Following in the footsteps of the traincrash history of some other political families who lost the presidency such as Michael and Kitty Dukakis, Al and Tipper Gore have decided to separate. The couple had been married for 40 years.

The son of the famous Tennessee Senator Albert Gore, Sr. followed his father into politics after he enlisted for service in Vietnam because he didn't want to find a way out of that war and someone else go in his place. He married his wife Tipper in 1970. The young Gore served as a U.S. representative, U.S. senator and vice president. In the 2000 presidential election, Gore won the popular vote by roughly 500,000 votes, but lost the presidency due to the electoral college breakdown by states. While most blame the loss on the narrow loss in Florida, the fact was that Gore lost the election by failing to win his home state, as voters there seemed to send him a rebuff message because of the problems with Bill Clinton sex scandal at the White House. The U.S. Supreme Court in a divided 5-4 decision prevented a recount of the votes in Florida, and thereby gave the narrow victory to George Bush which served two terms.

Meanwhile, Gore went on to become an environmental messenger after losing the election, but was often criticized for seeming too extreme on his message. Even comedy shows like SOUTH PARK made fun of Gore's message. His film, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH even became the subject of British court case which found nine significant errors in the message of the film, while siding mostly with Gore in other areas.

Tipper Gore herself was criticized by music community members such as Frank Zappa for her Parents Music Resource Center, which wasn't really a group of concerned parents at all but a small group of political wives of members of congress and the senate who formed a music censorship group. Some punk rock and rap artists lost recording contracts because of this self-righteous group of censors. Eventually Cd's and records began labeling of content to satisfy these censors and congress. But artists resented the labeling as a serious infringement on First Amendment freedom of speech rights. For some artists and record stores it had a chilling effect, and even led to a few obscenity arrests. Some people in this country believe in doing bad legal things to people to punish them for what they say or believe. Tipper Gore's censorship group was just one of those type of organizations. Hey, guys, looks like a slightly used censorship babe is now available!

The Gores have managed to make plenty of political enemies over the years among both conservatives and liberals alike. Now, it seems that both Al and Tipper Gore can't stand each other either. The word of their split came by word of an email of all things. That's so nice.