I can't believe it. Reliable sources indicate that Al Gore got a personality tranplant while we weren't looking.

Or a personality uncovering, rather. Presumably he was always in there somewhere.

These movie reviewers who review famous, talented, good-looking people in settings that cost millions of dollars are saying that "An Inconvenient Truth" which is basically a filmed lecture by Al Gore with great graphics, is a wonderful movie because Al is engaging and human and relaxed and funny.

And saying something very important well. That global warming is well along, and we need to do something to stop it or our goose is cooked and us with it.

The first line of the SF Chronicle review of June 2, 2006 is "If things are even half as bad as Al Gore says they are, 'An Inconvenient Truth' is the most important movie anyone will make this year. The film's significance as a wake-up call about global warming overshadows all its other virtues. Yes, it handles complicated material in a clear and intersting way. Yes, it renders cinematic what might have seemed like a static lecture, and yes, Al Gore is funny and engaging in way way you've never seen him be. But beyond that, the movies brings a feeling of history: Virtually everyone who sees this movie will be galvanized to do something about global
warming--and everyone should see this movie."

That's Mick LaSalle writing, and every review I've read so far essentially says the same thing. Terrific movie, massively important message, and you won't believe how interesting and human Al Gore is.

Democracy is best served is people say as well as they can what they really know in the public arena. It's good that Al Gore adventures brought him to the point of doing that. What I remember of the 2000 campaign before the ballots were cast was that Bush said he wouldn't engage in nation builing and Gore said he keep Social Security funds in a lock box. I sure didn't hear much,if anything, about global warming--and the reviews say Gore started giving the lecture this movies is based on in 1989, or 11 years before he ran for president and didn't take office.

I deeply believe in democracy. Therefore I deeply believe in the jury system. And yet at any given jury duty stint, I deeply wish to not be selected for this jury here and now in front of me. To put those contradictions together, my rule on jury duty is to go as myself and be honest. Not try to tweak the system and say blah blah to get out, but just come as I am.

Not a bad idea for democracy in general, and yet when people are running for really powerful offices it's hard. Maybe in a way, Al Gore, the old version, was more honestthan some, in a way, because he was openly robotic. In a way, he wasn't good at presenting a synthetic self so we knew this surely couldn't be him as he was, after all, made of flesh and blood.

And now here he is being something much more recognizably human and saying we need to do something if this our planet is going to remain suportive of flesh and blood. Thanks, Al. I voted for you, and if I go to your movie, I guess I get to see more of who I voted and and get, productively scared and productively inspired.

Productive inspiration would be a good job for a politician, I hear FDR did it, but it seems really hard for politicians to do it now.