Re: Maureen Dowd's 'Pass the Clam Dip' (full column link below) -- From John Edwards' hair to Al Gore's weight, no one proves the point of Al Gore's new book better than gossip columnist Maureen Dowd.
Dowd says she's read Gore's book, but don't expect to learn anything about it in her column.
Doesn't the New York Times have a women's section [tongue firmly in cheek] they can stick her petty columns in? The Times should be embarrassed to have her on the Op-ed page.
Pass the Clam Dip
By MAUREEN DOWD
It’s no wonder Al Gore is a little touchy about his weight, what with everyone trying to read his fat cells like tea leaves to see if he’s going to run.
He was so determined to make his new book look weighty, in the this-treatise-belongs-on-the-shelf-between-Plato-and-Cato sense, rather than the double-chin-isn’t-quite-gone-yet sense, that he did something practically unheard of for a politician: He didn’t plaster his picture on the front.
“The Assault on Reason” looks more like the Beatles’ White Album than a screed against the tinny Texan who didn’t get as many votes in 2000.
The Goracle does concede a small author’s picture on the inside back flap, a chiseled profile that screams Profile in Courage and that also screams Really Old Picture. Indeed, if you read the small print next to the wallet-sized photo of Thin Gore looking out prophetically into the distance, it says it’s from his White House years.
A subliminal clue to his intentions, perhaps? He must be flattered that many demoralized leading Republicans and Bush insiders think a Gore-Obama ticket would be unbeatable. And he must be gratified that his rival Hillary has never cemented her inevitability, even with Bill Clinton’s lip-licking Web video pushing her.
But though he’s on a book tour clearly timed to build on his Oscar flash and Nobel buzz, and take advantage of the public’s curiosity about whether he’ll jump in the race, he almost seems to want to sigh and roll his eyes when he’s asked about it.
“I’m not a candidate,” he told Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America.” “This book is not a political book. It’s not a candidate book at all.”
Of course, his protestation was lost given the fact that he was sitting in front of a screen blaring the message “The Race to ’08,” and above a crawl that asked “Will he run for the White House?”
He is so fixed on not seeming like a presidential flirt that he risks coming across as a bit of a righteous tease or a high-minded scold, which is exactly what his book is, a high-minded scolding. He upbraided Diane about the graphics for his segment, complaining about buzzwords and saying “That’s not what this is about.”
Diane was not so easily put off as he turned up his nose at the horse race and the vast wasteland of TV, and bored in for the big question: “Donna Brazile, your former campaign manager, has said, ‘If he drops 25 to 30 pounds, he’s running.’ Lost any weight?”
Read more . . .
Maureen Dowd Al Gore Gore 2008 Assault on Reason News Politics Tennessee Bush Diane Sawyer Gore's New Book Bill Richardson Pass the Clam Dip
