While I didn’t watch the debates, the impression I get from the local postmortem is that Gore acted basically like he always does: giving a vague impression of insincerity and condescension. It seems like I keep hearing Gore on the radio addressing questions with a little condescending chuckle and a reply that implies a hearty, friendly, “Well, you can believe something that dumb if you want to, heh heh.”
Now, I’m not here to talk about Gore, per se, because I had been thinking for a while about the South, and how it appears to me that among Southern men, the ideal of coolness is a sort of aloof, vaguely condescending know-it-all, been-there-done-that attitude. For example, NPR did a story on “the Machine,” a rumored white supremacist secret society at the University of Alabama. They interviewed a few students about whether the Machine really existed (hello? Duh! Obviously it really exists!) and the replies they got were along the lines of, “heh heh, that’s all nuthin’- people just like to talk.” (With an implicit, “I’m too cool to get all het up over some secret society, so I’ll just give a condescending chuckle to anyone who thinks that this might contain an iota of interest for them.”)
Exhibit #2 is some guy from my Dad’s neighborhood whom I met on a trip back to my home town. Apparently the local cops were doing a drug bust of some people who were growing marijuana behind his house. Being a Southern male, he gave a laid-back rendition of the tale, in which he saw a man in camouflage lying in the grass trying to stay hidden, so he sauntered up to the camouflaged policeman and said, “Now, y’all ain’t doin’ a drug bust now, are you?” (This reminds me of Southern Attribute #2- long stories which GO NOWHERE and HAVE NO POINT.) He went on and on about this for quite some time, but the only part of it which was actually intelligible beyond the bit about how cool it was to draw attention to the policeman was “Now, y’all know I was in the Army…”
Exhibit #3: When I was a youngster, how many times did I hear this little dialogue:
Southern boy: “I ate rattlesnake/alligator/whatever once.”
Ben (aka Southern boy #2): “Wow- what did it taste like?”
Southern boy: “Shrug. Ain’t nothin- tasted like chicken.”
Even as a kid I found this annoying- any time these guys have a cool experience, they immediately have to be bored by it, lest they be uncool.
Anyway, this all relates to Gore because he’s from Tennessee, and to me he has the same aura of “heh heh, you’re an idiot, and I’m too cool” attitude. Plus, he radiates the weirdly predatory insincerity of the average Alabama Younglife director, but that’s arguably a different issue. Is this just me, or does Gore really seem like this to you, and does it seem like this is a particular way for Southern men to make asses of themselves?
-Ben