Margeret Grey in Nashville Al Gore once claimed his romance with wife Tipper inspired the novel "Love Story" and the couple shared an uncomfortably long kiss before millions on the stage of the Democratic National Convention. Yeah, well guess what? After a 40-year marriage that survived the near-death of a child and the heartache of losing the disputed 2000 presidential election, the former high school sweethearts are calling it quits. "After a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate," the Gores wrote in an e-mail to friends on Tuesday. "This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together." I've been able to confirm the statement came from the Gores. Their spokeswoman, Kathleen something declined further comment. The Gores told friends they "grew apart" after four decades of marriage and there was no affair involved, according to two longtime family friends. That is such horseshit. You know with Current TV and the love affair the Obama Zomba-Jamba Nation was having with Al he could tap that shit quick and easy if need be. The couple had carved out separate lives over time, with the 62-year-old former vice president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate on the road frequently, said the associates, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the couple's behalf. They told me the former Vice-Everything Powerful On Earth felt he needed to make hay while the sun was shining on his Tennessee ass and the sheen on that Nobel Prize still shone "Their lives had gotten more and more separated," one of the friends, stifling a yawn, said. The couple, who own homes in Nashville and, unspeakably, Carthage, Tenn., had reportedly purchased an $8.8 million estate in Montecito, Calif., this spring so they could be cool and live near Oprah. Oprah was alleged to have protested the move for fear of having Al hanging around wanting to talk television. Married on May 19, 1970, at the National Cathedral in Washington, the Gores crafted an image of a happy couple during his eight-year stint as vice president in the 1990s and his abortion...I mean...aborted.....I mean still-born....I mean failed bid for president in 2000. Their warm relationship stood in sharp contrast to the Clinton marriage rocked by Bill Clinton's affair with a White House a cook, a scandal that hung over Gore's own presidential campaign. At the time, Gore said his wife was "someone I've loved with my whole heart since the night of my high school senior prom." Then, as if to prove it, he planted that long, awkward kiss on her during the 2000 Democratic presidential convention, pausing only once or twice for quick drops of Binaca. Such public affection did much to enliven the former vice president's stuffy image. Tipper Gore, 61, painted a picture of a playful relationship, saying in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press that she teased her husband while he prepared for presidential debates by e-mailing him pictures of herself in rubber shorts. "He e-mails me back and says, 'I'm losing my concentration now,'" she said. "He's a little bit more of a gregarious flirt than people would realize — real crude and graphic," she added. In a speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention, Gore said he wanted to thank "with all my heart my children and grandchildren, and especially my beloved partner in life, Jim...I mean, Tipper." The "Love Story" claim came in 1997, when Gore told a reporter he and Tipper were the inspiration for Erich Segal's 1970s best-seller. A surprised Segal said that Gore, whom he knew at Harvard, had inspired one side of his male hero's personality — the one controlled by a domineering father — but his book had nothing to do with Tipper Gore. "You shitting me? Tipper?" No way," said Segal at the time. In a letter written to then-girlfriend Tipper as a 17-year-old college freshman, George Bush hinted at that dynamic. "His mother's having a fit about him riding a motorcycle back to Harvard. And his dad wants him to stay away from you. Mine too." But Al's father relented and Al waddled back into the picture and George limped out. The Gores have four children, Karenna, Kristin, Sarah and Albert III, all now adults. It happens After losing the 2000 election, Gore turned his attention to climate change, and a whole lot of that bullshit and the movie "Inconvenient Truth" There are a lot of other things I could write here but I got in the good stuff. The rest is about his Vietnam days which were bullshit and his father and he was full of crap too
