Apparently a lot of Americans were surprised ("saddened," "depressed" -- New Republic) by news that Al and Tipper Gore were, after 40 years of marriage, parting company. Everywhere neurotic married couples asked: "If the Gores can't make it, who can?"Read the whole thing. Well written.
Well, how about the Clintons? Even the Eliot Spitzers were still together, last time we checked. Many political marriages have weathered far worse. Think about the odd White House dynamic of FDR, his mistress Lucy Mercer, his wife Eleanor and her wife Lorena Hickok. Go back far enough and you find some perfectly awful political marriages that endured, but none worse than the Lincolns'. Mary Todd once spat in the face of the secretary of state. (Are you taking notes, Michelle?) After one of Mrs. Lincoln's hissy fits, the long-suffering Abe shrugged it off, saying, "It does her lots of good and it doesn't hurt me a bit."
In my grandparents' day marriage meant something.... Common folk were obliged to pledge their troth, for better or worse, till death do we part, and like it.
If things got really bad, the wife was expected to discretely poison her husband and then quietly shut herself up in her big Victorian house for the rest of her life. The townsfolk would tactfully turn a blank eye, figuring he doubtless deserved it, and for the next few months husbands could be expected to mind their Ps and Qs.
... Even the Gores' email announcement of their separation was boring, meaningless and phony, much like the Gores themselves, calling it a "mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration."
This attitude of Me Generation egotism and goofy pop psychology was perfectly captured in an interview with Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage: A History. She told NPR that the Gores' divorce shouldn't be viewed as a failure, but as a "success" and a "celebration of life." I wonder what Dr. Coontz thinks of the recession. "A celebration of government intervention!" The oil leak? "A celebration of blowout prevention technology!"
[Hat tip to J.M., including for the header.]
All I can recall of AlGore's character came back in 1999 or so--as an early campaign PR stop for 2000. He visited the old family ancestral in Tennessee for Christmas or Thanksgiving. The greater Gore clan was there. The holiday aroma was evident even via TV. AlGore led a tour about the place and strolled up to his mom, continued droning on about on about holidays with family and festivities, rambled/groaned something about God... An then his mother, without pause in overseeing things and in a perfectly clear tone unlike his own, crushed him underfoot with the statement that he never comes home for holidays. A clear uncomfortable smirk emerged on his face and the camera slightly tilted, then was raised back up.
ReplyDelete--This was on an evening news show. Quite probably a 60 Minutes episode. It was a show I never thought I'd learn anything from.
So here's AlGore's future--Who gets the big Malibu house? I hope AlGore's had time enough to try out all 9 bathrooms or whatever the place has.
With marriage at best a fifty-fifty proposition in this sweaty petri dish we call American culture, the Gores simply realize that divorce is no longer a scandal to most voters. Nor, for that matter, is adultery, fornication, indiscriminate sex with partners of both sexes and all ages (and all species? -- the next frontier). It is all a form of entertainment, to be peddled by wizened whores of the information age, like the awful Mary Hart, who in an earlier age would have been hawking sailors from a whorehouse doorway. Or, for that matter, like just about every journalist drawing a paycheck. It is no accident that Elliot Spitzer is oozing his way back into the public square as a talking head on CNN. Scandal is currently judged by its entertainment value.
ReplyDeleteWhen the majority of Christians are of the nominal sort, who cling to traditional poses as a means of increasing their titillation over sin, what can one expect?
The real entertainment orgy will come when President Bubba has hisself the Big One, and the journalists, who buried reports of his squalid indulgences while he walked the earth, no longer have to restrain themselves. His carrion will fly in all directions, as journalistic vultures pick frenziedly for a piece. All of those stories about his affairs, his seduction of interns, his snootsfuls of cocaine, his alleged rape, and all the hideous deeds he has managed to squelch thus far, will suddenly gain a "credibility" journalists always denied they had while he was alive, and we will hear repeatedly of this "important" story, that we, The American People, have a right to hear (now that it no longer matters).
"I hope AlGore's had time enough to try out all 9 bathrooms or whatever the place has."
ReplyDeleteOh, but just think about that "carbon footprint"!!!
"Nor, for that matter, is adultery, fornication, indiscriminate sex with partners of both sexes and all ages (and all species? -- the next frontier)."
ReplyDelete--This last year in Germany a man married a chair. I could not find any picture of the chair for specific identification on type or genus.
--This last week progress was made there in reigning in this defiant brand of debauchery. Courts in Germany rejected gay marriage, calling such pairs, at best, something like cohabitants.
US is not so far off from example #1 though. Are we yet at the level of shocking the sensibilities of the Romans? Hhhmmmmm...
On AlGore's bathrooms--Word has it that room #6 was built out under the sea so that he could both see his film as played from his 80 inch TV in the living room and be amongst earth's beauty. Pass the word.
"In my grandparents' day marriage meant something." Mine too ... except it was the opposite. My grandpa tried to poison my grandma. It didn't work but not for lack of trying. Good Italian marriage ... until the '80s when they ended up getting a divorce in the end anyway. At least they aren't as boring as the Gores.
ReplyDeleteThe Spirit of Family, by Al & Tipper Gore 2002
ReplyDeleteComplemented by a... smattering of quotes from John Milton, Plato and others, this impressive collection showcases more than 250 photographs of contemporary American families...The so-called spirit of these images ranges from heartbreaking to smile inducing. Al and Tipper have arranged the photographs by theme (e.g., photos of farming families, families at mealtime, couples reading the paper, parents smoking around children, white children with black nannies, etc.). Without explanations, some are confusing, e.g., two little girls-one white, one black-stand side-by-side in their bathing suits. Are they sisters? Cousins? Friends? Yet this approach allows the more complex work here to maintain its socio-sexual zing. A nervous-looking bride walks through a park with her fiance, while a couple sits on a nearby park bench, kissing. A trio of pudgy adults smiles as they dig into a meal of ribs, corn on the cob and Diet Pepsi. Teens mourn over the casket of a classmate. A laughing woman sprays a young girl with a garden hose. A family of four stands at a busy intersection in Manhattan, underneath a Calvin Klein billboard showing an underwear-clad hunk. The book includes families from all walks of life and potential voting demographics-and it is oddly successful at describing the beauty and awkwardness of family in its current incarnations, including same-sex couples. The ambient tolerance, plus a few less-than-clothed figures, may provoke responses from a variety of camps. --From Publishers Weekly
This book begins with an excellent objective-to portray the dramatic changes in the American family over the past two generations-and the Gores did a fine job of selecting and arranging an outstanding collection of photographs. ...However, the book consists almost entirely of these loosely strung-together photographs, with only brief, informal comments by the authors buried among the early pages and occasional, distracting snippets of quotes. Not a single photograph is captioned...Other than the concept of family, no substantive connection is apparent. Carefully selected and beautifully reproduced, the photographs are nothing short of brilliant. Yet so many questions go unasked and so many issues are not addressed that one is left disappointed. --From Library Journal