Can I Buy A Vowel

The High Priest of the Environment spoke and there was silence!
Al Gore, through a Herculean effort, was able to quote everyone under the historical sun by direct quote or reference.
Let's review, he gets and Oscar for a propaganda piece with more half truths and scientific mumbo jumbo. Then a Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat got one (until it was stolen and going for $31.99 on e-bay.)
But this little piece he put out almost caused me to drive my bald forehead through my solid oak desk. Had it not been for students in the vicinity and tipping my hat politically, it would have ugly.
First I love how he tries to sound religious:

I have a purpose here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it.

I thought of Steve Martin in the The Jerk when he realized his "special purpose."
There are more samplings in this speech than a rap album:

One hundred and nineteen years ago, a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life's work, unfairly labeling him "The Merchant of Death" because of his invention--dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, t he inventor made a fateful choice to serve the cause of peace.
Seven years later, Alfred Nobel created this prize and the others that bear his name.

the words of an ancient prophet: "Life or death, blessings or curses. Therefore, choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live."

Winston Churchill applied to those who ignored Adolf Hitler's threat: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."

Yet as George Orwell reminds us: "Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Now, we and the earth's climate are locked in a relationship familiar to war planners: "Mutually assured destruction."

As the American poet Robert Frost wrote, "Some say the world will end in fire; some say in ice." Either, he notes, "would suffice."

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called "Satyagraha"--or "truth force."

Mahatma Gandhi awakened the largest democracy on earth and forged a shared resolve with what he called "Satyagraha"--or "truth force."

One of their visionary leaders said, "It is time we steered by the stars and not by the lights of every passing ship."

of course, this classic

In the Kanji characters used in both Chinese and Japanese, "crisis" is written with two symbols, the first meaning "danger," the second "opportunity."

In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado, "Pathwalker, there is no path. You must make the path as you walk."

The great Norwegian playwright, Henrik Ibsen, wrote, "One of these days, the younger generation will come knocking at my door."

Make no mistake, the next generation will ask us one of two questions. Either they will ask: "What were you thinking; why didn't you act?" Or they will ask instead: "How did you find the moral courage to rise and successfully resolve a crisis that so many said was impossible to solve?"

What disappointed me is the failure to mention the immortal words of Beck
"I got two turntables and microphone!"