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The bigger they are, Al,
the harder they fall!
of TheColumnists.com
This isn’t political. This is observational.
Al Gore looks like the Saturday Night Live
characters Hans and Frantz. “We pump you up,” bellowed
Dana Carvey.
When Gore was on the tube constantly after being named the Nobel
Peace prize winner, he appeared to be a stuffed balloon version
of the guy who won the 2000 election and lost the presidency.
Either Gore has added about a hundred pounds since then or wife
Tipper has lost 90.When they were seen together they appeared
on television as the sideways versions of Mutt and Jeff, not
tall and short to an extreme but wide and narrow beyond belief.
I know Gore is out to save the world with his global warming
campaign but is he swallowing all of that excess air?
No public figure in my memory has ever grown wider in his time
than Gore has. He could easily pass this week for the blown up
jack o’ lanterns seen on front yards across America.
William Howard Taft is the only huge American president. He was
supposed to have passed the 300 pound mark before he gained the
presidency and sat on the Supreme Court as a two-seated justice.
Bill Clinton had some weight problems during his Monica years
but a threatened heart attack and eventual bypass surgery got
him down to his playing around weight.
George W. Bush may be a lot of things but he isn’t fat.
They say he spends more time on his bike than Lance Armstrong.
George Bush, president 41, was a trim athlete at Yale in 1947,
a handsome trim pilot before that in World War II and a pretty
lean octogenarian today. As for wife Barbara, well…
Teddy Roosevelt had a few extra pounds on him but he could still
climb San Juan Hill and hunt down rhinos. I don’t think
Al Gore could climb an ant hill.
Washington and Lincoln were tall and lean, Jefferson and Madison
were short and squat. Truman, Eisenhower and Kennedy walked,
played golf, boated and played touch football to stay slim. Lyndon
Johnson was a big guy but he was no Gore in size.
Nixon was a crook despite his denials but stayed slim. Ford was
a great athlete and stayed tough on the links into his 90s.
Carter was always thin and Reagan was a cowboy who didn’t
look silly on a horse.
Bush 41 had the best resume and looked like a president should
when he took office.
Clinton, of course, was famous for his snacks. He paid the price
with heart problems but seems now to be toeing the diet mark.
Gore won the 2000 vote but lost the presidency. He didn’t
seem so huge then. He only seemed dull and a pretentious kisser
at the nominating convention.
Now he is a substitute Halloween pumpkin with a well-rounded
frame, an expanding body and a size that wouldn’t fit into
a golf cart.
I don’t know what his global warming campaign has done to
his physique but it is hard to listen to his words of wisdom
about that or anything else when it seems to be coming out of
a blow-up doll. Politicians are often stuffed shirts. But a stuffed
entire body?
This isn’t about Al Gore’s politics. This is about
Al Gore. He is reaching that dangerous stage of life when the
extra 10 or 20 or 100 pounds really can damage a guy.
Tipper has to get on him and get him over to the Biggest Loser
campus so he can shed some of that avoirdupois.
Of course I don’t know if he will be running for president
or not. If he is, maybe the idea is to stay out of the primaries
and escape climbing all those steps leading up to the platforms
in Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina and Florida.
Gore’s son was in drug trouble recently. That’s enough
to cause any father the kind of aggravation you try to relieve
by extra eating. That could explain some of it but not all of
it. After all, Tipper still looks good.
I voted for Gore in 2000. I was pissed when he didn’t oppose
the Supreme Court decision with a recount request in Florida.
But where do you go after the Supreme Court says you’re
out by a 5-4 vote?
John Kerry didn’t appeal the Ohio vote in 2004. He still
looks like he hasn’t had a good meal since he celebrated
his return from Vietnam. Not even all of his wife’s Heinz
ketchup--suggested by Reagan to be a vegetable--could fatten
him up.
If Gore does run he has to get that balloon body down to a fighting
weight, say, maybe, 300 pounds or Taftlike.
Oh, how about Hillary? She still looks trim. Why does she always
wear pants suits? My wife already explained that one to me. She’s
hiding the heavy legs.
©2007 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001
by Jim Hummel. The photos of Al Gore are courtesy of Wikipedia,
but one of them has been "enhanced" by our graphics
department. This column first posted Oct. 22, 2007.
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