Roger Kimball thinks Al Gore has become quite a comedian, and cites with devastating approval his recent column in the New York Times:

It is just lovely that the New York Times -- the world's most discredited newspaper -- would give so thoroughly discredited a mountebank this lavish soapbox upon which to make a fool of himself. Next stop, Hyde Park Corner -- or maybe a padded cell.

(The link goes to the same Times piece that Roger Kimball found so entertaining.)

As I like comedy, I thought I would come to the gratuitous defense of Al Gore the comedian. I think some of what he said would actually sound OK if applied in another context properly recontexted. Like this:

We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands.

At the risk of sounding a bit fantastic, I think Al Gore (who no longer has to run for office) might give some consideration to rebadging himself. What's to lose? The fact that he might look ridiculous? He's already looking completely ridiculous, and you can't get any more ridiculous than that. According to the saturation principle (especially as applied in SCUBA diving), once you are saturated with something, more becomes inconsequential, and there's no particular risk.

Despite Frank Rich's insistence that the Tea Partiers are far-right terrorists, Nancy Pelosi has already greased the skids for Al Gore by saying,

"We share some of the views of the Tea Partiers."

Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put it in the plant beds and transferred it. I've hoed it. I've dug in it. I've sprayed it, I've chopped it, I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it.

A zebra does not change its spots.

I haven't read the book, so I don't know whether there's a happy ending, much less a moral lesson.

But it's a tragedy to think that global warming might lead to the extinction of the spotted zebra.

MORE: On Facebook, John Hawkins quotes Al Gore with approval:

"I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion."

Considering that the "climate crisis" is an illusion Al Gore "took the initiative in creating," maybe it's time to just fess up. (He could always claim that he was the first man to receive the Nobel Prize in Magic.)

MORE: Lest we forget, Al Gore is also a bible-waving fanatic!