Entertainment Weekly Upgrades Al Gore's 'Cool' Status

Slapstick Politics has an excerpt from a recent Entertainment Weekly article on Al Gore's film, "An Inconvenient Truth." It turns out documentary films about global warming have a way of making people cool. This should be encouraging news for science club high schoolers around the country.

Minds are being changed, all right, and not just about global warming. Miraculously, over the past few months, An Inconvenient Truth has accomplished something many people once thought inconceivable: It's made Al Gore cool. The somber policy wonk who campaigned for president in 2000 with all those bland speeches about lockboxes is gone. He's now a hip and trendy (in a wonky sort of way) ecological activist. While promoting the movie this summer, Gore has been connecting with crowds more effortlessly and comfortably — even charismatically — than he ever did as a politician. He even found his sense of humor; turns out it's been hiding all this time inside daughter Kristin, a former comedy writer on Matt Groening's Futurama and the one responsible for Gore's gag on The Tonight Show last month about having a showbiz feud with Lindsay Lohan (''She knows what she did...''), along with most of his other recent zingers. (See the animated trailer her pals at Futurama whipped up for the film.) True, Gore's new gig doesn't come with perks like rides on Air Force One or a house with an oval-shaped home office, but in some ways it gives him even more clout than being Commander-in-Chief. After all, if you truly want to make a difference these days, if you really want to be taken seriously by the public and participate in the national dialogue, you don't run for president. The job title for you is Movie Star.