Bad Hair Day?

So . . . it's been only a few weeks since Al Gore's movie won the Oscar and the rumors are starting up again. I've learned to be skeptical about British "scoops" about American politics, but here's a report in the Telegraph:

"Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.

"Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again. Mr Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case made in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won him an Oscar this year.

"But, aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, former strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching former campaign staff, including political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr Gore, 59, but have not been asked to stop."

Well, Bill Clinton did say on Larry King that Gore might run. Gore pal Marty Peretz reacts in the New Republic:

"Is this true? Or is it not? I couldn't reach my source(s). But all of this news (or maybe it is just speculation or wishful-thinking) tells you how much of a clamor there is for him to run. Even Bill Clinton thinks he might. This would not be good for Hillary. In fact, it would be a disaster. What do you think about a Gore-Obama ticket, particularly if Obama falters a bit?"

I would think Peretz would know if this was really happening.

I do trust the British press on all things Diana, including this Daily Mail report on Tina Brown's forthcoming book:

"Princess Diana was a manipulative schemer who was ruthless in her pursuit of Prince Charles, a bombshell book will claim."

Historian David Greenberg has an interesting piece arguing that the media can no longer distinguish between high crimes and misdemeanors:

"Just hours after devouring Don Imus for his slurs against the Rutgers University women's basketball team, the media pack was already circling fresh quarry. As the leather-faced hate jock fast became a bad memory, the scandal jackals were, by last weekend, starting to chew up a new menu of reprobates, from U.S. Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales to World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz to Durham County, N.C., Dist. Atty. Michael B. Nifong. Next week, surely, still other offenders will face the media maw.

"I am not defending these guys . . . But the speed and ferocity of the attacks against them and the harsh tenor of the discourse -- in these scandals and others like them -- hardly reflect a dispassionate pursuit of justice. It's impossible to measure a quality as intangible as public hunger for punishment. But it seems to me that in the last decade or so, a strain of intolerance and vengefulness has spread throughout our culture. Vocal swaths of the public, amplified by the media, have been expressing a primitive, unquenchable desire to inflict stern penalties on supposed wrongdoers -- no matter how obscure the offender or how minor the offense.