I don’t want to sail with this ship of fools
Ann Althouse is getting some criticism for for making playful fun of Al Gore’s tone in this article:
“… I haven’t ruled out for all time thinking about politics again. It’s just that the way it works now, I don’t think that the skills I have are the ones that are most likely to be rewarded within this system. It’s like a washing machine that is permanently set on the spin cycle. It doesn’t stop spinning. That creates real problems for a politics based on reason.”
Friends have urged him to run for president again, but he wants to see a “transformation of this conversation of democracy” that de-emphasizes imagery and spin-doctoring.
Althouse says:
What?! You think this is spinning? You’re spinning. You’re always spinning. You’re like a washing machine. Al Gore is grateful to those who have a good opinion of him, but you… you don’t seem ready for reason, you know, reason, that process that yields a good opinion of Al Gore. Why don’t you help him transform the conversation of democracy. De-emphasize imagery! You washing machine.
You can bet he’s not referring to one of those new energy-efficient washing machines, either.
Gore’s way of expressing himself is pompous and self-flattering as always, and Althouse is justified in poking fun at it. Nevertheless, the essential point seems to me a reasonable one. Maybe it’s time for Gore to resign himself to never being in a position to use federal power to realize all of his nanny-state dreams and to work as he can to bring them to pass through other means. Who knows? He might discover along the way a few useful truths about humility and compromise.
Perhaps because Al Gore is pretentious. Sort of the politician Sting, if you will.
BTW, per an earlier post, you can shorten flower stems quite easily, you just need a good pair of garden shears, like the pair I keep in my kitchen for just such occasions. The flowers I get at the Grand Central Market are grown for the vases of basketball players, one imagines. My cluster of short glass vases isn’t able to accommodate even a quarter of the stem sometimes.
Uh, Jon? I know how to manipulate garden shears, but thanks for the point-by-point explanation. : ) I’m just lazy and figure that if the florist is going to pack them in wet gauze for you anyway, why not just get them cut to size so you can arrange them without fussing with shears and stuff when you get home? I don’t think their little xylem are closed by then.