Stuart Schneiderman on the Gores’ divorce
June 3rd, 2010
Life Coach Dr. Stuart Schneiderman offers some thoughts as to why the forty year marriage of Al and Tipper Gore might have ended.
I will speculate that the Gore marriage fell apart because Al Gore fell in love with something else. Not with another woman, not with another person, but with a cause. The Gore marriage failed because Al Gore was seduced by the cause of global warming.
Al Gore did not simply come to believe in its truth; he became its most prominent public spokesman. From losing presidential candidate Al Gore became a prophet, a world savior, someone who might have thought that God took the presidency from him because He had something bigger in mind, something more global and more consequential: saving the planet from global warming.
Being a prophet, Al Gore was never home. He circled the globe; he traveled around like an itinerant preacher, advancing the cause of global warming.
Reports tell us that the Gores had, for some time, been living separately. […] Tipper was home alone.
And Al Gore was not just traveling around. He had become the subject of mass adulation. He was feted and praised and even worshiped for his work on the environment. He won a Nobel Prize; he made a fortune; he was everywhere doing everything to save the planet.
As is usual with Dr. Schneiderman’s analysis, it couldn’t be stated better.
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This is pure speculation and an easy temptation to attack a prominent advocate of global warming. Al Gore has been praised and demonized for his work on global warming. No doubt that causes stress in a marriage, but so can a hundred other things in a marriage: poverty, the death of a child, prolonged illness, jail time, etc. There are plenty of couples that are able to stand adulation, and plenty of couples that can travel the globe together. If someone wants to give me a Nobel Prize and a fortune, my wife and I would be happy to give this a try.
Leo,
I think you’re missing the point.
The point is not the truth value of Dr. Schneiderman’s speculation. Dr. Schneiderman freely admits its a speculation. I also introduced his thoughts as ones which describe why the marriage MIGHT have ended.
That being said, the point of the post was to instruct readers as to a potential danger to marriage which seems to have felled one of the longest lasting and solidest seeming marriages in politics.
If you want to trot around the globe as a zealot for any cause, whether it be global warming (one I despise), traditional marriage (one I support) or even orthodox Judaism (one to which I dedicate my life) I wish you luck. However, you may wind up with the same results.
The fact is that I know somebody whose marriage ended as he traveled the world bringing his message far and wide. I wholeheartedly support him and his work. He had the same results as the Gores. It saddened me. Heck, the Prophet Samuel had a bit of family trouble due to his zealously bringing the message of G-d himself to the people.
This is precisely the problem I have with this post. You despise his cause and think him a zealot, so it is easy to take or quote speculative shots, and that hurts your credibility. Better to wait until supportive information comes out or to take on the difficult cases where the cause is one you support, not one you despise. If he were really putting global warming above all else, then he would realize his divorce would weaken his cause since he is its public face. It has been argued that the Clintons stay together for such reasons, though that is also speculation. We all know people who have spent a lot of time on good causes. I know at least one whose marriage fell apart after a political campaign on an important issue, whether because of that or not, I cannot tell. I have met a couple of Nobel Prize winners. You don’t get one without countless dedicated hours of work. The real question is why some of those marriages fall apart and others don’t. That question isn’t addressed. A separate question is whether, if the cause is great enough, then perhaps the risk (and it is only a risk, not a certainty) should be taken. I personally don’t think global warming is that cause, though I side with the majority scientific opinion that it is not a myth.
Leo,
I also, in my response to your comment quoted people whose causes I love and who lost their marriages.
I am not making the blanket point that one should never be completely dedicated to a cause. I’m just discussing the potential costs. Sometimes those costs are worth it. Sometimes they are not.