Home » Misc » Al tipper gore

Al tipper gore


Al and Tipper Gore: where did it go wrong? | Al Gore

To hear news of any marital break-up is a solemn moment, but the US has been genuinely shocked this week to learn that its former "second couple", Al and Tipper Gore, have agreed to separate after 40 years of marriage, a landmark they had celebrated with close family and friends only a couple of weeks ago.

The couple issued a statement on Tuesday saying it was "a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration". Friends of the couple were reported as saying no third party was involved, and that they had simply "grown apart". With Al Gore frequently away from home and wrapped up in his environmental work, one friend said "their lives had gotten more and more separated" – offering extra context, perhaps, to recent reports that the couple had bought a new luxury house in California, 2,000 miles away from their long-time family home in Tennessee.

Ever since Al was first elected to Congress in 1976, the Gores have been viewed in Washington as one of politics' most rock-solid, durable couples. This was the man who bought his wife a 1967 Mustang as a Valentine's Day present a few years ago to remind her of the car they travelled in when dating back in high school (his male friends say they have never forgiven him for raising the Valentine bar so high).

The couple experienced a roller-coaster of political fortunes over the years, none more dramatic than when Gore ran for the US presidency in 2000 after spending eight years as Bill Clinton's vice president. He narrowly lost out to George W Bush, of course, but one of the abiding memories of the campaign was "that kiss" at the National Democratic Convention, a lingering passionate embrace that left commentators cynical and smitten in equal measure.

"It was always easy to portray them as the perfect, all-American couple," says Clive Webb, a reader in North American history at the University of Sussex. "He was the lantern-jawed character and she was the pretty blonde wife. With their four kids and conventional looks, they were the quintessential American family. They were a striking contrast to the Clintons who, at the time of Gore's run for presidency, were mired in marital problems."

Webb says that Tipper helped to soften her husband's public reputation for being stiff and, at times, pompous. "She humanised him at a time when people were asking which candidate they'd rather have a beer with. Her role was largely to connect with the Bible Belt of Middle America, who viewed them as a traditional southern family."

In 2003, the Gores jointly authored a booked called Joined at the Heart: The Transformation of the American Family, in which they included anecdotes from their own marriage to help investigate the causes of these pressures. "For us, as for most Americans, family is our bedrock, and we believe the strength of the American family is the nation's bedrock," they wrote.

Sarah Churchwell, a senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, says the couple's split marks the end of an era in US politics – which, she adds, she won't mourn. "Tipper Gore represented the traditional political wife. In many ways, she was the quintessential Republican political wife. This hopefully will mark the end of wives as political accessories where marriage was viewed as a backdrop, a given."

For Churchwell's generation – an American teenager growing up in the 1980s – Tipper Gore is best remembered for her campaign via the Parents Music Resource Center to censor music and place "explicit language" stickers on records, after her then 11-year-old daughter was heard listening to Prince's Darling Nikki.

"We hated her back then for this," says Churchwell. "We only knew of Al then as her husband – my consciousness of her predates him. And for many Americans the name 'Tipper' means one thing: a privileged, conservative, southern background. This all later fed into her role as the traditional wife/mother promoting family values."

In recent years, Tipper has played a near nonexistent role in her husband's environmental campaigning. And, following the dizzy peaks of 2007, when his documentary An Inconvenient Truth led to Oscars and a Nobel peace prize, Al Gore's currency has fallen somewhat of late – largely due to his close association with, and advocacy of, climate science that has been under severe assault in recent months. But expect more from Gore. As New York magazine noted in 2006, he has developed a habit of stealing Bill Clinton's nickname – the Comeback Kid.

Tipper Gore | The First Amendment Encyclopedia

Tipper Gore, former Second Lady of the United States (2009 photo, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Mary Elizabeth Aitcheson Gore (1948– ), known since childhood by her nickname “Tipper,” led a successful fight to have parental warning labels affixed to record albums that contained sexually explicit lyrics, portrayed excessive violence, or glorified drugs. She co-founded a group that campaigned to provide information about explicit material in music videos, television shows, and videos.

Critics say Gore's campaigning for warning labels violated First Amendment rights

Critics saw Gore’s actions as overt violations of the free speech guaranteed in the First Amendment and mockingly referred to the labels as “Tipper Stickers.” Gore, wife of former vice president Al Gore, from whom she has been separated since 2010, said she supports the First Amendment and opposes censorship for adults. She explained her position in Raising PG Kids in An X-Rated Society (1987), insisting that the goal of record labeling was to provide parents and communities with information about what children were listening to and not to interfere with the creative process or with First Amendment rights of recording artists.

