had fun at Al’s expense. The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd, in a burst of genuine humor that reminded us of the good old days when she was fun to read, also mocked poor Mr. Gore.
Of course, Ms. Dowd covered her flank by referring to him as the president (you know: the Florida recount, yada yada yada), but she was laughing rather than crying:
“‘George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility,’ [Gore] said, in one of the most virulent attacks on a sitting president ever made by such a high-ranking former official. ‘Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world.’ (He did not ask the neocon cabal ringleader, Dick Cheney, to step down, perhaps in a spirit of second-banana solidarity.)
“John Kerry’s advisers were surprised and annoyed,” Dowd continued, “to hear that Mr. Gore hollered so much, he made Howard Dean look like George Pataki. They don’t want voters to be reminded of the wackadoo wing of the Democratic Party.”
Okay, here’s something you won’t often hear Inkwell say: Read Dowd’s column, and, if like me you were crying for Argentina (I mean Al Gore), you’ll soon be laughing.