Well, this is sad news to read:
After forty years of marriage, Aland Tipper Gore are separating, the couple announced in an e-mail to friends Tuesday morning.
“This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration,” the former vice president and his wife said in the email first reported by Politico. “We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further.” Gore’s spokeswoman later confirmed the validity of the e-mail.
The news stunned many political watchers — the duo’s mutually affectionate manner on the campaign trail did much to enliven Al Gore’s stuffy image — but also good friends.
“I’m shocked — beyond shocked,” said Chris Downey, a close friend for many years who said she spoke to Tipper last week. “This is the least likely course of events I could imagine.”
I certainly can’t say I was close to them — I never met Tipper, even though I got to know her husband fairly well covering him for years back in Tennessee. But knowing Al, and watching her from afar, she always seemed like the more approachable, open and personable of the pair. I always respected Al’s intellect and command of issues, and was glad when my paper endorsed him for the Senate in 1984, but he wasn’t exactly a guy to light up a room. Which suggests that the big loser in this split is Al.
And of course, their family and all those who care about them.
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Very sad. It may have had something to do with her being constantly eclipsed by him. She is apparently quite talented (as a photographer) and has plenty of her own pet issues. The news commentators seemed to think it was totally mutual and that they were both cool with it.
Actually, I think Al Gore is quite appealing on An Inconvenient Truth…but maybe that’s why I’m a liberal, huh?
It’s probably no picnic trying to live with the guy who invented the Internet AND discovered Global Warming.
Or maybe she got tired of turning the lights off every time she left a room.