Gore founded the Parents Music Resource Center

Tipper Gore was born in Arlington, Virginia. She met Al Gore at a high school graduation dance and later followed him to Boston, where he attended Harvard University. She earned a BA in psychology at Boston College in 1970. The couple married that same year. She earned an MA in psychology from George Peabody College in 1975, while serving as a freelance photographer for the Nashville Tennessean. She shelved plans to be a child psychologist when her husband was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1976. As a congressional wife, she became an active member of the Congressional Wives Task Force, which she chaired in 1978 and 1979, and which studied the effects of media violence on children.

Gore’s involvement in the task force led her, in 1985, to join with other prominent Washington wives to found the Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC). Their chief target was explicit material that was accessible to children. Gore had become personally aware of the availability of “porn rock” when her eleven-year-old daughter, Karenna, bought Prince’s Purple Rain because she liked the song “Let’s Go Crazy.” When mother and daughter listened to another song on the album, “Darling Nikki,” which described a girl masturbating with a magazine in a hotel lobby, Gore was astounded. Her concerns were largely based on her background as a psychologist who was aware of children’s vulnerability to media influences.

Many viewed PMRC as another attack on liberalism and the First Amendment. Throughout the 1980s President Ronald Reagan’s administration had campaigned to rid the country of material classified as offensive. That effort led to attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts, public book burnings, and censorship of a wide range of tapes, CDs, and music videos. A plethora of task forces, conferences, and activities were launched to implement Reagan’s positions.

PMRC advocated for warning labels on explicit media

PMRC was instrumental in influencing the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to require warning labels on tapes and CDs containing explicit lyrics. (Explicit lyrics may refer to sexual activity, including deviant practices such as incest and rape, or to material that describes or encourages suicide, murder, illegal drug use, or alcohol abuse. ) Artists ranging from hard rocker Frank Zappa to folk artist John Denver campaigned against the labels. In 1990 RIAA replaced the initial labels with stickers reading, “Parental Advisory—Explicit Lyrics.” Currently, about a third of all record companies employ the labeling system.

Recording artists were concerned that the labeling system would cause radio stations to refrain from playing their music and that stores would refuse to sell their material. Some artists released cleaned-up versions of albums simultaneously with those containing explicit lyrics. Some stores, including J. C. Penney, Wal-Mart, Kmart, Camelot, and Disc Jockey, opted not to sell labeled versions. A number of states passed legislation banning the sale of stickered material to anyone under the age of seventeen.

Gore was seen as a censor

Despite Gore’s repeated assurance that she wanted only to provide information about explicit lyrics and had no desire to ban albums, critics viewed her as a self-appointed censor. They criticized her and the PMRC for issuing the “Filthy Fifteen,” a list of artists whose works regularly included explicitly sexual or violent material. Artists on the list included AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Sheena Easton, Judas Priest, Cyndi Lauper, Madonna, the Mary Jane Girls, Merrcyful Fate, Motley Crue, Prince, Twisted Sister, Vanity, Venom, and W.A.S.P.

In response to the labeling system, Frank Zappa added a label to his own albums, assuring purchasers that listening to his music would not cause them to end up with the guy with the horns and pointed tail. In songs such as “Rapist (Tipper Gore Mix)” by the Flying Medallions and “PRMC Sucks” by the Gang Green, Gore and PMRC became the target of derogatory music by the very artists they sought to monitor.

Gore resigned from PRMC

When Al Gore was elected as Bill Clinton’s vice president in 1992 and 1996,Tipper Gore launched a campaign to promote the concerns of the mentally ill and was active in efforts to help the homeless and to improve education. She resigned from PMRC, which had lost its momentum as more strident groups took up the cause. During her husband’s presidential campaign in 2000, she moderated her stand on explicit material to keep from alienating the music industry.

Critics say labeling system is ineffective

Critics claim that the labeling system has been ineffective. It is left to individual record companies to determine which materials are labeled explicit, and the result is that labeling is chiefly confined to rock, rap, and hip hop. In 2001 the Federal Trade Commission reported that 90 percent of teenagers under seventeen who tried to buy a stickered CD were successful. Although the number had dropped to 83 percent by 2004, such easy access challenges the effectiveness of the system.

The ongoing technological explosion has also undermined the viability of music labeling. Many minors have unlimited access to explicit material through cable and satellite television, DVDs, videos, video games, the Internet, file sharing, iPods, and MP3 players.

This article was originally published in 2009. Elizabeth Purdy, Ph.D., is an independent scholar who has published articles on subjects ranging from political science and women's studies to economics and popular culture.