THE VICE-PRESIDENT TURNS TO LESBIANISM
It's because he's tried nearly everything else in vain,
says Mark Steyn New Hampshire WHAT is it with vice-presidents and situa- tion comedy characters? In 1992, Dan Quayle attacked Murphy Brown, epony- mous heroine of the sitcom Murphy Brown, for having a baby out of wedlock. Five years on, Quayle's successor has just salut- ed Ellen, eponymous heroine of the sitcom Ellen, for declaring herself a lesbian. `When the character Ellen came out,' Al Gore droned approvingly to an audience in Los Angeles the other day, 'millions of Americans were forced to look at sexual orientation in a more open light.'
`Forced' is the operative word. If you live in Britain, Ellen is just a minor Ameri- can import on Channel 4. But if you hap- pened to be in the United States earlier this year, when Ellen came to terms with her sexuality, proclaimed her lesbianism, rocketed to number one in the ratings, made the cover of Time (`Yep! I'm gay') and won an Emmy, it was a non-stop les- bian blitzkrieg. In the run-up to the great event, Ellen DeGeneres, the actress who plays the character, also came out; her movie-star girlfriend came out; at 'Come Out With Ellen' parties, hordes of miscel- laneous lesbians came out; even ABC- TV's network publicist came out. For a few brief weeks, a lesbian tide threatened to engulf the country, much like the swollen Red River as it burst its banks and spilled over the border into Manitoba. In both news stories, the populace cowered nervously before 'a vast network of dykes' — the headline actually referred to the Red River defences, though by this stage , most of us assumed it was ABC launching its fall schedule.
But, granted all that, what's it to do with Al Gore? In the Fifties, Vice-President Nixon didn't waste his time giving speech- es about Leave it to Beaver (nothing to do with lesbians, I hasten to add, but a popu- lar family sitcom of the day). After all, these people do not actually exist. From Gore's point of view, though, that's proba- bly the best reason for hanging out with them. Unable to wriggle out from under the fund-raising scandals with the slippery ease of his boss, Gore has seen his poll rating go into free-fall. Nothing seems to work. He summoned the country's leading television weathermen to the White House to warn about global warming, only to find that these days he's the only guy feeling the heat. So, before his succession is called in question, Gore has decided to come out — not as a lesbian, but as a cool, loose, hep kinda guy.
Like Ellen trying to be heterosexual for her first three seasons, it seems that Gore has been living a lie, masquerading as a boring stiff who talks in the robotic mono- tone of that electronic voice in your car that tells you to fasten your seat-belt. According to his former aide, Bill Curry, he is not 'this cigar store Indian enviro- technocrat', but, in fact, a 'subtle, wry, `Before you go ... just one more question.' funny person'. Evidence is hard to find, though recently, when the Gores attended a party as Beauty and the Beast, his staff had to dissuade him from putting Tipper in the fake fur and squeezing into Beauty's gown himself. America is not yet ready for a transvestite Gore. They don't mind that he's a drag, but they don't want him as a queen.
Instead, he went to California to champi- on Ellen. It was time, he decided, to make clear that he was no Mister Squaresville. An earlier attempt at gay outreach had got bogged down in a complicated furniture metaphor: `There's a lot said about having a seat at the table,' he told the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 'but it's not enough for you to have a seat at the table. Everybody's got to realise that as full mem- bers of the American family it's your table too.' Does he want us to sit on it?' one gay mused.
So, for what immediately became known as 'the Ellen speech', Gore took the old rep actor's advice and steered clear of the fur- niture. Because he was talking about a tele- vision show, he inevitably made the evening news bulletins. What he couldn't have fore- seen was the almost Quayle-scale ridicule that followed. 'Stupid,' said George Stephanopoulos, former Clinton press sec- retary turned commentator; Time pro- nounced the Vice-President a 'loser'. Even Ellen herself seemed unimpressed, prefer- ring to concentrate on her squabble with ABC over the 'Warning: adult content' advisory notice they've slapped on her. If it is any consolation, no one ever accused Al Gore of 'adult content' and the only warn- ing he requires is 'May cause drowsiness'.
