Al Gore, III: GOOD guy with bad timing

Even a GOOD guy can have moments of spectacularly bad judgment, and speeding down the freeway in a ecologically correct Prius hybrid car at 2 am on the 4th of July was bound to provoke the cops in Southern California's stridently Republican Orange County, better known to tv viewers as the O.C. If it'd been a stretch Hummer, maybe the cops would have looked the other way.

The embarrassing drugbust of Al Gore III-- scion of Tipper and (Big Green) Al Jr and publisher of Good magazine-- grabbed headlines around the world.
There had been some odoriferous global warming going on inside the silent-running car before the police pulled him over and insisted he roll down his window. This ill-timed joint , along with a collection of feel-Good drugs like Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, Adderall and Soma which had no scrips, put young Al in the joint for 12 hours, until he could raises $20,000 bail. Why do they call it a high-way, he must have mused. (Coincidentally, Laguna Niguel, the spot where Gore was pulled over, is not far from the old haunts of last century's turn on, tune in, drop out guru ,Timothy Leary.)

Gore III, 24, rates as a new media personality, and is quite bloggable in his own right. Gawker covered both of his launch parties last fall and remarked that he was "no douchebag" . They doled out this rather faint praise because he'd confessed to "refreshing Gawker and Wonkette religiously." The bloggers kidded Al for taking time off "from saving the world on recycled stock paper", and joked that his launch party at the trendy Beaver club in Chelsea and the new issue were both, well, appropriately Good. Lauren Bush, the niece of the numbskull in the White House, attended the party as did Gore's rather straitlaced parents.

The timing of this arrest, on the eve of the Live Earth concerts on 07/07/07, could not have been worse. But so far there have been few reports of blood and gore on the home front. The hearing for speeding at 100 mph and drug possession will take place in 30 days. We bet it gets Good coverage.

Note: This piece was corrected when a reader pointed out that the ex-Vice Prez is Al Junior, named after his lawmaker father, so his son was christened Albert Arnold Gore the third. Similar confusion about the famous moniker cost an Irish bookie ten thousand euros. He'd run a pool on the next celebrity to go to jail, and fifty people had placed money on 14-1 odds that it would be Al Gore Jr.
Al leaves Orange County Jail on the morning after, heading to get treatment, according to his father.