Who Will Be First?

Rigidly embargoed until Tuesday, Al Gore's new book, Assault on Reason, is now available. I'll be telling you more about it after I absorb it, but can anyone doubt that Gore has transitioned from run-of-the-mill politician to prophet and high priest of a growing segment of our population?

Here's a mini-review from Talking Points Memo:

Gore even argues that Internet interactivity, just like the back- and-forth at TPM, is reviving something like Revolutionary-era pamphleteering and “committees of correspondence,” strengthening “a meritocracy of ideas” instead of letting conglomerates corner “the marketplace of ideas” by beaming one-way shock imagery at us through our TVs.

Fear almost always trumps reason, Gore explains, and television does it hundreds of times a day to Americans who watch TV for the national average of four and a half hours. Print, at least, makes you think by engaging a different lobe of the brain to interpret its otherwise meaningless symbols. He praises the Internet for restoring reading and writing to millions, if sometimes too instantly and anarchically to make them think as well as they would while sitting down with a good, serious book like his.