Today it was reported that Albert Gore, III, was nailed at 2:15 a.m. for driving at 100 miles per hour on a southern California freeway. In the car - which smelled of freshly smoked marijuana - the cops found a smorgasbord of drugs including: speed; uppers, downers, and pain killers.
Reports said that young Al's problems started in 1996 when he was bounced from the highly exclusive public school he attended just outside D.C. Back then he was caught smoking or possessing marijuana.
Also back then, his father was just completing four years as Vice-President/Lap Dog to Bill Clinton.
This young man is the same child cited by Al as having almost died when hit by an automobile - before Al Senior's very eyes - on a roadway. The story was used by the V.P. in various speeches during that period of his career.
It was a story meant to show that the future V.P. had his family priorities straight and that he had learned what, in life, really mattered.
Well - since that time, Al the Third, has been nailed several times by cops. Some of these nailings involved drugs, some were automobile violations and some - like this last one, involved both.
In those earlier years, young Al the Third had to bear up to the publicity created when his mother testified before congress about posting warning labels on CD's regarding violent and lewd lyrics. Though I believe his mother, Tipper, was correct in her position, nevertheless, I would imagine that young Al must have taken some awful teasing and ribbing about his mother - [she who was ALWAYS described by the press at that time as a 'former drummer' in a rock and roll band] - by his classmates.
I'm not saying she shouldn't have expressed her opinion. I am saying that I have little doubt that such maternal opinions might have caused him problems at school.
Additionally, we all know that his father has more piety than the average monastery. His old man knows several things: how all of us should live; who should be allowed to contradict him [answer: nobody - debate not allowed]; that he's a modern day prophet and visionary who only now is being recognized for his genius and prescience; that he thinks he and Tipper were the direct inspiration for Erik Siegel's "Love Story" characters; and that while he was 're-inventing the government' as Vice-President, his immediate boss, the President, was getting fellated by an intern while conducting business conversations on the Oval Office phone. [That act alone gives a whole new dimension to the phrase 'multi-tasking.']
Anyway - did all the activities of his parents have a negative effect, the results of which were, in part, played out this week on a California freeway?
Could be. I don't know. Unlike Al the Third's father, I am not an expert in much of anything.
But - there are two things I have going for me in writing this column:
Personal experience as a student, and personal experience as a teacher.
My mother was a high school teacher at the high school I attended. She was quite respected and was quite a great and wise character.
I loved my mother as deeply as can any son and as a result, I never told her what her teaching activity did to me.
What it did, and what she never knew, was this:
During my two years in junior high school, I was repeatedly told by my friends' older brothers who were then in high school, who was planning to beat me up when I eventually arrived in high school. It was made clear that the 'beatings' were to be a way to 'get' at my mother for perceived slights.
I spent the summer between junior high school and high school with my stomach in a rather terrified knot.
For the first two years of high school, I walked with great dread through the halls of the building. I feared going to the men's room.
On several occasions I was beaten up. I was also knocked around, repeatedly threatened, cornered and intimidated and, in general made to fear my daily entry into the school building. And why?
Why indeed. These bums did not, as it turned out, do it to me because my mother had done something to them. In fact, my mother actually got along with the bums who attended my high school back then.
I would guess-timate that only about five per cent of the harassment had anything to do with an 'action' taken by my mother.
The bums who made my life hell did so because they were son's of bitches. They were stupid young men - and, without exception - they were cowards.
Or - as we called them then and now: they were bullies.
But, no matter what you call them, they had mental baggage that made them vicious.
Again - I must emphasize that my mother was not some 'crone' who was hated by students. In fact, she worked very well with the slower students and often had some of the toughest guys in her classes.
She also never had any real disciplinary trouble. She was a veteran teacher and was respected across the board. In all the years she taught there, her classrooms were orderly, disciplined, interesting, and productive.
In all her years there, she sent only one person to the front office for a discipline problem. The reason she even did it on that occasion was because she feared that, if the boy remained in the room, a real brawl would break out. It was simply a matter of defusing the situation.
