Oh that Al...

Al Gore
Former vice president

Carnegie Mellon University

Not long after I left my job in the White House my wife, Tipper, and I were driving from our home in Nashville, Tenn., to a small farm we have 50 miles away. ... We looked for a place to eat and found a Shoney’s restaurant. ... The waitress came over and made a big commotion over Tipper and took our order and went to the couple in the booth sitting next to us. She said: “Yes, that’s former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper.” And the man said, “He’s come down a long way, hasn’t he?”

It was an epiphany. The very next day, continuing a true story, I flew to Nigeria, to give a speech on energy policy, and I began my speech by telling that story that had just occurred the day before ... in terms identical to the ones I’ve used here: Shoney’s low-cost family restaurant chain, Tipper and I were driving ourselves, what the man said, and they laughed.

After giving my speech I went out to the airport to catch a flight back to the United States. ... In the middle of the night we landed on the Azores Islands for refueling. ... I walked out on to the platform to get some fresh air and to my surprise a man was waving a piece of paper and running toward the plane yelling: “Call Washington. Call Washington.” ... What it turned out to be was that one of the wire service reporters in Nigeria had already written a story about my speech there and it had already been printed in newspapers across America.

My staff was very concerned because the story began, “Former Vice President Al Gore announced in Nigeria yesterday, quote: My wife, Tipper, and I have opened a low-cost family restaurant named Shoney’s and we are running it ourselves.”

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/education/index.html