an inconvenient silence

After I came back home to the States from vacation, I was surprised to see so little media coverage of Al Gore’s Nobel Prize, which had been awarded a couple of days before. Did I miss something? This year alone, the guy got an Oscar, wrote a huge bestseller, and won the Nobel Peace Prize and there’s no draft-Gore movement? Then my vacation buzz wore off and I got busy and forgot about it.

Now Tom Maguire floats an intriguing theory about the mystery candidate who is the subject of Ron Rosenbaum’s journalistic-ethical dilemma. (It’s worth reading the post and the comments, especially those that Rosenbaum replied to, and his final reply.)

But here’s Maguire:

Blog speculators are focusing on Hillary and Huma or Bill and a woman.  But I don’t think anyone has mentioned Al Gore, mainly because he is not a declared candidate.  But so what?  Bettors have him trailing only Hillary and Obama in the Dem field; and yet, the “Will he or won’t he” stories following his Nobel Prize disappeared almost immediately two weeks ago.  Is he really staying out of the simply because he thinks he can do more to save the planet and a private citizen wielding a Peace Prize?  Maybe!

Hmmm. Interesting. But I’m also intrigued by the picture Rosenbaum paints of what he calls “journalistic insiderism.”

Mickey Kaus (who said a couple of days ago that he didn’t know the rumor Rosenbaum was talking about) recently mentioned a related phenomenon: “the CW buzz in Mark Halperin’s “Gang of 500.”

Not too many folks seem as troubled as Rosenbaum by the ethical dilemma.  Jonah Goldberg is getting a lot of theories via e-mail.

And now Kaus has come up with a theory about that [emphasis in the original]

 Rosenbaum’s post seems to be functioning as a sort of depth charge that threatens to bring all the various rumored scandals about all the candidates to the surface.

Bring ‘em on!