So - she handled her classes well and had few discipline problems. Plus, those she had, she handled herself and handled quite well.
So - why did I go through such hell?
Again - the demented s.o.b.'s who made my life hell did so just because they could. There really is no other reason.
Now - imagine being young Albert Gore, III. Your parents are out on the lecture circuit discussing morality - telling people that they have the 'answers' to the ways we should live - etc. etc.
If you're young Al, your father - whether with deep sincerity or not - has already used you - when you were about nine years old - as a 'speech prop' when he was trying to beat Clinton for the nomination in '91.
In what some believed was a craven attempt to acquire sympathy and to get some street credibility in the: "I have suffered just as have you commoners," department, Senator Al used to talk publicly about two events in his life: his older sister dying of lung cancer and the day an automobile almost killed this same son - Al the III, right before Senator Al's eyes.
Young Al the III's accident was a regular staple in Senator Al's speeches. Of course, sometimes the kid was right there with him and had to listen to the speech and - no doubt - relive that accident to some extent.
Now, I know nothing about Al, III, other than what I've read in the papers and heard in his dad's speeches.
Nevertheless - I cannot even begin to imagine the hellish crap that that boy has undoubtedly been through in his life due to the high profile of his parents.
Can you just imagine how 'ducky' it is to be in junior high school while your mother is campaigning against 'dirty lyrics' in rock songs? Imagine how the bullies treated Al III when pictures of his mother appeared on front pages of newspapers showing her when she was a 'rock and roll' drummer in her own band in her youth.
Then, all during your high school years, your father is vice-president to a president who is known for: screwing a former t.v. reporter/lounge singer known as Gennifer Flowers; is accused of requesting sexual favors from a young gal who is later called 'trailer trash' by the president's colleagues; and who is ultimately impeached for lying about receiving oral sex in the oval [oral?] office?
I'm not just beating up on Clinton here. Sure - V.P. Al didn't commit those 'sins.' But - kids being kids, can you not just imagine what Albert III's life was like?
"Hey, Alby, Baby, is your dad gettin' any of Bill's 'left-overs?' Was your dad there when Monica was doin' Bill? Your mom's gettin' long in the tooth, y'uh, know - so - just maybe - your dad's gettin' some 'referral's from the Prez' when your momma ain't lookin'."
Also, lest we forget, the Clinton/Gore administration was the first presidential administration to openly champion homosexual rights in general and in the military in particular. Adolescent boys can be vicious when they can use homosexual issues to taunt another kid. Even though young Al, III is most likely not gay, it wouldn't matter. The bullies would be brutal: "Hey, Alby - your daddy and Bill are in big with the 'pansies and fairies' ain't they? Does your daddy think a Drill Sargent oughtta wear a dress?"
Oh man - the potential harassment that I imagine in this column probably doesn't come close to what this young man suffered through his adolescent and teen years.
It must have been brutal at school and elsewhere among his peers for Albert III whose junior high and high school years ran concurrently with his father's eight years as vice-president.
On top of it all - he then has his father run for president. By then his father was the subject of merciless satire and parody for his inability to tell jokes effectively - and for his marionette-like woodeness.
His father was parodied on Saturday Night Live, on Leno, Letterman - you name it! Candidate Al was a punch-line in many a joke.
And, if I'm right, has the Gore family dealt with the such issues of harassment?
I doubt it. For that matter - I doubt that Alby has ever told them even one per cent of the crap he's been through due to their public personas.
So - to that extent - I'm guessing that V.P. Al and Tipper are unaware of how much he's probably suffered. If they aren't aware, then it's hard to blame them for not connecting his drug use and delinquency to consequences he may have suffered from being their child.