Personally, I like the show, if only because, in the Sunday Times a year or two ago, on a Julie Burchill list of 'funny peo- ple', I found myself directly under Ellen DeGeneres — and how many guys can claim that? But it's hard to imagine a more mismatched couple than her and Gore. She's just come out of the closet; he is a closet. She rambles and burbles away; he . . . speaks . . . very . . . very . . . slowly, like a grade-school teacher taking the time to explain to little Johnny why he can't have a second Twinkie with his milk. Of Bob Dole's economic plan, Gore said, 'It's unconscionable. That means it's wrong, and it shouldn't happen.' Thanks, Mr Vice- President: for tomorrow's word of the day, Al Gore defines 'patronising'. Unlike Clin- ton, who declares that every American child should have the right to go to college, Gore seems determined to keep the entire electorate in kindergarten. He is not the first vice-president to attempt to yoke his office to pop culture. General Charles Gates Dawes, vice-presi- dent under Calvin Coolidge, is best known today for . . well, to be honest, he's not best known for anything. But, if you were to look him up in The Bumper Book of Obscure Vice-Presidents, you'd find he won the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize for the Dawes Plan for German war reparations. Howev- er, he also composed a number one pop song: Many a tear has to fall But it's all in the game ...
Nat 'King' Cole and Bing Crosby had a hit with it, so did Cliff Richard. As Gener- al Dawes predicted, it's outlasted anything else he wrote, such as The Banking System of the United States and its Relation to the Money and Business of the United States (1894). Indeed, not only is 'It's All In The Game' the most enduring legacy of any vice-president in the history of the Repub- lic, it's also proving a peculiarly apt title for Gore's term of office.
Many a tear has been jerked, but it's all In the grand game of ensuring that, in three years, Albert Gore Jnr meets his ren- dezvous with destiny. To that end, every- thing must be pressed into service, including his routinely touted stricken rela- tives: in his speech to the 1992 Democratic convention, it was his son, who was nearly killed in a car crash; at the 1996 conven- tion, it was his sister, who died of lung can- cer. Gore 'loved her more than life itself, he told America in a hushed voice, and Paused. 'Tomorrow morning, a 13-year-old girl will start smoking. I love her, too. By this time, the gaps between his words were big enough to smoke half a pack of Marl- _ boros in, 'And that is why until I draw my last breath I will pour my heart and soul into the cause of protecting our children from the dangers of smoking.'
No network news anchor saw fit to men- tion a speech Gore made in 1988, four years after his sister's death: 'Throughout most of my life, I've raised tobacco,' he told a North Carolina audience. 'I've hoed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn, stripped it and sold it.' No television correspondent pointed out that in 1990, six years after the 'nearly unbearable pain' of his sister's death, Gore was still taking campaign contributions from the tobacco industry. Eventually, the Washington Post caught up with him and asked him why, if he was that devastated, he'd carried on hoeing, chopping, shred- ding, spiking, stripping and selling the stuff. His answer was ingenious: 'I felt the numbness that prevented me from inte- grating into all aspects of my life the impli- cations of what that tragedy really meant,' he said. 'We are in the midst of a pro- found shift in the way we approach issues. I really do believe that in our politics and in our personal lives, we are seeing an effort to integrate our emotional lives in a more balanced fashion,' He hasn't performed that adroitly since. At this stage in the game, it's time to shed a tear for Gore himself, as it slowly dawns on him that in terms of electability there's a world of difference between a smooth phoney and a stiff phoney. Gore is a stiff in every sense. He stiffed those tobacco farm- ers when he no longer needed them. He stiffed the New Age earth-mother eco-fem- hiists who, along with their cats, dogs and elephants, came to his 'earth mass' in 1991: 'We are not separate from the earth,' he intoned. 'God is not separate from the earth.' But he subtly separated himself from these core supporters when it became clear they could threaten his political via- bility. He'd do the same to his new gay chums.
When he first became ensnared in the White House scandals, reluctant critics regretted that this fine upstanding man had been 'Clintonised' during his time as vice- president. Not really. Clinton was elected as a rogue and has been repeatedly forgiv- en. The derision heaped on Gore suggests that the same courtesies will not be extend- ed to him. He's still a shoo-in for the Democratic nomination, and Tipper must be gingerly eyeing the gorgeous go-go Gore girls and wondering on whose head the next quadrennial family tragedy will fall. For the rest of us, surveying Gore's journey from tobacco fanner to eco-crazy to every lesbian's best pal, the question must be, if he ever really came out of his closet, would there be anything there?
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