I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT AL GORE.

I don't like Al Gore. Okay? I didn't like him in 2000 (even though I would have voted for him if I could have, obviously), and I don't like him now. I watched about twenty minutes of An Inconvenient Truth and couldn't handle it.

I'm not going to say that I think pollution is a problem and we should conserve energy, etc., and, okay, climate change may be an issue, but I'm not totally convinced and I'm not going to base any of my opinions on what Al Gore has to tell me, and this is why:

Do you see that image? It makes you think that pollution creates hurricanes, doesn't it? Oh, shit, like Katrina? Shit, do you remember that hurricane? It was the worst hurricane ever. Well, after the 1970 Bhola cyclone, which killed up to half a million people in Pakistan. Even China had one that was worse: Typhoon Nina in 1975. And while Katrina killed about 1800 people in 2005, the worst hurricane in American history was the Galveston Hurricane in 1900. Katrina was the most destructive hurricane in our country's history, causing the most property damage and becoming a major political issue, but I think it's been exploited by both the right and the left and the most important issues it pushed into the mainstream do not involve not what caused the hurricane (because, really, we know what causes hurricanes by now).

Basically, my problem with Al Gore's Nobel Prize is that he won it based on a movie that exploits our country / generation's fear of everything. You can argue that it was for "the greater good," which is a terrifying phrase, but the truth is that Al Gore exaggerates his truths, and I'm not convinced that's a good thing.

So please, World, stop giving this man awards, if only because I'm tired of having to hear him accept them. I just wish he'd be honest with himself and the rest of us and take a cue from Doris Lessing, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:


PS. I'm more excited today about the trailer for Tim Burton's adaptation of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, starring (surprise!) Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter, which seems to be in denial that it is a musical.