Yeah, it sounds like I'm defending Tipper and Al. And, I am - a bit. True, I cannot stand the former V.P., but I can empathize with the family. And my theory that the parents are not completely to blame is based on the premise that, indeed, Tipper and Al may have no idea that their son may have truly suffered a great deal of harassment and thus incubated some terrible resentments.Why do I think the Gores are probably ignorant of their son's suffering? Well - I'm extrapolating based on my personal experience.
As I wrote above, I went through hell in high school. But I never once reported any of it to my mother or father nor to any school official.
I did not tell them for four reasons: My mother loved to teach. It would have ruined teaching for her if she'd known the fall-out in my life.
Secondly: Squealing would only produce more beatings and punishment.
Third: If I didn't learn to handle my own problems - I never would.
Fourth: [and most importantly] I was growing bigger and the older thugs were graduating. I knew it was a matter of time before I was a junior/senior and I'd be at the top of the 'pecking' food chain.
It was knowing that the crapola would totally end with high school graduation that made everything bearable.
But what of young Albert? When will his torment ever end?
His father has never stopped shoving his own face in the public eye. The father's has been parodied, imitated, scorned and been the object of immensely funny [or, depending on one's viewpoint, immensely vicious] satires.
It should be apparent to anyone watching the Gore family, that former Vice-President Al Gore is the 'child' cheered on by the family. He's the one who's the focus of the families energies and attention.
Perhaps the social pressures on young Albert have been too much.
He can never compete with his father's accomplishments and no matter what his father accomplishes - it is never 'enough.' His father always has to be 'out there' - pushing his mug and his philosophy and his so-called ideas.
Young Albert is now twenty-four years old.
The ages of twenty to thirty are the period when a young man should start making his mark and name in life. That's when his parents should be rooting him on.
But it is his father who is STILL out there, pounding the pavement, trying - at 59 years of age - to build his 'legacy.' And - from what pundits can guess - his father is still trying to get that 'big job promotion' that he's wanted his entire life - that is to say: the presidency of the United States.
In a way, young Albert is a bit like a 'Prince Charles.' He can never be a big cheese while his father is alive since his father can never stop trying to be king himself.
Getting back to dealing with abusive behavior: I'll also bet that young Albert has handled the incredible multitude of embarassing and angering situations involving his parents in the way I did: He has probably kept his mouth shut.
As noted, in some circles his father is a laughing stock as a 'wooden' and uncomfortable speaker with little real humor. And - as noted above - the second half of his father's vice-presidency was riddled with scorn and ridicule since it was dominated by the actions of Al's boss whose inability to resist oral sex was legendary.
As some national news anchors noted: They had never even referred to the phrase 'oral sex' on the national airways in any context whatsoever until Clinton's escapades during the Clinton/Gore years became famous.
Just this past year, Al the Third's dad was the subject of a merciless parody on the Comedy Channel's television series entitled 'South Park.'
I confess to a guilty pleasure: I am a huge fan of 'South Park.' I saw the show in which they made fun of former V.P. Al Gore.
More importantly, since Al the Third is twenty-four years old - I should point out that 'South Park' is a major - and I do mean major - hit show within that age group. Therefore - without doubt - virtually every one of young Al's peers as well as - probably - young Al himself - saw the episode I'm referencing.
Here I'm going to give you a brief run-down on that episode. Just imagine what young Al's days were like after this show ran.
In the Gore episode, V.P. Al is portrayed as an eccentric dooms-day lunatic. He stomps around the little Colorado town of South Park warning everyone that the horrible, vicious creature known as 'Man-Bear-Pig' is lurking in the woods. 'Man-Bear-Pig' is a blatant metaphor for 'global warming' throughout the episode.
Gore's character cannot convince everyone that the legendary 'Man-Bear-Pig' exists. Soooo what does he do? He dresses up in a combined man/bear/pig costume and haunts the woods.
The town's people decide he is a completely deranged idiot. Throughout the show, everytime he appears, characters make fun of him. And, everytime someone makes fun of Gore, another character says, and I paraphrase:
"Don't pick on him. He's lonely. He has no friends. No one likes him. He's just yelping about 'Man-Bear-Pig' to get attention. It's just something he made up 'cuz he's lonely. He's really just a harmless and partially demented fool.'
