popular thinking

AL GORE CAN OUTSING JOHN ASHCROFT?!

Yes.
Watch out, John Ashcroft.
Al Gore can sing, too. The former VP and woulda-coulda-mighta-been leader of the free world showed off a wicked impersonation yesterday of Bush's former attorney general.
"Let the eagle soar!" boomed the Tennesse tenor (or is he a baritone? once I get the audio clip posted, you can judge for yourself). "Soar like it's never soared before!"
If American Idol ever had an all-politician edition, Gore said he could challenge Ashcroft.
"If he was singing that song, I think he's had enough practice in the shower that he'd win hands-down. But now, if it was 'Wings of a Dove,' I think I could take him," Gore said between hearty laughs. "This is the first time I've ever been asked about Ashcroft's singing."
(Which, of course, makes this a POPULAR THINKING EXCLUSIVE!)
Gore sat down with me yesterday at the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, just blocks from his alma mater, to promote his upcoming global warming film, An Inconvenient Truth.
The film opens June 2, a day after his other media project, the Current TV cable news channel, finally finds a home on Boston's Comcast system.
He hadn't yet seen American Dreamz, but had heard that it spoofs both W. and Simon Cowell.
Gore also acknowledged not being hooked on the nation's No. 1 TV show, even though it often has more pull with voters than the average election.
"But you, it's so ubiquitous in the spin-off, the little featurettes on all the news programs and everything. Every time someone is kicked off, you seem them all over the place," he said. "So I feel like I know all about it, even though I haven't seen the show very much."
Gore drinks "at least three or four" Diet Cokes, and is often seen in his movie drinking the soft drink.
The science-loving pol did acknowledge that perhaps all of that fake sugar might be too much of a good thing.
"But (I'm) not too worried. I think probably any day they'll come out with a study showing the combination of caffeine and aspartame turns your brain into telecopy dust or something," he joked. "But you know what? I think it's better than corn syrup. There's actually an emerging linkage between corn syrup consumption levels and the sharp rise in one of the types of diabetes."
Yeah, yeah.
In other related Gore environmental news, he said he finally joined the hybrid car craze -- although he chose a Lexus. Sorry, Prius fans.
And he couldn't recall the last time he rode the T. It did bring a smile to his face, though.
"It's been a long time," Gore told me. "But it's a great system, great system. Boston, like New York, is fortunate to have a great subway."
Which means, of course, it really has been a long time since Al Gore rode the T!