Politics: President Gore and more

So I’ve only had one (I think) post on politics ever since I added it to my topics list (way back in February I think). So here’s a bit more…

Al Gore was on SNL last week (I didn’t see it on TV, but did find a clip at crooksandliars.com Video-WMP Video-QT ). It’s very much worth watching – though I wish Al would take some speech coaching from John Stewart, his timing is terrible.

The address goes as follows:

President Al Gore:

Good evening, my fellow Americans. In 2000 when you overwhelmingly made the decision to elect me as your 43rd president, I knew the road ahead would be difficult. We have accomplished so much yet challenges lie ahead. In the last 6 years we have been able to stop global warming. No one could have predicted the negative results of this. Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack. As you know, these renegade glaciers have already captured parts of upper Michigan and northern Maine, but I assure you: we will not let the glaciers win.

Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history. We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon, and the oil companies are hurting.

I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash. I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because – hey if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us. (more here)

It was a fun poke at the failures of the Bush administration, and he managed to address many of them in a short time. But I’m not sure how much it will do in the long run.

More pressing, I think, will be the impact of the release of An Inconvenient Truth – the Paramount Classics movie documenting Gore’s crusade to stop Global Warming. They have a ‘pledge’ counter on the site, trying to reach 1 million before the opening weekend. But my pledge (including bringing two friends) only brought them up to 74,420… They have only 8 days to spread the word, to get 1 million people to pledge to go see this film.

For comparison’s sake, how did films like The Passion of the Christ and Fahrenheit 9/11 do? Well, nobody count’s actual humans it seems (it’s all measured in green paper these days), but The Passion took in just shy of $84 million in its first weekend and Fahrenheit 9/11 smashed documentary records with about $22 million. Even if An Inconvenient Truth garners 500,000 folks, which I’m doubting, it would pull in only (at $8 a ticket) $4 million. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see the groundswell of support (or controversy) that these other two films had. Prove me wrong – sign the pledge…

For more (and better) commentary on politics and contemporary culture – check out Nacho’s “Woodmoor Village“

And also worth visiting is the relatively new blog by an extraordinary young Tibetan Buddhist practitioner (and fellow scholar) living in Brooklyn: http://samsara-politic.blogspot.com/

That’ll be all for me for now on politics… more philosophy tomorrow though 🙂