More on Al Gore’s character…

Below is an excerpt of a column I wrote for the old CNSNews.com about Al Gore’s character. Consider it as you weigh the credibility of the claims in the police report concerning Gore’s alleged sexual assault of a masseuse.

A Child's Tragedy, A Parent's Character

By Steven J. Milloy
Copyright 2000 CNSNews.com
February 28, 2000

One can scarcely imagine a worse event – the death or severe injury of your child.

For a parent, the grief may be compounded by the guilt associated with partial or even imagined responsibility for the harm occurring. How one deals with the challenge of guilt-on-grief provides unique insight into one's character. Consider the cases of Al Gore, Robert Sanders, and John and Reve Walsh.

Environmental Activism Sparked by Tragedy

On April 3, 1989, then-Sen. Albert Gore, Jr. and his son, Albert Gore III, were leaving the Baltimore Orioles opening day baseball game when, according to news reports, Albert III "let go of his father's hand" and darted into the street near Memorial Stadium. Albert III was hit by a car and injured severely with broken bones, ruptured spleen, bruised lung and concussion.

The driver of the car, Jasper McWilliams reportedly was not speeding and the police did not charge him at that time.

The accident was understandably distressing to Gore, but his behavior in its aftermath was curious. In his son's hospital room, the elder Gore began writing his well-known book and environmental call-to-arms "Earth in the Balance."

Gore wrote, "For me something changed in a fundamental way. I don't think my son's brush with death was solely responsible, although that was the catalyst. But I had also just lost a presidential campaign; moreover, I had just turned 40 years old. I was, in a sense, vulnerable to the change that sought me out in the middle of my life and gave me a new sense of urgency about those things I value the most."

Albert III's accident spurred Gore's now famous activism on the "rapidly deteriorating global environment," a battle which Gore wrote includes "completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say, a 25-year period" and "embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution, every treaty and alliance, every tactic and strategy, every plan and course of action — to use, in short, every means to halt the destruction of the environment and to preserve and nurture our ecological system."

The fact that a car accident precipitated a call to eliminate the internal combustion engine is bizarre enough, but it's not the end of the unusual events following the accident.

A week after the accident, blame for the accident somehow got displaced. McWilliams was suddenly charged with speeding and failing to exercise proper precaution upon seeing a child in the road.

He was tried in Baltimore District Court in July 1989. McWilliams was acquitted of all charges, leaving Gore, as the parent holding his child's hand while crossing the road, with responsibility for the accident.

But why did Gore, a powerful Democrat, allow Baltimore City, a Democratic stronghold, to prosecute McWilliams at all?…

Gore claimed to invent the Internet, claimed to be the basis of “Love Story,” uses 20 times as much electricity as the average American while urging the rest of us to cut back, made a bundle off scaring people about the climate, blamed the tobacco companies for his sister’s death from smoking even though his family raised and sold tobacco, sat by while an innocent man was prosecuted for his own negligence, and now, at the very least seems to have betrayed his wife and possibly committed a violent sexual assault.

What part of Al Gore’s character is not simply creepy?