Thursday, May 25, 2006

There He Goes Again   [Jonah Goldberg]

Remember the other day I posted this:

Priceless. Arianna Huffington on Al Gore at Cannes:

"This is my second visit to Cannes," he said. "The first was when I was fifteen years old and came here for the summer to study the existentialists — Sartre, Camus... We were not allowed to speak anything but French!" Which may explain his pitch-perfect French accent.

Was this before or after he spent his summers working on his family farm?

Me: At the time I was being more sarcastic than anything, but the hilarious, absurd, pretentiousness of it bugged me. So, I looked it up. According to several biographies, Al Gore was home in Carthage, TN famously using that hillside plow of his when he was fifteen. The biographers, including David Maraniss, went to considerable lengths to nail that down because Gore received so much flack for saying he worked the family farm. Meanwhile, I couldn't find any mention of him summering at existentialist sleep-away camp in France. But I did find out that he got straight C's in French three years in a row at St. Alban's. Presumably somebody who can ribbit fluently about Camus, should be able to get a B — even at St. Alban's. Anyway. I wrote it all up here, in the LA Times, which should have a desirable impact out there.

I'm sure Arianna Huffinington will be relentleess in getting to the bottom of this.

05/25 09:38 AMShare