| Attempting to prove -- once and for all -- that he is not a space alien, Vice President Al Gore gave his wife a violent, mashing kiss before beginning his speech at the Democratic National Convention. It was as if Gore had read a manual on how to kiss a girl, but got stuck on a famous Clinton maneuver -- the Juanita Broaddrick kiss. You almost expected Gore to step back and say, "You better put some ice on that."
To bolster the Democrats' message that Gore is human, an endless series of Gore's friends and family members took to the stage throughout the convention to issue personal testimonials about what a witty fellow Gore is in private. By the end of it all you had to marvel at how well he keeps that amazing sense of humor under wraps. This guy must reach Olympian heights when he's alone in the bathtub.
In point of fact, Gore is so bereft of authentic feeling that his every motion is transparently phony. The man is a collection of weird tics and false sanctimonious gestures -- the back tilt, the shrugged shoulders and the arch chuckle. Most awkwardly, Gore couldn't help but slip back into that patronizing kindergarten sing-song voice his advisers have spent so long trying to beat out of him.
In an embarrassing fluke, the sappy biographical video shown before Gore's speech included a Halloween photo of Al Gore dressed up as Frankenstein. This remained the most natural image of Gore shown throughout the convention.
His speech-of-a-lifetime did bear witness to how his great sense of humor seems to dissipate whenever anyone's watching.
In the verbal equivalent of George Bush Sr. looking at his watch during the 1992 townhall debate with Clinton, Gore could not read his speech fast enough. He just kept rushing through that windbag of a speech and stepping on his applause lines as if he wanted to spit out the whole garbled mess as quickly as possible and get back to the bathtub where he really hits his humor stride.
Gore promised to be a virtual whirligig of a president, enacting every issue under the Rainbow Coalition. He ran through innumerable promises of assistance for "working families" -- a euphemism for families in which no one works. One piece of assistance noticeably not offered "working families" was a right to notification before a particular invasive surgical procedure is performed on their teen-age daughters.
Indeed, when Gore promised to save Roe vs. Wade, he got his longest and most heartfelt round of applause. He mentioned national defense and got only a lukewarm reaction. He mentioned America's role in freeing the world "from fascism and communism" -- polite applause. He said he would fight for the victims of crime -- sporadic clapping. But the mere mention of Roe vs. Wade and total pandemonium broke out! This is a party that apparently cares about nothing as much as killing little babies. Continued... |