At the episode's finale, the Gore character is verbally shredded by a nine year old character who really insults him with quite carefully crafted psychological insights and repeats - 'Look, we know you're lonely. We know no one likes you. But you don't have to go around dressed as 'Man-Bear-Pig' to get attention,"...etc.
Can you imagine being twenty-four years old and having your own father [for whom you are the 'namesake'] humiliated on a show that is perhaps the most popular comedy show among your college educated age group - a show that virtually every one of your peers has seen?
Whew! It must have been brutal for young Al when that episode aired - as well every time it's been re-run. And believe me - it has been re-run several times.
So - I suspect that young Albert bears a lot of emotional scars and baggage.
And - let's take a look at the boy's chronology. He started getting into trouble with marijuana at the exclusive St. Alban's school in Washington, D.C. - the same school his father attended when he was thirteen. That would be the same year that his father was re-elected as vice-president and the same year that the young boy's adolescence - as well as that of any peer/bullies - would begin its full bloom.
He's been caught two or three times since the age of thirteen. That doesn't mean he's only been in trouble three times. It means he's only been caught three times. I suspect that, since the age of thireteen, he's been in trouble right along through this present incident.
And let's look more closely at his latest bust.
We have a young man, twenty-four years of age, possessed of every educational, financial, and societal advantage - alone - driving a car at 100 miles per hour down a southern California freeway - stoned on pot and with his car loaded with other drugs for his own use - none of which he attempted to conceal.
And - according to cops - as soon as they pulled him over he admitted who he was - and not in a way that implied he was seeking special treatment.
One doesn't need to be a 'shrink' to recognize a cry - or rather - a 'scream' for help and a 'shout' for some attention! The kid is a hurtin buckaroo!
Where was dad? He was out saving the world. I assume his mother was probably lining up the rock bands that are always so essential to saving mankind as well.
Anyway -- I never talked about my nasty high school experiences with my parents -- nope -- not once. My mother went to her grave not knowing about the little sadistic bastards - some of whom she'd had in class - who had endeavored to make my life hell. I am proud that she never knew.
And, I think it's a fair guess that young Albert, III, has been through experiences similar to mine - and, far more likely - has been through far worse experiences that are just horrible for an adolescent and a young man and which can result in deep scars.
Furthermore, I have little doubt that the taunting and controversy surrounding his father has not stopped and will not stop until the old man retires after becoming the world champion of 'show and tell' or finally gets tired of running around, metaphorically shouting: "Look at me - look at me! I'm going to save the world!"
Like I said: I never talked to my parents about my problems that resulted from my mother's job. Why? As noted, I didn't want to hurt my mother and destroy the great pleasure she took from teaching.
I suspect young Al hasn't talked to his parents about the problems he's suffered from their pursuits and for reasons similar to mine: He probably doesn't want to hurt his mother and father who so immensely enjoy being on-stage and telling the world how to live.
My problems ended when I graduated from high school. For young Albert, I doubt that there is - or ever will be, an end in sight.
But - what I suspect now, more than anything: Now young Albert may be ready to talk. His latest escapade is just too much of a cry for attention.
I entitled this column "Channeling my mother."
By that I mean: I can hear what my mother would be saying today if she read the recent articles about young Gore:
"For goodness' sake. The former Vice-President should shut up about his slide show and heat stroke and God-knows-what-else and go home. His family needs him. How the hell does he think he can save the world if he cannot even save his own son? The number one job he signed up for in this life was the one with the title 'father.' It's time he went home and took care of that job."
I wish you luck, young Albert Gore, the Third.
Your father appears thrilled to have everyone 'looking at him' and praising him.
I suspect that as long as there is a mirror in this world, your father will never feel lonely.
But for you, young Albert? For you, I don't think a mirror is the companion you need right now.
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