Much like a bad case of political herpes, the genital bump that is Al Gore just won’t go away. But as the nation moved on with the soothing Valtrex that is the Bush Administration, a raging case of Al Gore threatens to erupt again. Spoiling an otherwise lovely evening.

In the coming days, we will no doubt be enthralled at the poise, leadership, courage and/or conviction Al Gore showed in “arranging� a plane to haul a few hundred patients but mainly “evacuees� out of New Orleans. We will be treated to taunts of how “this is how President Gore would have handled the situation� or “Gore has saved more lives by himself than McChimpyburton has� and so on. But Gore will take no credit. Nope. None. No way.

Here’s how one DailyKossack relays the story:

Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be “politicized.”
….
Gore chose not to speak to the assembled media, but he was seen in a black T-shirt and jeans moving rapidly from one side of the plane to the other assisting with the off-loading operation.

“fearing it would be ‘politicized’. Lord no, we don’t want that to happen. Needless to say, if that was the end of the story even I would have gained a little respect for Gore. But now, we’re just picking up steam.

The politically neutral group over at www.algore-08.com give us a clearinghouse for what Mr. Bashful has been up to:

Gore at NOLA: Haven from fury Mercy Flight Brings Evacuees to ET
Saturday, 03 September 2005
From the Knoxville News Sentinel

Gore at NOLA: Al Gore Paid for Refugees’ Flight TO Chanttanooga
Tueday, 06 September 2005
From The Chattanoogan

But unlike the previous two news reports, a new one strolls across the ticker today:

Gore at NOLA: The Fastercures Airlift From New Orleans
Wednesday, 07 September 2005
From TPM Cafe
by Greg Simon, President
of Faster Cures

Don’t misinterpret that to mean that Greg Simon posted that story on TPMCafe. It’s author is listed as “bar2bar2″ – but I’ll come back to that. It reads like a long-winded, self-indulgent piece of agitprop with great detail as to how Greg Simon, the President of Fastercures had Al Gore working behind the scenes to harass FEMA officials so they could land a plane in New Orleans and get their damned photo-op. I mean Mission of Mercy:

Over the next three hours (from 2a.m. to 5 a.m.) I was called by an array of Majors and Lieutenant Commanders telling me to stop. (“I don’t mean to be rude, sir, but you must not do this. You must stop this now.�) Major Webb from GPMRC (don’t ask), Grant Meade from ESF. Major Lindquist from TRANSCOM (at last!) all telling me they would not cooperate and they did not know how we had gotten permission to land. I never mentioned Gore’s name because no one ever asked me who was paying for the flights or how we had come so far.

Finally at 5 a.m. Major Lindquist said if we landed he would not put any patients on the plane and we should expect no cooperation and there was no place to store the plane so we would have to leave.

Arguing with FEMA coordinators by Captain Good Corporate Citizen! Who is this masked man, this Greg Simon? Well for starters, he was Al Gore’s Chief Domestic Policy Advisor from 1993-1997.

He also helped J.P. Morgan select a Board of Directors for a very questionable privatization scheme which screwed the US taxpayers out of over $2 Billion dollars and potentially caused the Russians to sell uranium to the Iranians while netting tens of millions of dollars for Gore’s biggest campaign contributors who directly benefited from this sweetheart deal. Whatever the case, let’s not mention any connection from Simon to Gore at all in this 2,580 word narrative. Especially not about that. I would hate for anyone to try to politicize this event and ruin the era of good feelings that resulted.

The Talking Points Memo Cafe post in their “Reader Blogs� section gives us a posting time of
Sep 07, 2005 — 05:06:40 PM EST by an author named “bar2bar2″.

However, this exact same post was made in the comments section of The Nashville Scene at 09.07.2005, 03:40 PM about a half hour before the TPMCafe post as Nashville is on CST. This time by a poster named “BL� listing an e-mail address of barbara@zoomedia.com.

Could “bar2bar2â€? and “BLâ€? be the same person? They might not be – who knows? Zoomedia bills itself as a “communications / strategic marketing” company. Zoomedia lists it’s Board of Directors and lo and behold a Barbara Lavery is shown as the President of Zoomedia. Zoomedia also just happens to list Greg Simon’s Fastercures as one of it’s clients in the “non-profitsâ€? section. Quite a coincidence.

So theoretically, we have the President of a marketing company, cross-posting fawning praise at Joshua Micah Marshall’s website and The Nashville Scene for one of her clients who just happens to be Al Gore’s former Deputy Chief /collaborator in his “mission of mercyâ€? and not disclosing any of that information over the course of a 2,580 word tome.

If Sean Penn has taught me anything, it’s to not marry Madonna. If he’s taught me two things, the first is still to not marry Madonna but second would be to not do any bit of charity without bringing your own personal photographer to catch you in the act. Who needs a personal photographer when you can have the President of a marketing firm?

Sssh….whatever you do – don’t politicize this national tragedy for your own personal gain.

We’ll keep this our little secret, ok?

Update Outside the Beltway notes:

Damned nice of him. Sure, he can afford $100,000 without batting an eye. But so can a lot of people who didn’t do anything like this.

Hopefully some more people will look into the background of that Talking Points Memo post and figure out that the President of Fastercures’ public relations arm is what’s getting this whispering campaign going.

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