Al Gore: Entertainment Industry Awards Vacuum

And the Emmy for Outstanding Performance by a Once-Humiliated Politician Making a Gratifying I-Told-You-So Victory Lap goes to...

When you’re hot, you’re hot, and people are falling all over themselves to give you awards, just so you’ll show up and they can bask in your sheen. So it goes with Al Gore, who will receive an honorary Emmy for his portrayal as a young autistic man suffering from a bewildering series of deadly maladies on an episode of “House.”

“Not only was the former Vice President able to render an exquisitely sensitive evocation of autism, but he also quite convincingly played a character significantly younger than he,” enthused International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences President & CEO, Bruce L. Paisner.

Gore responded, “It is an honor to be recognized by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.”

OK, in reality, Gore’s receiving the 2007 International Emmy® Founders Award thanks to his “launching cable/satellite channel Current TV and his ongoing effort to alert the world to one of the great challenges of our time, global warming.”

And what Paisner actually said – or what the Academy’s publicity department constructed for Paisner to have ostensibly intoned was, "The Academy presents the Founders Award to an individual or organization which crosses cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity- how perfect a definition for Al Gore. We in the media industry are honored that one of the world’s leading political figures has joined our global community of broadcasters."

And Gore’s quote actually went like this: “It is an honor to be recognized by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, which, like Current TV, strives to create a global conversation through the powerful medium of television.” Gore will receive his shiny object in November in New York.

My version was better.