AL GORE-- LOOKIN' BETTER EVERY DAY

Last night at 11:30 PM I e-mailed Ken and asked him if he would be covering John Stewart's interview with Al Gore. For someone who until recently always made up upstairs by 9:30 to watch South Park and hit the lights at 10 sharp, that's saying a lot. I'm getting into a can't-miss-The-Daily-Show-and-The-Colbert-Report-phase again. Well, sometimes I'm just so tired I do miss Colbert. In fact, sometimes I'm so tired that when Stewart introduces his dull hacky guest, I can just turn off everything and get a few extra minutes of sleep.

Last night it seemed like I had barely gotten upstairs and turned on the TV-- having worked hard researching a story about the Rove pal caught molesting 8 year old girls who put together the Bush campaign TV ads in 2000 attacking Gore for selling nuclear secrets to China-- before Stewart was introducing his guest. "Is it that late already!" I thought. It wasn't. The guest was Al Gore and Stewart had, wisely, decided to devote most of the show to him. Many rock stars wish that they got the kind of reception Al got from The Daily Show audience last night. John Amato's got a low-res video clip of it up at CROOKS AND LIARS but it doesn't capture the hysteria and emotional connection between the audience members and Al. So many, many, many "what if's" must have been on so many minds at that moment when Al came out on stage, waved once and gave two Thai Buddhist-style wei greetings (folded hands, slight bow).

Most of the interview, one of Stewart's best ever, was spent discussing AN INCONVIENENT TRUTH and the truth behind the film and book. But at one point, Stewart, being Stewart, couldn't resist monkeying around and jokingly asked Al if he wouldn't have liked to have seen Florida already suffering the predictable fate of the world's coastal areas if Bush's environmental policies keep going unchecked. Not a chance. I mean beyond not wishing ill to any place, Al certainly doesn't wish ill on Florida because, as he pointed out, "I won Florida." The audience roared their approval. So did I; I hope I didn't wake my neighbors.